Urban Planning and Design for Terrorism Resilient Cities

Abstract

The actuality of this research is determined by a significant number of recent terror attacks and their disastrous impacts on urban forms. The venue of terror attacks has moved from developing to developed countries that have already experienced number of attacks in a last few decades. Though, existing urban polices do not meet counterterrorism standards and guidelines, especially in European countries. The necessity of implementation new environmental standards, as well as equipment of major buildings in high risk areas with elements, against terror attacks has turned into essential factor for the 21^st century design.

The research consists of two parts: 1) identification of environmental design (CPTED) factors that influence the choice of places for terror attacks, and 2) identification of factors of spatial urban structure that influence the choice of places for terror attacks. For the identification of environmental design (CPTED) factors that influence the choice of places for terror attacks 14 sites with terror attacks and 21 sites without terror attacks were accessed according to the developed CPTED questionnaire. Then the data was analyzed using the correlation analysis, automatic regression and descriptive statistics. For the identification of factors of spatial urban structure that influence the choice of places for terror attacks space syntax analysis and visual assessment of the syntactic maps was applied.

The research results reveal that the following CPTED factors are related to the choice of place of terror attacks: 1) strong separation of private and public activities, 2) a site that has a direct access to the main street, 3) a site that has a multiple entrances and exits, 4) minimization of vehicle access points to the building, 5) access to private and public space, 6) when a site has a direct access to the city center, 7) site is well-used, 8) redistribution of same functional buildings on the site, 9) a presence of a medical institution nearby the site. According to the results of the automatic regression analysis the following CPTED factors do the biggest impact on the choice of places for terror attacks: 1) vehicle access points to the buildings are minimized, 2) public and private acivities are separated, 3) there are many same functional buildings redistributed in the surrounding area. Descriptive statistics reveal the weakest points on the analyzed sites: 1) public and private activities are not separated, 2) many same functional buildings are not redistributed in the surrounding area, 3) access points to the building are not minimalized, 4) the object is surrounded by an open space, 5) there is no security police presence at the site, and 6) there no minimum required setback distance between the building and site boundaries. After the visual comparison of segment maps of integration, choice, mean depth and connectivity, we have discovered that almost all terror attacks happened on the most globally integrated (R=n) street segments, except Tel Aviv case study. Finally, the recommendations for the elements of site reorganization and the elements of street network reorganization are proposed.

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.sace.18.1.15443