0012 SAC15210.1177/1206331211430012Barnard-Wills et al.

Space and Culture

Articles
Space and Culture

Introduction: Spaces 15(2) 9297

The Author(s) 2012
Reprints and permission:
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DOI: 10.1177/1206331211430012
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David Barnard-Wills1, Cerwyn Moore2,

and Joel McKim3

The interlinked discourses of terrorism and risk serve both to structure policies and drive the
design of technologies, with implications ranging far beyond traditional issues of national secu-
rity and international relations. Both the threat of terrorism and the policies and technologies
intended to counter it affect the physical and social environment, potentially changing the nature
of the space itself, as well as the way people use, inhabit, and think about places and spaces. This
special issue intends to map these developments and provide theoretical accounts of such trends
and phenomena. This editorial is written shortly after a devastating urban/rural tragedy in Norway
that confirmed that not only does the threat of terror remain present, but it does so in close prox-
imity to the encouraging events of the Arab Spring that demonstrated the role played by space,
both physical and virtual, in the collective resistance of state repression and intimidation.
Terrorism acts as driver for diverse policies of preemption, prevention, and prediction, includ-
ing the substantial growth of surveillance. Frequently, terrorism is framed in terms of risk, with
certain places, populations and activities identified as risky or suspect, and thus a proper target
for monitoring and intervention. The logic of counterterrorism is risk averse. Attempts to secure
space against terrorism or other associated risks and natural hazards raise questions about what
exactly is being secured and for what purposes. Which populations or activities are included or
excluded from a space? Which uses of space are privileged, and which are brought under the
rubric of terrorism?
The threat of terrorism and the counterterrorism responses raised against it, affect the aes-
thetic and affective dimensions of architectural and urban design, and could constrain movement
and experience within the space of the city. These threats and countermeasures also have pro-
found implications for urban ethical and political life. To what extent does the risk of terrorism
foster a politics of secrecy as opposed to openness? Do these conditions prevent the development
of a potential ethics of hospitality or cosmopolitanism?
The spaces affected by terrorism and risk are not just physical but also include virtual spaces
such as the Internet. These spaces too are designed, constructed, and contested in ways affected
by conceptions of risk and terrorismthe decentralized communications potential of the Internet
is seen by governments not only as a site of radicalization, but also of ideological conflict, as in
the case of WikiLeaks and Anonymous. The architecture of these virtual spaces establishes code
as law (Lessig, 1999). Software codes and protocols can be understood as frozen organisational

1
Cranfield University, Swindon, UK
2
University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK
3
University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA

Corresponding Author:
David Barnard-Wills, Department of Informatics and Systems Engineering, Cranfield University, Shrivenham,
Swindon, UK, SN6 8LA
Email: d.barnardwills@cranfield.ac.uk
Barnard-Wills et al. 93

and policy discourse (Bowker & Starr, 2000, p. 135), including political and social values even
if these are unarticulated. Physical spaces are themselves divided up into zones of control, rang-
ing from physical and electronic security cordons to free speech zones, and the fortified Green
Zone of Baghdad (Chandrasekaran, 2007). These spaces are modulated through the differential
application of protocol (Galloway, 2004). As forms of policy, the architectural and the code are
particularly opaque to nonspecialists and the general public.
If living in an urban setting is now the norm for the majority of the earths inhabitants, it has
not precluded the space of the city from remaining uncertain, precarious and even fearful for
many. These tensions can be explained in part by the growing social and economic inequalities
in both finance- and service-based global cities (Sassen, 2006), and the swelling megacities
of the developing world (Davis, 2006). The structural injustices of globalized capital produce
civil unrest (in the form of crime and political instability), but they also engender creative coping
strategies (such as informal economies and DIY construction methods) that significantly alter the
spatial makeup of the city (Cruz, 2008).
The fears associated with urban space are of course intensified when cities become embroiled
in violent global conflicts. The urbicidal destruction of the 1992-1996 Siege of Sarajevo and
the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center made clear that architecture and the built environ-
ment are now the focal point, rather than simply the backdrop, for contemporary military aggres-
sions and terror campaigns. The risks presented by terrorism are distinct in that they are of an
inherently indeterminate nature, making the appropriate level of response at the municipal level
difficult to assess. As Brian Massumi (2006) identifies, post 9/11, governmentality has molded
itself to threat. A threat is unknowable. If it were known in its specifics, it wouldnt be a threat.
It would be a situation . . . and a situation can be handled (p. 289). Under these conditions, in
which threats appear fundamentally ungraspable, the definable fears associated with urban living
are in danger of being displaced by a dispersed and potentially limitless anxiety.
Yet Sara Ahmed reminds us that abstract fears and anxieties, particularly those triggered by
proximity to racial or religious otherness, have very tangible effects on the spatial organization
of the city. She explains, fear works to align bodily and social space: it works to enable some
bodies to inhabit and move in public space through restricting the mobility of other bodies to
spaces that are enclosed or contained (Ahmed, 2004, p. 70). The impulse to mitigate risk through
acts of enclosure, containment or division has clearly had a profound impact on the current urban
environment and the very notion of public space. Setha Low (2001) rather chillingly reveals that
one third of all new homes now built in the United States are in gated residential communities
(p. 26) and scholars such as Teresa Caldeira and Pow Choon-Piew confirm that a proliferation of
fortified enclaves, separating the upper classes from the poor or marginal, is simultaneously
redefining the public life of Latin American and Asian cities (Caldeira, 1996; Choon-Piew,
2009). The threat of terror has engendered its own forms of barriers and enclosures, including
what Wendy Brown (2010) describes as the new walls striating the globe (p. 8) and the estab-
lishment of detention camps, where national and international rule of law is suspended indefi-
nitely to protect state sovereignty (Butler, 2004). International relations theorists such as Didier
Bigo have focused on the role of the border as a key site of surveillance in liberal democracies
(Bigo, 2006). According to Stephen Graham (2010) these civilian and military processes of sur-
veillance and policing are becoming increasingly blurred as we enter into an era he dubs the
new military urbanism. Given the weight of these conditions, perhaps the greatest risk of all is
that the openness, cosmopolitanism, and exchange that characterize the democratic city may not
survive these security measures.
The defenses and resilience of the Ideal City must now incorporate risk management and
mechanisms of knowledge production. Its spaces consequently become sites of surveillance.
Surveillance is an ordering logic and an attempt to render spaces known and knowable, and
94 Space and Culture 15(2)

therefore tractable for intervention by a range of security actors, but also to smooth the flow of
commerce. Recurring narratives of attacks on urban space, combined with a perceived need for
places to compete for resources and attention, has led to various security actors placing a high
priority on security and surveillance, often framed through the concept of resilience (Coaffee,
Wood, & Rogers, 2008). Surveillance studies has paid particular attention to the spread of visual
surveillance in urban environments (Coleman, 2004; McCahill, 2002), but the information
dimension becomes incredibly important in the smart city where the overlapping infrastruc-
tures of communication, socialization, smooth circulation, or intelligent transportation systems
contain surveillance potential (Monahan, 2010). The tensions between knowledge/surveillance
and physical architecture are important here. Sometimes these two modalities are opposed, and
at other times they are brought into synergy. Technological surveillance may offer the guarantee
of free-flow through a space, or the absence of physical barriers; however, architecture can be
used to provide mechanisms of surveillance in space.
How has a creative community of artists and designers responded to our current context of
terror and risk? The latently menacing installation spaces created by artists such as Gregor
Schneider, Miroslaw Balka, and Laurent Grasso are perhaps one manifestation of a collective
state of anxiety. Architects and landscape designers, meanwhile, are faced with the considerable
challenge of meeting security requirements while maintaining an atmosphere of openness and
accessibility (Boddy, 2008). Nowhere is this imperative more explicit than in the design of U.S.
government buildings (particularly since the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal
Building in Oklahoma City) and the recent completion of the San Francisco Federal Building by
Thom Mayne of Morphosis provides one example of an attempt to reconcile this tension through
the interplay of secure and public zones, transparency and opacity. But this balancing act is not
always successfulfor many, the shift at Ground Zero in New York from the crystalline struc-
tures proposed by Daniel Libeskind to the reinforced concrete base of the current Freedom
Tower symbolizes the failure of architecture to respond effectively to the challenges at hand.
Indeed, Eyal Weizmans insightful account of the central role played by architectural form, the-
ory, and infrastructure in the ongoing Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories suggests
that architecture may be more complicit in the production of contemporary spaces of conflict
than the discipline would care to admit (Weizman, 2007).
Evidently, political violence and more particularly terrorism has become an explicit concern
in a range of different disciplinary contextsincluding international relations, political theory,
and sub-branches of these disciplines such as Security Studiessince 9/11. Themes related to
the study of risk have been slightly less explicit but nonetheless embedded in many theoretical
discussions about the methods employed to mitigate threats. Of course, there were bound to be
difficulties when reconciling the immediate and ever-present threat linked to terrorism, and more
aesthetic considerations associated with the securitization of threats. However, this was not the
real tension within these different disciplines. Rather the nature of terrorism and risk became
entwined, providing a central pillar in much of the literature that sought to address contemporary
forms of political violence. Onlookers might have predicted a small place among the less excit-
ing theories of international relations for this type of work, but it quickly gained purchase, over-
writing accounts of terrorism in urban settings.
In the midst of the Cold War, Paul Virilio had illustrated the ways in which forms of war
shaped the built environment and public space. Virilio (1983) writes, the objects, bunkers,
blockhouses, anti-aircraft shelters, submarine bases, etc. are kinds of reference points or land-
marks to the totalitarian nature of war in space and myth (pp. 2-3). Nearly 20 years before 9/11,
Virilio signposted how the evocation of war fashioned the built environment, while also pro-
ducing security strategies and pre-emptive policies. The evocation of a war against terror after
9/11 arguably only shaped urban space obliquely, but the war myth was certainly used to
Barnard-Wills et al. 95

securitize political space. Importantly though, terrorism during the Cold War had already
informed many of the governance strategies deployed to counter threatsincluding data reten-
tion, the targeting of terrorist financing, and pre-emptive security policies. Indeed, the use of
political violence in urban settingsepitomized and advocated by the Brazilian Carlos Marighella
(2002) in his Minimanual of the Urban Guerillahad a long history. The Minimanual was pub-
lished in English in the early 70s shortly before a wave of terrorism, which led to a series of
countermeasures, including internment, throughout the 1970s and 1980s. In a sense then some of
the theoretical claims about the novelty of the politics of precaution, are limited, partly due to the
under-appreciation of the urban aspects of terrorism. In another sense, some overzealous theo-
retical reading of risk may need to be balanced or offset against works that are firmly linked to
policies and history. The city has long been a site of risk and fear, if not always terrorism (Joyce,
2003; Schivelbusch, 1987).
The development of this special issue was, in part, inspired by the desire to address the issues
of terrorism and risk through a multidisciplinary perspective. The aim was to bring together a
range of different, but nonetheless linked, areas of research interests and researchers. A key
aspect of each article included in the special issue relates to the theoretical discussion of gover-
nance. A methodology based on the study of strategies and tactics, as well as ways of seeing and
regimes of truth (Dean, 2010; Miller & Rose, 2008; Tully, 2002), is particularly relevant to
understanding the politics of risk, terror, knowledge, and surveillance in the modern city or vir-
tual space. The diagrams and intentions of security policies are fundamentally important objects
of study, as are the efforts that seek to make space knowable. Foucaults point is not that society
is a panopticon, but rather that the panopticon was a particular form of governmental diagrama
way to arrange both space and information to enact governance (Foucault, 2008). Such diagrams
are presented as answers to the problems of security, risk, and terror that government poses to
itself. Therefore the way that spaces of terror and risk are imaged, both retroactively and for the
future, is vitally important. The past is a selective reading based on exception and novelty, a
patchwork of CCTV images, and recirculated photographs of events or attacks (Reinhardt,
2007). The future is built up from imaged scenarios, based on possibility rather than probability.
The complexity and vividness of such scenarios contributes psychologically to our sense of their
terrifying plausibility (Kahneman, Slovic & Tversky, 1982).
In their contribution to the special issue, Claudia Aradau and Rens van Munster directly
engage with this mode of thought and politics of knowledge. They argue that contemporary
politics is increasingly defined at the horizon of unknown, yet catastrophic future events.
Exploring spatiality and temporality, the authors demonstrate how the practices entailed in the
governance of an unknowable and unexpected future inform counter-terror policies.
The article by David Barnard-Wills and Debi Ashenden focuses on cyber security and the
securitization of virtual space, offering a reading of ways in which risk and an account of the
ambiguity of space are used to drive current policies. The focus on technological possibilities
and cyber war, highlight the ways in which virtual and digital space are securitized.
Kevin Haggerty and Camille Tokar seek to contribute to the growing literature on ID scan-
ning and surveillance in their article on the appeal of nightclub scanning systems. Using ethno-
graphic work, the article interrogates the diverse appeals of such devices to institutional
audiences, offering insight into cultural practices and the role of institutions in advancing the
use of surveillance. They also engage with the postjustificatory epistemology that often features
in technological security interventions.
Teresa Stoppani engages with the symbolic role of architecture, even at the moment of its
destruction. The artificial disaster is interpreted not only as an attack on what architecture sym-
bolizes but also indirectly on the disciplinary practice of architecture. Destruction triggers the
questioning of the role, meanings, weaknesses, and responsibilities of the discipline. Stoppanis
96 Space and Culture 15(2)

article moves through governmental attempts to map disaster, formal efforts to write the disaster
or war on to the body of the city, and critically provocative responses within architectural theory
that highlight the very violence of architecture itself. This ranges from urbicide in Sarajevo to
Ground Zero after 9/11. The article is particularly relevant for the account of the way that archi-
tectural space is contested, both physically and symbolically, and for the ideological weight
present in these conflicts.
Erin Despards examination of the use of plant life in security architecture and environmental
design for crime prevention demonstrates the limits of a purely aesthetic critique of the securiti-
zation of space. Calls for harmonious, green, and psychologically beneficial spaces risk
co-option by sophisticated, designed security that fails to question the political drive behind
these practices. Despards article also demonstrates the way that security design can shift between
different modulations of the same core principles. Plants see use as barriers, indexes of care and
control, and as boundary markers. Controlled and ordered plant life in the city also offers oppor-
tunities to increase the surveillance capacity of space. Despard also highlights the complex semi-
otic potential and legibility of plant life.
John Hutnyk continues this complex reading of space through an examination of the framing
of both the city and political violence in culture and storytelling. His accounts of films such as
Sammy and Rosie Get Laid and My Beautiful Launderette, and of The Satanic Verses, show how
the complexity, legitimacy, and ambiguity of U.K. diasporic street politics of the 1980s has been
reconfigured in terms of terror and a persistent everyday anxiety. This account of real and fic-
tional spaces is carefully related to considerations of the loss of depth and multiplicity in
diasporicAsian identity, demonstrating the way that both culture and space are implicated in
politics of risk and terror. Given the turbulent year experienced in London and elsewhere in the
United Kingdom, such a consideration of the political and cultural dynamics of street protest is
more pertinent than ever.
Together the pieces included in the special issue not only build on and extend existing schol-
arship in an emerging field, but their individual content and the connections between them offer
new, innovative insight into the complex relationship between space, terror, and risk. It is
hoped that the scope and collective contributions of this special ssue will influence future
research and analysis of the links and tensions in these three areas.

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