Culture aspects

Culture aspects in urban planning have been classically addressed in terms of urban arts and city planning. Cultural resources have become recognised as an important component of urban space. Growing features are cultural policy and practice. Relevant issues are: societal needs, socio-economic issues, the natural/structural/infrastructural environment, and social aspects of urban planning.

For the purpose of Securipedia, aspects known as - security culture - from the technological point of view are safety aspects.

Examples

 * 1) Technically, culture is linked to cognition and refers to people’s assumptions about the world.
 * 2) The classical policy concept of political culture centres on norms and values guiding citizens’ assessments, expectations and behaviour consequences.
 * 3) Culture is regarded as a threshold criteria for defining when a society will accept a problem (such as a security threat/challenge) to be solved.
 * 4) Cultures prescribe members' relations with the community and how these members orient their actions.
 * 5) The cognitive dimension of culture is especially important to address aspects, such as perception of vulnerability and building of cognitive foundations for citizen resilience.

Security-related aspects of culture

 * Culture aspects are an important ingredient of citizen resilience that urban planning can support and that, in turn, urban planning can take advantage of to tackle security aspects.
 * Existing public security cultures influence the criteria for societal acceptance of urban security planning decisions and results, and for the addressing of security aspects in that context.
 * Urban structure and cultural artifacts resulting from urban planning influence a society and its culture. That may involve and challenge ethics aspects.
 * The concept of (security) culture is important for effective security related urban planning.
 * Activating civic culture can also be a method to use in urban planning in order to efficiently address security aspects.

Risks in neglect of culture aspects
Security issues which could arise if security culture is not appropriately addressed in urban planning, include the following:
 * Planning irrespective of, or even against, societal norms and values;
 * Raising crime incidents;
 * Increasing citizens' perception of insecurity;
 * Increasing gap between felt and factual security;
 * Loss of legitimacy of public and planning authorities.

Relevant schools of thought
The following approaches/schools of thought are of particular relevance for covering culture-related security aspects in urban planning:


 * Cultural criminology
 * Community safety approach;
 * Security culture
 * Perception of (in)security;
 * Environmental design (behaviour setting);

Checklists for practical consideration of culture aspects in security-related urban planning

 * Checklists for dimension consideration
 * Stakeholder-rated methods
 * Determination of security aspects - methods for urban planners