Culture aspects

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Culture aspects

Introduction

Culture aspects in urban planning have been classically addressed in terms of urban arts and city planning. Growing features are cultural policy and practice. The purpose is to "create contexts in which planners and multicultural groups can continuously learn and experiment, think systematically, engage in meaningful dialogue, and create visions that energize action and inclusion in city planning."[1] Cognitive dimensions of culture are especially important to address aspects, such as perception of vulnerability and building of cognitive foundations for citizen resilience.


Concept of culture

Technically, culture is linked to cognition and refers to people’s assumptions about the world.[2] Definitions of culture, also as related to security, abound. The classical policy concept of political culture, as established by Almond and Verba, centers on norms and values guiding citizens’ assessments, expectations and behaviour consequences.[3] Theoretically speaking, culture provides the background for (re)cognition and forms the cognitive as well as value-laden basis for so-called "taken for grantedness".[4] This has been seminally elaborated by Alfred Schütz, who also regarded culture as a threshold criteria for defining when a society will accept a problem (such as a security threat/challenge) to be solved.[5] Social sciences and humanities have mainly defined cultural factors as cognitive forms by which members of social communities make sense of reality, attribute meaning to facts as well as save and reproduce knowledge and their interpretation of the world.[6] EU FP7 Programme documents show that this definition of culture also strongly influences Security Research, e.g. in the form of the emphasis on felt vs. actual security.

This cognitive dimensions of culture is especially important to address aspects such as perception of vulnerability and building of cognitive foundations for citizen resilience. It requires a "multicultural sensibility for planning", which includes considering how cultures, "which prescribe members' relations with the community, orient their actions, and, among other things, suggest how they might use formal planning processes."[7]


Culture aspects of citizen resilience

From the cultural point of view, identification of vulnerability should be based on a comprehensive approach. While vulnerability in general is the susceptibility of a community to the impact of hazards, its strategic addressing, among other things by urban planning, should in particular “involve a predictive quality: it is supposedly a way of conceptualizing what may happen to an identifiable population under conditions of particular risk and hazards” – where vulnerability is seen as “the complex set of characteristics that include a person’s: initial well-being (health, morale, etc.); self-protection (asset pattern, income, qualifications, etc.); social protection (hazard preparedness by society, building codes, shelters, etc.); social and political networks and institutions (social capital, institutional environment, etc.).”[8]

Resilience as an evolving concept in security research, in particular with respect to planning for secure systems of different kinds, can be summarized to be so far based on the following characteristics:

  • It reflects the extent of change that a system can experience while retaining its order, or normative (formal) as well as its dynamic organization.
  • It reflects the capability level of a system for self-organization.
  • It requires both acceptance by as well as symmetric competences of the citizens.
  • It reflects the capability of a system to learn and adapt to changing environments while retaining its characteristics and identity (or, technically, its operational closure).

With a view to building quantitative indicators for resilience to plan for improved systems, resilience can be defined as determined by the degree to which a social system is capable of organizing itself to increase its capacity for learning from past disruptions and disasters for better future protection and to improve risk reduction measures.[9]


Addressing of cultural factors in urban studies

In urban studies though, cultural factors so far have mainly been understood as legal requirements related to upholding historic landmarks, involving questions such as "Is it legal for a historic preservation commission to stop an owner from demolishing or even modifying the exterior of a historically significant building?"[10] 

Contrast with VITRUV approach to culture from D1.1.


Addressing culture aspects in urban planning

The concept of (security) culture is important for effective urban planning for several reasons. One of those is that 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. Another reason is the need to identify Cultural influence of urban structure, such as cultural artifacts that result from urban planning and may also involve and challenge ethics aspects.

Consider the following example: In his seminal work The Culture of Control: Crime and Social Order in Contemporary Society, cultural criminologist David Garland identifies cultural and institutional practices to construct artefacts which allow a continuation of imagined middle-class separation from crime. He illustrates his argument with examples from urban planning, especially the concept of offering citizens new middle-class type privacy in private public spaces, such a commercial malls based on architectures "to separate out different 'types' of people" and including commercial policing by private companies.[11]

Culture aspects are however not limited to factors that limit citizens’ acceptance of urban planning or distract perception of security, also as addressed in urban planning and represented by built infrastructure that results from such planning decisions, from a more "objective" risk assessment. For example, activating civic culture can also be a method to use in urban planning in order to efficiently address security aspects. Likewise, cultural 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.

Consideration of cultural aspects in urban planning can for the most part be referred to the approach of cultural criminology. In a similar vein as new urbanism, cultural criminology points out that while culture figures prominently in theoretical and practical approaches, it entails a concept of vulnerability and resilience that are based on a type of culture that is "rooted in the material predicament of the actors concerned. It eschews both a social positivism of material conditions and a cultural positivism of stasis and of essence."[12] Cultural criminology, in contrast, sets out to appropriately consider dynamic change, pluralism of values, ethnic diversity and, "in terms of method", to "rescue the human actors", among other things from an overly technological approach to security.[13]

Apart from cultural criminology, the following approaches/schools of thought are of particular relevance for covering culture-related security aspects in urban planning:


Take home messages for addressing culture aspects of security in urban planning

  • Get to know culture: Familiarize with public security cultures, which influence citizens’ acceptance of urban security planning decisions and built environment resulting from those planning decisions.
  • Mind cultural meaning: Consider the influence of culture on urban structure, and of urban planning on culture, bearing in mind that culture aspects go beyond preserving historic artefacts and protecting the traditional image of the city. Culture is linked to dynamic societal processes, and it among other things co-determines the meaning that citizens ascribe to built urban structure. These processes cannot be planned and meaning cannot just be socially transmitted by design of urban space.
  • Analyze risks comprehensively: Use the culture of risk of a society in order to determine security aspects in urban planning, and needs to protect, that may be overlooked by technological approaches to risk analysis.
  • Integrate cultural components of resilience: Consider in resilience-enhancing planning that resilience, and the vulnerabilities towards which it is directed, include elements of public culture – such as citizens morale and societal preparedness, social networks, etc. Planning should work with – not over or against – those aspects. Resilience as capability to learn and adapt to changing environment essentially involves societal characteristics. This involves styles of how citizens perceive urban environment and security (gaps), as well as their expectations how this should be addressed by authorities.


Footnotes and references

  1. ↑ S. Ameyaw: Appreciative Planning: An Approach to Planning with Diverse Ethnic and Cultural Groups. In: M.A. Burayidi (ed.): Urban Planning in a Multicultural Society, Westport: Praeger, 2000, pp. 101-114 (p. 101).
  2. ↑ E.g. R.M. Keesing: Theories of Culture. In: Annual Review of Anthropology, vol. 3 (1974), pp. 73-97.
  3. ↑ G.A. Almond/S. Verba: The Civic Culture: Political Attitudes and Democracy in Five Nations. Princeton, NJ: University of Princeton Press, 1963.
  4. ↑ Cf. E. Adler: Seizing the Middle Ground: Constructivism in World Politics. In: European Journal of International Relations, vol. 3 (1997), no.3, pp. 319-363.
  5. ↑ A. Schütz: Gesammelte Aufsätze. Bd.3: Studien zur phänomenologischen Philosophie. Den Haag: Nijhoff, 1972, pp. 156-157.
  6. ↑ For a classical example, see C. Geertz: The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books, 1973.
  7. ↑ H.S. Baum: Culture Matters–But It Shouldn’t Matter Too Much. In: M.A. Burayidi (ed.): Urban Planning in a Multicultural Society, Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2000, pp. 115-136 (p. 115).
  8. ↑ T. Cannon et al.: Social Vulnerability, Sustainable Livelihoods and Disasters. Report to DFID. Conflict and Humanitarian Assistance Department (CHAD) and Sustainable Livelihoods Office London, 2003, p. 5.
  9. ↑ United Nations, International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (ISDR): Terminology: Basic Terms of Disaster Risk Reduction, 2011, http://www.unisdr.org/we/inform/terminology).
  10. ↑ Cf. J.S. Kayden: The law of urban design. In: T. Banerjee/A. Loukaitou-Sideris (eds.): Companion to Urban Design. London/New York: Routledge, 2011, pp. 175-185 (p. 175).
  11. ↑ D. Garland: The Culture of Control: Crime and Social Order in Contemporary Society. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, p. 162.
  12. ↑ K. Hayward/J. Young: Cultural Criminology. In: M. Maguire/R. Morgan/R. Reiner (eds.): The Oxford Handbook of Criminology. 4th ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007, pp. 102-121 (p. 117).
  13. ↑ Ibid.

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