Culture aspects

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Culture aspects

Culture aspects in urban planning have been classically addressed in terms of urban arts and city planning. Cultural resources have become recognized as an important component of urban space.

Growing features are cultural policy and practice. Relevant issues are: societal needs, socioeconomic issues, the natural/structural/infrastructural environment, and social aspects of urban planning.


Commonly, societal needs are addressed in urban planning (such as need for parks, green and recreation area, need for public transport improvement, need for bike routes, need for social gathering places and culture resources, special needs of vulnerable groups (such as children, disabled, elderly etc.), and many of them have security/safety relevance. Examples are:

  1. Lighting of urban spaces, bus stops, video installation etc., which helps reducing crime rates, robberies, sexual harassment etc.
  2. According standardized constructions to avoid chemical leaching from/around industrial sites and to avoid substance harassment and environmental pollution;
  3. According physical protection of urban rivers and channels (also sewage) to avoid flooding /overflowing;
  4. Child friendly construction norms and standards for schools and preschools to avoid injuries (e.g. safety areas near streets);
  5. Additional parking houses/garages to provide for increased drivers’ needs – improvement of ventilation systems to control exhaust fumes and avoid health problems;
  6. Counter-terrorism design measures to avoid terrorist attempts;

etc.


Security issues, that could arise, if not addressed, are:

  • Raising crime incidents
  • Increasing environmental problems
  • Increasing health problems
  • Increasing accident rates
  • Increasing flooding






Concept of culture

Technically, culture is linked to cognition and refers to people’s assumptions about the world.[1] 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.[2] 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". [3] 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.[4] 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.[5] 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." (Baum 2000: 115)[6]

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.).” (Cannon 2003: 5)[7]

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.[8]



Security related aspects and benefits

  • 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.



=Approaches how to address it

  • Comply with all the existing planning/construction/safety norms and standards;
  • Follow public/governmental programmes and initiatives (e.g. crime prevention programs, counter-terrorism programs, environmental and climate protection programs);
  • Consider upcoming societal needs, societal/demographic changes;
  • Consider public views (e.g. from surveys, studies and citizen participation etc.) in planning ideas and processes.


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


Practical checklists to consider culture 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. ↑ E.g. R.M. Keesing: Theories of Culture. In: Annual Review of Anthropology, vol. 3 (1974), pp. 73-97.
  2. ↑ G.A. Almond/S. Verba: The Civic Culture: Political Attitudes and Democracy in Five Nations. Princeton, NJ: University of Princeton Press, 1963.
  3. ↑ 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.
  4. ↑ A. Schütz: Gesammelte Aufsätze. Bd.3: Studien zur phänomenologischen Philosophie. Den Haag: Nijhoff, 1972, pp. 156-157.
  5. ↑ For a classical example, see C. Geertz: The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books, 1973.
  6. ↑ 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).
  7. ↑ 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.
  8. ↑ United Nations, International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (ISDR): Terminology: Basic Terms of Disaster Risk Reduction, 2011, http://www.unisdr.org/we/inform/terminology).

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