Resilient planning for sporting mega-events: designing and managing safe and secure urban places for London 2012 and beyond

Abstract

Since the 1960s both regeneration and security have been prominent themes in Olympic planning. However, this paper argues that the prominence given to post event “legacies” in London’s bid to host the 2012 Summer Games has fomented a merger of these hitherto distinct ambitions oriented around notions of “resilience”. In addition to identifying this merger, based on analysis of planning for the 2012 Games the paper sets out its component features and considers a range of key implications. These include the accommodation of Olympic security amid shifting national security arrangements and, at a local level, the impact and importance of the 2011 London riots on Olympic safety and security processes. Organised over four areas of discussion – the first three comprising of the coupling of spatial strategies of resilient planning and design with concerns for security; the temporal framework of such approaches; analysis of the altered physical and institutional landscape of London ahead of the 2012 Olympic Games – the paper concludes by identifying and discussing the ways in which urban rejuvenation and securitisation which are increasingly being combined into resilient designs and master plans in the Olympic context and, crucially, standardised, exported and transferred to new urban hosts of similar events.