People, City, and Security: Urban Interfaces in the Age of Events

Abstract

Tampere today is the core of Finland’s second-largest urban region and a hallmark of successful post-industrial transformation where event arenas gradually replace old smokestacks as signifiers of the city’s vitality. This chapter explores the evolution of security thinking and ways of planning secure cities that have developed over this transformation. It discusses new forms of urban competition and how the event industry and its security regimes have impacted urban planning, creating new technical and spatial interfaces. It aligns with Robert Beauregard’s critical view on the urban age approach as well as the urban growth machine arguments. Its approach to industrial transformation acknowledges Erik Brynjolfsson’s and Andrew MacAfee’s ideas of second machine age. The chapter discusses findings from Tampere and describes the process of aiming at a secure city through multi-stakeholder and inclusive urban planning and building adequate readiness for operating in its varied events and other environments. Its empirical findings stem from group interviews and workshops with urban security actors and survey data from ice hockey spectators. The chapter yields both structural or planning-related findings and findings that pertain to individual experiences. The structural findings deal with security actors’ perception of their transforming operation environment due to the new event arenas and spaces that emerge in the urban space and the changing roles and uses of, for example, areas that surround stadiums and other venues. The individual findings show how new arenas are experienced from the security perspective.