ABSTRACT
The attacks of 9/11 were unique, both in terms of the combination of tactics employed – the simultaneous high-jacking of planes and the targeting of iconic buildings by aircrafts which were used as missiles, as well as the intensity of the damage caused and insurance losses accumulated. 9/11 also brought to the fore wider concerns about different types of ‘postmodern’ or ‘catastrophic’ terrorism (Laqueur 1996; Carter et al. 1998), and of a society based on living with an acceptable degree of risk and danger (Ewald 1993; Lianos and Douglass 2000; Beck 2002). In the post-9/11 era it is generally accepted that the nature of potential terrorist threats has changed, requiring alteration in counter responses from Governments and agencies of security at all spatial scales; from defence of localities to the developments of international coalitions to fight the global ‘War on Terrorism’. Moreover, discussions in the wake of 9/11 served to highlight the links between new forms of defensive urbanism, strategically targeted terrorism (using chemical, biological or nuclear products) and military threat-response technology.
