ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses some of the implications of building security for the design and everyday experience of the public realm, mainly in the North American context. Building security professionals propose cost-effective and tested solutions to perceive natural and human made threats against physical plant and human assets. Meanwhile, their critics point to the broader costs to society incurred when security concerns trump 'good design' in the public realm. In the first decades of the 21st century, 'security' broadly defined has been a powerful force producing the spatial experiences of people around the globe. Specialist architects and building security experts have provided the forms and details that have resulted in this securitized built environment. Critics of the security-industrial complex abound in everyday life, as ordinary folks regularly rail against the inconveniences of queues and searches, against surveillance and other invasions of privacy. Some take their critique public in the form of protests, performances, and publications.
