This website summarizes a project outlining the impact of anti-terrorism security on urban public space since September 11, 2001.

Even before these terror attacks, owners and managers of high-profile public and private buildings had begun to militarize space by outfitting surrounding streets and sidewalks with rotating surveillance cameras, metal fences and concrete bollards. In emergency situations, such features may be reasonable impositions, but as threat levels fall these larger security zones fail to incorporate a diversity of uses and users.

Utilizing an innovative method developed by our interdisciplinary team, our year-long study of Los Angeles, New York City and San Francisco finds that security zones cover between 3.4% and 35.7% of the public realm in the six districts studied. The ubiquity of these security zones encourages us to consider them a new land use type. Click here to see a full summary of the results, while a broader discussion can be found in this recent article published in Environment and Planning A.