Evolving security motifs, Olympic spectacle and urban planning legacy: from militarization to security-by-design

This paper examines the form, function and impact of previous Olympic security arrangements and their intersection with planning practice. Drawing from prior and ongoing empirical research investigating the security practices at summer Olympic Games, the paper argues that wider shifts towards ‘total' security models comprising continually reproduced security motifs can be observed that are increasingly standardized, mobile, globalized and planned-in. For most Olympic organizers, preparations now necessarily include attempts to equate spectacle with safety and to ‘design-out’ terrorism by relying on highly militarized tactics and expensive and detailed contingency planning. Such securitizing practices have intensified in form and scale since 9/11, with such intensification set to continue at the XXXIII Olympiad in Paris, where a vast security infrastructure is being embedded into the large-scale and long-term master-plans for the central city. This represents a high point in spatial planning practice through embracing principles of security-by-design where Games-time security infrastructure, whilst providing effective protection, becomes a less visible but permanent, physical legacy that can also contribute to local programmes of regeneration, climate resilience and crime prevention. The paper concludes by reflecting upon what the continual evolution of security infrastructure means for the balancing of planned-in security and spectacle at future Olympiads.