Foreword

The management and protection of urban public spaces remains one of the top priorities of local and regional authorities, and a key mandate from the electorate, given their central role in the attractiveness of cities and in fostering the social inclusion of all groups of the popula tion, as well as cities’ offer of culture, leisure and trade opportunities. Unsurprisingly, this has long been a key area of work for the European Forum for Urban Security (Efus), as a network dedicated to urban security gathering some 250 cities of all sizes from 16 European countries.

The waves of terrorist attacks against European cities since the mid2010s have sent shockwaves in European local authorities, which found themselves confronted with the complex challenge of securing their urban public spaces without turning them into “bunkers”. What can cities do to render their public spaces more safe, inclusive and open to all? How to collaborate more efficiently with national authori ties, in particular on counter-terrorism, but also local police forces and all the other relevant local stakeholders? How to take into account new technological developments? How to better involve citizens and civil society?

One of Efus’ members, the City of Nice (France), was the target in 2016 of a particularly deadly terrorist attack on its famous public space the Promenade des Anglais on Bastille Day, a particularly symbolic day for the French. In the following years, the city took a series of initiatives to better prevent such attacks and protect its public spaces, some of which were supported by the European Commission and Efus. In 2019, Nice took the lead of a wide-ranging, EU-funded project titled PACTESUR (Protect Allied Cities against TErrorism in Securing Urban aReas), which aimed to empower cities and local security actors, mainly in the face of terrorist threats, but also against other risks inherent to public spaces. Efus was one of the project’s partners, along with the City of Liège (Belgium), the City of Turin (Italy), and the National Asso ciation of Italian Municipalities (ANCI) Piemonte (Italy).

Over the course of four years, the project organised a wide range of ac tivities, including, but not exclusively, the deployment of pilot security equipment in the project’s partner cities, police academies for various European local police forces, and European Weeks of Security aimed to give a voice to European local stakeholders, police representatives, experts and civil society in the conversation about the security of public spaces.

This publication, presented during the PACTESUR project’s final conference (Brussels, 23-24 November 2022), presents the main insights Efus has drawn from this large project. To be clear, this publication is not meant to be a comprehensive description of all the work carried out by the project, but rather takeaways that we hope can be useful for European local and regional authorities.

We’ve looked at the main challenges faced by local authorities in pro tecting their public spaces; how this issue is approached by EU institu tions; why it matters to involve a wide range of stakeholders but also, directly, citizens; what technology can bring and the main pitfalls to avoid; how to correctly assess public spaces’ vulnerabilities and prepare for all eventualities; and how to communicate in case of a crisis.

We have strived to include as many practical cases as possible, drawn from the PACTESUR project, but also from other EU-funded projects that tackled the issue of the protection of public spaces and in which Efus took part.

We hope this publication will be of interest to you, and that you will join us in keeping this conversation alive by sharing your views and experience through our website and our regular on- and offline confer ences, workshops and other types of meetings and platforms. There is no single or simple answer, but it is clear that directly exchanging between cities on such an important issue can only benefit us all, local authorities and citizens alike.

Elizabeth Johnston Executive Director