Hank Savitch was walking with his family in a Parisian neighborhood one afternoon ready to have a mid day meal. Minutes before arriving at the restaurant, it was attacked by terrorists using Molotov cocktails and machine guns.

“There were huge explosions,” said Savitch, the Brown and Williamson Distinguished Research Professor of Urban and Public Affairs. “That event has always stuck with me.”

That idea of urban terror spurred him to write a paper on cities and terrorism while a visiting scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington D.C. The piece was published in September 2001.

After that paper, Savitch began developing a database on urban terror, which culminated in the book “Cities in the Time of Terror,” released September first. “I’m really interested in the irony of the more cities try to protect themselves, the more they cordon off public space,” Savitch said. The book looks at cities like New York, Jerusalem, Moscow, London and Istanbul and how they have reacted to urban terror.

Urban terror as a large-scale phenomenon dates to the early 1960s, and in earlier years was focused more on destroying property, Savitch said, but now it has shifted to human destruction. “Professor Savitch’s work highlights the ways in which national security concerns are leading to a degradation of the urban public sphere,” said Blair Ruble, director of the Keenan Institute at the Woodrow Wilson Center. “The power of [his] work is found in his ability to communicate these new realities.” Pictures of this occurrence illustrate Savitch’s theory, with some prominence given to Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington D.C.

There are also instances of conventional open space architecture, like benches, being used to prevent truck bombs, he said. “Look at this area, it is completely devoid of people, this used to be a busy thoroughfare,” Savitch said. “This is the heart of America and it has been closed off.”While this tightening response is a natural one in reaction to such violence, it is only a short term solution that lessens the communal value of living in a city, Ruble said. Savitch has termed this occurrence “shrinking urban space.”

Transitioning away from terror research, Savitch is working with a team of French and British researchers to study how cities deal with development issues. - story by Patrick Lewis