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tv   Documentary  RT  September 12, 2013 4:29am-5:01am EDT

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little. cities are exciting it's incredible cities all of human life. sediment haitians of all of human history they all landscapes of power. london once the heart of the british empire. along with new york and home calm still in the center of the global financial industry. symbol and driving force behind the international monetary flow. twelve million inhabitants over three
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hundred languages countless ethnicities and colleges london is a prototype of a global network mega city and a laboratory for security measures a lot of the changes in cities since the nine eleven terror attacks in new york and washington were already on the way before those attacks so it's important to to sort of stress that the nine eleven attacks have led to certain changes intensifying that we're already on the way most importantly i would say there's a increasing preoccupation with security as defined by the state as defined by big companies and as defined by those in government. professor and also the stephen graham teaches and researches on security and surveillance and the militarization of space cities are getting more into the focus of conflict this is not entire.
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currently. on texas is leading to another. of renewed emphasis on the city site. throughout history have protected cities and their inhabitants know the rules have disappeared borders are more open than ever. in the generally doesn't come from the outside is already here living among us. the city is a fragile fabric of space. and we protect ourselves against the invisible comprehensible against feelings of vulnerability you can see to hear of the original ones a further one monitoring this vehicle is coming up and down the street down the end there are further to hang up the corner of that building at the end of the street
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another one and then another two on the corner of that building these globes this building is one of my favorites it's completely encrusted t.v. some of which is almost impossible to work out what it is for. one that monitoring the door is the service entrance and you've got a globe which is the street and then there is a fixed camera that was just looking straight at the ground and there is no door. around the corner we've got another pin one which is coming out looking at this traffic into change which is already being covered by that and then another globe which can obviously swing round. on the other side as many cameras again all in all just from this one spot is being watched by sixteen c.c.t.v. cameras. photographers henrietta williams discovered a disturbing pattern of security architecture in the middle of london they realized they were moving in a kind of visual parallel city the findings developed into an art project we called project. ring of steel entering the put up tick on because we were really
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fascinated in this i did that when you were in the city of london every movement is traced by cameras. in exhibitions and on the internet and real to williams and george showed a tight network of security cameras and structures. clearly visible on a map there will come of close to in real life. empty and easily overlooked control booths. a tree in the middle of a street surrounded by an bolts. a tank beriah disguised as a pole. together with the only present security cameras these structures form a security ring around the city of london. remarkably enough the boats followed almost the exact same lines of the old city walls dating back to roman times the ring of steel and fortress
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a matrix for other cities the project about the ring of steel was primarily to make it visible so that people understood how to read the skate i think that's what i find most interesting about the ring of steel is because it was so keen to not have this very visible defense it is not like a very mobile that way you can find it and see it very easily so we really wanted to explain to people like three mapping through photographs and also to a guided tour how to find it and how to be able to analyze what you were looking at and to understand how the system was operating. ninety ninety three a truck with sixteen tons of explosives detonates of the city of london the only brings terror to the capital and demonstrates to the british establishment we can hit you right in the center of your power. it's the worst of
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a series of attacks and a painful reminder of the city's well nobility and hopelessness an act never to be repeated. banks' administration and police resolve to implement a system of continuous monitoring of the says he send through limiting access routes building checkpoints i didn't stalling countless surveillance cameras. he was standing by one of the checkpoints in the so-called ring of steel over here. which was established in the nine hundred ninety s. following some of the terrorist attacks by the irish republican army finance call of london the so-called city. it was an effort to basically control access and so use the surveillance cameras as you can see here to create checkpoints around a smaller number of roads going into the the financial core of the city and the idea is that you have also made the system fall registering and checking the number
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plates of all of the vehicles that are actually going in and out of the city of london. the system developed over eighteen is there's no largely computer operated checkpoint controls are quite rare and random. unpredictability is part of the system of potential attackers should never feel safe the electronic system sees everything and can seal off the financial district at a moment's notice. increasingly people just take this for granted people just assume that they are being digitally monitored that they are creating a track their daily lives people increasingly embrace that sometimes it's important to stress that this is not. coercive big brother thora tarion state such as.
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the g.d.r. with the stasi a completely centralized system of monitoring political activity but there are all sorts of different efforts to collect data for all three different reasons for all sorts of different geographical scales and those dates and those images don't all necessarily become centralized so it's better to think of a thousand little brothers if you like then wong orwellian big brother society. more than twenty million traffic movements per day without an effect if electronic management system daily life in a mega city is impossible to organize cameras can be found even beyond the ring of steel in taxis buses and trains for the toll system the urban traffic control
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center and the police and of course all thirty two districts have cameras of their own all told there are well over twenty thousand surveillance cameras in london. we're living in the urban millennial more than fifty percent of the world's seven billion inhabitants now live in cities the numbers are increasing. with the promise of jobs and prosperity cities leave the people from the surrounding areas the cities become mega-cities then evolved into urban landscapes. at the german aerospace institute in berlin technologies are being developed for effective mobility and safety in emerging urban landscapes. martin rue it works in bulletin but at any given moment he's online in the transport control system and has a with a capital of the under way province with five million inhabitants one of the most
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rapidly growing cities in china the daily traffic demonstrates the problems inherent in the massive influx of new comers. despite all their oases of tranquility more than one hundred fifty cities in china will have a population of some five million inhabitants by the year two thousand and fifty without proper controls this development threatens to cause supply and environmental problems as well as social unrest. in france in his mission hartmann says arm and if lot of talks are always go together with our chinese partners equipped a fleet of taxis currently one thousand are part of the program and of course on france when we're finished ten thousand automobiles will transmit their g.p.s. positions to the central computer every second on the pollen and for kids. i was these nines learn from these individual reports we can calculate the current speeds
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that can be driven on the streets and can forecast how traffic will develop in the next half hour and for example with the easy stuff a kid in the mason show in dubai shoots once in fifteen go through a destruct ration and push them in. the taxis are always in motion the system is dynamic and provides not only information on traffic conditions any deviations from normal traffic patterns are also recorded seismographic li the system immediately recognizes congestions disruptions in traffic flow and late in the threats to peace and order. in a lot of chinese cities automobile traffic is increasing astronomically. traffic jams and the threat of gridlock are becoming a dire social problem. this is why we want to continue to develop our partnership with germany we accept our responsibility and want to take appropriate measures to
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actively push this project forward in the future we want to have means and measures for countering the gridlock threat to tell you this will also help us find ways to gain the upper hand over the environmental pollution and climate change resulting from traffic on. the interview.
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on the market is mother nature. may customers struggle with to. fight for each drop from an old dirty supply. let people think your prices purer want to. live. there and wash their hands. and flush their toilets when the same water. that's nice is selling and spraying water. dramas that can't be ignored. stories others refused
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to notice. faces change lights never. old picture of today's lives long gone to and from a ranch that love. looking. to be. with the hope of the german chinese project each taxi movement can be monitored and directed online by the traffic control center. management or total surveillance. taxi drivers becoming security agents who controls all of the data. and who has access to it. took.
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in the middle ages it was said that city and liberates this meant complete a personal liberty and the anonymity of the city in contrast to the nearness of village life but will we lose our open freedom as our movements are increasingly recorded. how can we maintain that delicate balance between our desire for freedom and our need for security. will the new conflict transform cities into digital fortresses. cities of always being principal sites for target saying during wolf going right back to the days of classical civilisation through many evil societies to the contemporary period. the fishes thing about this relationship today is that.
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we are not seeing states mobilize against other states and their cities we're seeing both in terms of the west and cities like london we see military and state and police forces mobilized against people who blend into the city who inhabit the city. the balances he center embassies are always heavily protected but since the nine eleven attacks high security architecture has become dominant and highly visible. symbolic locations of potential targets. the brandenburg gate as a magnet for tourists right next door the u.s. embassy. is security and public space still co-exist.
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but in the future will the security situation call for other solutions will potentially endangered buildings have to be conceived differently a downside the city center like the new u.s. embassy in london an entirely new embassy is going to be built at a cost of about walden billion dollars. the building looks almost exactly like a twenty first century castle it reminds me very very much of the norman keep as a sort of structure it has a thirty meter moat filled with water believe it or not which is both a landscape. and aesthetic feature and the security feature and it involves a whole lot of blast proofing architecture has a whole lot of very intense security devices and systems many of which are confidential as you'd expect built into this glass and steel almost medieval castle like structure. are we
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witnessing or a nascence of medieval architecture with electronics city wools and bomb proof modes. fortresses have always had a dual function protection from the outside and for rulers protection from their own subjects. major events such as the g eight and g twenty summits and the world economic forum demonstrate how the ruling classes are protecting themselves from their own citizens the security efforts are increasing from year to year. the distinction between police and military is blurry. at the two thousand and nine g. twenty summit in pittsburgh a sound kind of developed for the military was used for the first time against a civilian population. this non-lethal weapon is ideal for urban landscapes but to clearly fit containing civilian protesters.
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the security industry is developing more and more devices which can be implemented in war and on the home front drones can be used for attacks and in surveillance. the swiss capital has always been a fortified city more discreet and less visible today than during the period of says he will and towers. ben heard eddie and his partner pascal vessel have been developing architectural concepts for many years in two thousand and seven there were a commission to reconstruct this was parliament building the most important
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requirements transparency and security in all of his projects at the is interested primarily in public space. so really i think far too little attention is paid to that is an architectural projects today not only in switzerland but also in other countries because there's the building which is a published object and there's everything that happens around it which no one seems to care about but it's the public space that creates a sense of security in a city to satiate and start to talk to me. the square in front of the parliament building is a form a parking lot. of. the empty stone space feels like an enormous carpet today the square is a very lively and popular location with people enjoying lingering relaxing or
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simply letting time pass by. one fifty if you feel totally safe because you have an overview of everything there are no spaces where you're not sure to see me i go there and he will someone pop out from behind a car. he's going to i think this is very very important in this day and age and with all the security requirements to imagine the terrorist attacks for which there is no one wants this to happen but if you're afraid it will it's a horrible feeling it's dissension it's the design of public spaces is very important in making people feel safe that it's just once they see here. everything is at his relaxed but the whole area is very discreetly and extremely well secured. beneath this with my enormous vaults housing the gold reserves of the
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swiss national bank. just but instead just a condition of parliament building it is in the middle of the city and there's no demarcation on the outside is anyone can go right up to the buildings facade so this reflex switzerland's open maintaining this was an important part of the concept of hope and. it was the full necessary to combine two opposing aspects maximum safety for the government and the maximum openness toward its citizens for the invasion for us it was always important for security to be a part of the overall design without it being very visible and that security checks can be carried out for that all requirements can be met and technically without necessarily being obvious things that when you enter the building you notice you're being surveilled and it's put a you're in a secure area like in an airport but you don't get
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a funny feeling about it that makes your visit there a negative experience to see the building represents what's with the last and one should experience it in the positive ways that i. i. i don't. stomach plants and historic location in the heart of the city muni built off the german reunification in europe's largest in a city construction project. that see a month long our goal was to recreate a hard for a bird in then the wall was only one hundred meters from here and we had the death strip here and you know it was a desert and here you have a vista. off to reunification in one nine hundred ninety the berlin municipal government turned over the rebuilding of the square to private investors
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who implemented their own concept of a high rise city with the purchase the investors not only developed and constructed the streets and squares they also acquired the rights of passage for the public space. it is the investors who ultimately decide who is allowed to be here. to put some up front find if my thoughts dumber plots was actually once the heart of europe nice and clearly had the busiest streets with the first traffic light ever built in germany or from lauren europe and for that matter. it's was really vibrant dunes and the press district was nearby the famous house photo last hotel's great music halls cinema and walls it was a really lively place and he has put the on the path.
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nothing ethne september at the hilton here after nine eleven things changed quite a bit for everyone became more cautious and for example when finding an object somewhere and. i put him on the white a lot has changed but we still strive to be open to the public that is and should be this is always a difficult balancing act to be. what's necessary in terms of safety and sealing off what and where would this destroy our concept for attracting people to come here often. can a public space be planned. the question of isolation or openness especially at the intersection of private and public urban space is also a safety issue the hide it and security is a matter of feeling as an object of kind of security at
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a subjective sense so that we determined that there are actually very few things which give a person a sense of safety the first one is cleanliness it must be light and there can't be any dodgy areas. staff have to be present which they are. all this gives an objective and subjective feeling of security and that without requiring a lot of electronics or not just months he knew in twenty of. the scarcity of cameras here compared to public spaces in other cities as much to do with the german theory of surveillance. many a skeptical because of the excessive control measures during the nazi period and by the stasi during these german times in daily life however few people care whether a shopping center is public or private and how many surveillance cameras are
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watching them they're only desire is to show up at their leisure. ulsan we don't realize just how vulnerable crowded places are until an accident or attack disturbs the peace it's. live. their lives. that speak. with. the limits of good lives.
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just see. it and. come out of my mind i'm a better little. a hook.
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live live. live . ok. i did have a crock it welcome to ted you're all a virgin at a little while and a little of the chesapeake bay and of virginia. county. rampage here all in the chesapeake bay probably one of the best there is an attempt to sell
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for a. while before the channel was. here . a way up there. as go all. right here are some of the headstones from graves it for you this is a fruits that's what we don't want happen to taint your all and we want to get some protection and make sure that we don't go into the chesapeake bay like uppers did in other communities. the mission free cretaceous and free as for judges free. range means free risk free. to tide free. and free broadcast quality video for your media projects and free media and on to
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our t. dot com. law not war president putin addresses political and public circles in the united states saying that america should not attack syria as it would diminish un and international disarmament efforts. the terrifying week of pillaging executions and forced conversions ends in the christian village of mahmoud a syrian army units for more than a thousand jihadists out of town. on the u.s. .

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