Can urban planning protect our streets from vehicle attacks?

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While vehicle attacksare difficult to predict and prevent, urban planning and design likeinstallingbollards couldplay a role in mitigating the death and carnage, experts say.

Torontobecame the latest metropolitan centre to fall victim to a vehicle attack on Mondaywhen a van mounted the pavement and plowed into pedestrians in the Yonge and Finch Avenue area of North York. The alleged driver, Alek Minassian, has been charged with 10 counts of first-degree murder and 13 counts of attempted murder. Police are not linking the incident to national security.

• THE CURRENT |Bystanders leap to aid Toronto van attack victims
• THE CURRENT |Officer's cool head may have helped rule out terrorism

Van attack suspect trained with Canadian military briefly

6 years ago

Duration 3:13

The Toronto van attack suspect trained with the Canadian military for a very brief amount of time. Alek Minassian joined the Canadian Forces last August and got 16 days into his 13-week basic training before he asked to leave, according to a statement from the Department of National Defence.

"The places we should be most concerned about in our city are the spaces where there is a high volume of pedestrians, little separation and cars going fast," Toronto's former chief plannerJennifer Keesmaat told The Current's Anna MariaTremonti.

The slower the vehicle is going, the easier it is for pedestrians to notice if something is wrong, she said, and to get out of the way.

"Moving cars quickly cannot be the key priority. Keeping people safe needs to come first."

She added that "the slower the vehicle is going, the less likely that the injuries will be traumatic."

Managing speed doesn't need to mean imposing speed limits. Cities can use physical structures like bollards or speeds bumps. Roads and streets can even have strategic bends so vehicles need to slow down before they reach a vulnerable space, like an open square.

Cities must strike the right balance, however, said Alan Bell, a former member of the British elite military forces.

Bell, the president of Globe Risk International a consultingfirm that advises companies on terrorist and criminal threats saidMonday's incidentwas a "one-off event," and warned against a knee-jerk reaction.

"We have to have an infrastructure in place to be able to respond to these type of events, whether it's a criminal act or it's a terrorist attack," he toldTremonti.

"Some of the countries I work in go the opposite way. You have roadblocks every hundred metres. You have chicanes to keep the speed down."

Putting a 'Band-Aid' on a city

Claire Weisz, an architect and urbanist based in New York, agreed that security concerns shouldn't erode the character of a city.

There is an opportunity to reimagine cities as places where cars are not the priority,which would benefit the daily safety of pedestrians and cyclists, she said. But it will take some forward planning rather than reacting to big events like Monday's attack, she added.

"If we just look back, what happens is you put a big, giant Band-Aid on something," she said. "You lose the vitality of that place."

"People start avoiding the place, and then pretty soon it's not the city that you want it to be."

Listen to the full conversation at the top of this page, where you can also share this article across email, Facebook, Twitter and other platforms.

This segment was produced by The Current's Geoff Turner,Ashley Mak and Alison Masemann.