‘Everything-old-is-new-again’: Private urban security governance responses to new harmscapes

Abstract

This article reflects on the proliferation of novel forms of private urban security governance assemblages, specifically the roles of private auspices and providers in responding to contemporary climate-related socio-material harmscapes. The authors use the lens of climatic harms and associated discursive shifts in understandings of the relationship between humans and ‘nature’ to draw attention to gating adaptations, assemblages of powers and capacities being mobilised in response to emerging harmscapes, the logics and technologies underpinning these developments, the roles of established security agents and novel security professionals and the use of resilience as a conceptual framing. These security governance ventures are conceived of as mutating private urban security governance vestiges from PUSG 1.0 to PUSG 2.0 and in this regard, ‘climate gating’ is used as an emblematic example in exploring PUSG 2.0.