Cities are increasingly exploring vertical spaces as a viable and smart approach to address the physical challenges from growing urbanisation. Given that urbanisation could shape the nature of crime and security threats, the approach should involve forward planning for homeland security strategies.

A passenger drone (UAV) – EHang 184 – was unveiled in February 2017 at the World Government Summit held in Dubai where the Road and Transportation Agency of the United Arab Emirates then announced its plans to commence regular flights (flying taxis) by July 2017. In Singapore, researchers at the Nanyang Technological University are designing an air traffic management system for drones. In London, the new mixed-use Canaletto tower was designed to create vertical communities.

Such developments not only underscore the practical utility of new technologies and architectural ideas but more profoundly how growing urbanisation and the advent of smart cities herald the increasing territorialisation of the vertical space. The foreseeable mixed use of the vertical space in cities – vertical urbanism – would have strategic implications on homeland security.

… Muhammad Faizal bin Abdul Rahman is a Research Fellow with the Homeland Defence Programme at the Centre of Excellence for National Security (CENS), a unit of the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.