Protection from terrorist attacks

won't come  simply or easily. Developers  have been asked to consider ways to prevent terrorists using vehicles to murder innocent people.
The answers will come in many forms - and not all of them will be popular, particularly in Downunder. Urban areas in Downunder have often been designed to be low density rather than high density. Even though people do little gardening many still see the "quarter acre plot" as the ideal. It may not be a quarter acre of course but they expect to have a garden at the front and another garden at the back - preferably easy maintenance, perhaps even artificial lawn. (No, artificial lawn is not easy maintenance but many people believe it is.)  They want room for the "barbie" and the pergola and perhaps a swimming pool. 
In many other places of course it is quite different. People live in much closer proximity to one another. Services are closer. 
The Senior Cat was watching our neighbour load her two young children into the care the other day. It is quite a business. Master  Three needs to be strapped into a child seat. Baby goes into a capsule. 
     "Once she would have put the baby into the pram and T.... would have walked. They would have gone to the shop which used to be there in M...St." the Senior Cat observed. True. 
They would probably have known people along the route too. You don't meet people driving along in a car the way you do if you walk or ride a bike or trike.
Then there is the sort of street design that leads to better communities, horseshoe shapes perhaps? What about co-housing where some facilities are shared - if you want them to be shared - but you get some privacy with your own back garden? What about the woonerfs which protect people from traffic and allow children to play out in the street - with a mix of housing types and age groups which allow the old to sit and watch the young while engaging in other pastimes? 
Oh but where do we park the car? It's an issue, a real issue. People say they need a car to get the children to child care and to school - and then they need to go to work themselves. That all this is encouraging the concentration of large numbers of people in other places is something that is barely considered, if at all - or people say that such places are "tourist attractions". We have made them that way. You can't drive a van at high speed down the narrow, cobbled streets of a German town - but you can drive it into the Christmas market. You can't drive a lorry at speed through the backstreets of a seaside town  in France - but you can drive it into a crowd of tourists in a busy shopping precinct. 
We aren't going to be rid of the terrorist attack-by-van but we might be able to lessen the threat if we change to a more pedestrian life style and live closer to home and to community.