Cities at Risk

Planning for and Recovering from Natural Disasters

Pierre Filion, Gary Sands

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317166023
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: City Planning & Urban Development
• Index: Politics & International Relations

As levels of urbanization increase around the world, the growing concentrations of population and economic activity increases vulnerability to natural disasters. Interdependencies among urban populations mean that damage to the built environment, including water, sewer and energy infrastructure, can affect millions. Even if there is no change in the rate of occurrence of natural disasters (an unlikely prospect in the face of ongoing climate change) the potential for human and economic loss will continue to increase, along with the time required to recover. How do cities prepare for and recover from natural disasters? In this book, the authors provide a broad overview of the issues related to the impacts of disasters on cities around the world, from assessing risks to accounting for damages. The comparative approach across different types of disasters in a range of urban locations is useful in identifying opportunities for policy transfer. While there is no 'one size fits all' solution to hazard mitigation, valuable lessons can be learned from the experiences of others. The chapters emphasize different modes for assessing hazard risk, as well as strategies for increasing the resiliency of vulnerable populations.

Chapter 1

Introduction: Urban Resilience Efforts in the Face of Natural Disasters

Pierre Filion, Mark Skidmore, and Gary Sands

The risk of suffering a disaster—a sudden catastrophic event that causes widespread destruction—is present in every city. Cities may be at varying degrees of exposure to a variety of natural disasters, including earthquakes, floods, tsunami and fires. While primarily the result of natural forces, such events are often exacerbated (and occasionally ameliorated) by the actions of urban residents. Unwise locational choices (flood plains, barrier islands or earthquake fault zones), inappropriate building construction techniques and high densities of development and population are choices people make that can contribute to the impacts of natural disasters.

As the global population continues to become increasingly urbanized (UN-Habitat, 2013), the potential for disaster losses increases as well. While the nature and frequency of many types of natural disasters has changed little over the past century, the extent of devastation that may be caused has escalated. The growth of urban populations has produced concentrations that are vulnerable to disasters. Urbanization has also augmented the extent and complexity of the built environment. When a disaster strikes an urban area, the potential for injury and loss of life is obviously a function of city size. There is more property subject to damage in cities than in thinly populated areas. A fire, flood or storm striking a rural area may damage structures and crops but restoration of these functions is relatively straightforward. The complexities and dependencies of the modern city make recovery of functionality more difficult.

The book is about urban resilience in the early twenty-first century. The term resilience has come into common usage in recent years (100 Resilient Cities, 2015; Pickett and Cardenasso, 2014; Vale and Campanella, 2005). Resiliency has been approached from a variety of perspectives, including urban design (Brown and Dixon, 2014), sociology (Holt, 2014) and climate change (Blakely and Carbonell, 2012; Newman and Beatley, 2009). Increasingly, resilience has become linked to sustainability (Coyle and Duaney, 2011; Roberts, Pearson and Newton, 2014).

In ecology, resilience refers to the capacity of an ecosystem to return to its original condition following a traumatic event. In current usage, the term has a much broader meaning. The 100 Resilient Cities organization, for example, defines resilience as the capacity of individuals, communities, institutions, businesses, and systems within a city to survive, adapt, and grow no matter what kinds of chronic stresses and acute shocks they experience (100 Resilient Cities, 2015). Thus, resilience often has a normative component, stressing not just returning to a prior state, but also implementing improvements.

The book draws its empirical substance from descriptions of recent natural disasters that have confronted urban areas. Disasters considered in the book comprise earthquakes, a tsunami, hurricanes, and floods which have taken place over the last decades. In one instance, however, the 1755 Lisbon earthquake, the book describes a historical event. The Lisbon case is introduced as a prototype for the coordinated state relief and reconstruction interventions in the face of severe natural hazards that have since taken place, including recent responses. The book casts light on variations in the reactions to the different disasters it discusses. It considers levels of preparedness, the mitigation of the consequences of hazards, the effectiveness of recovery instruments, and the attention given during the rebuilding phase to the avoidance of future destruction due to natural disasters. It also assesses the adequacy of the strategies deployed to address the disasters. Are these strategies suited to the nature and scope of the disasters? Have they minimized the effects of disasters and provided means to assure the safety and wellbeing of residents, while providing conditions for the rebuilding of more resilient urban forms?

Most chapters present a common scenario. The consequences of a disaster are often worse than they might have been otherwise due to insufficient preparedness. Inadequate preparation and response cause serious personal suffering and damage to the economy, which could both have been significantly reduced. And reconstruction does not always take place in a manner that will reduce damages in the eventuality of a future event of a similar nature to the one responsible for the destruction being repaired. The book does, however, introduce cases that have been more successful in alleviating the consequences of disasters. These cases demonstrate the benefits of preparedness as well as of the deployment of coordinated and well-funded recovery strategies. In one instance, effective efforts of this nature have involved primarily community-based self-help.

Preparedness for a natural disaster and the capacity to recover rapidly from the damages and destruction it inflicts are of course limited by the unpredictability of such events, the extent and complexity of required responses, and the availability of resources. Accordingly, any survey of disasters and the responses they have elicited will necessarily describe, along with some examples of successful preparedness and recovery, situations where preparation was wanting and aid to the population and subsequent recovery hampered by insufficient resources and/or inadequate decision making and coordination. After all, if readiness for and reactions to a natural event were perfectly honed, and, as a result, suffering and damages kept to a minimum, the trigger events would not qualify as disasters. They would rather be perceived as potential disasters that have been averted. But at the same time, full preparedness for all natural disaster eventualities would be far too expensive, and thus absorb too many resources that could be used in other areas of social life and, therefore, represent an unacceptable burden on society. It is a matter of balance. What measures in terms of preparation for natural events, the delivery of aid to victims, and overall recovery offer the best return for a given investment? What earthquake resistant construction techniques, land use planning and built forms that minimize flooding damages, along with evacuation strategies and efficient means of delivering aid can be adopted at an acceptable cost?

The book contributes to a growing conversation on how to deal with the destructive impact of natural events on cities. Why this increasing interest in natural disasters and their urban consequences? One obvious explanation is that, as the population of the planet expands and a growing proportion of people live in cities, more of the surface of the earth is occupied by urban development. On its own, this situation raises the odds that cities will be struck by natural events, and, in consequence, that large numbers of people will be victimized (Miletti, 1999; Pelling, 2003: 19–45). Moreover, the urbanization process in itself can exacerbate the implications of extreme natural events. Along with the severe impacts on densely populated areas of damages to buildings and infrastructures as well as resulting electricity, water and food supply interruptions, there are flooding risks accruing from the predominance of impermeable surfaces within cities (Brody et al., 2008). The presence in cities of land uses that are vulnerable to natural events and whose destruction endangers surrounding areas (and far beyond in the case of toxic spills and radioactive leaks) represents another urban vulnerability to natural disasters. This is the case notably of oil refineries and storage facilities, chemical industries, and, worst of all, nuclear power plants.

Increased interest for the effects of natural disasters on cities can also be attributed to a generalized perception that natural hazards are becoming more frequent and intense. If geological phenomena are for the most part outside the range of influence of human activity—although connections have been made between oil extraction, especially fracking, and earthquakes—the situation is somewhat different for climatic events such as hurricanes, storms, droughts, and periods of extreme temperature (Miller, Muir-Wood and Boissonnade, 2008; Stephenson, 2008). The increase in climatic disturbances scientists believe is caused by the atmospheric accumulation of greenhouse gases requires an adaptation of cities (Newman, Beatley and Boyer, 2009; Prasad et al., 2009). It indeed introduces an additional factor of unpredictability, which in turn increases interest in further study to reduce this uncertainty. For example, models of the past, where risks were assessed on the basis of the frequency of extreme events, are not as reliable as they used to be. Storms of an intensity that would be repeated every 50 or 100 years may now occur every 10 or 20 years, or adopt a random occurrence pattern (O’Brien et al., 2006). Given the evidence indicating that human activity is contributing to the frequency and intensity of climatic hazards, and the limited success of attempts at modifying behavior in this regard, it is justified to expect a further worsening of threats to cities from climatic events.

Yet another reason for heightened interest in the urban distress natural events cause is awareness of the threat such events can represent for technological systems supporting urban life. The failure of technological systems due to natural hazards can magnify considerably the gravity of these hazards. They can result in disruptions that endanger human life. For example, the January 1998 ice storm that affected southwest Québec and eastern Ontario provoked extensive and long-lasting power interruptions, forcing many people to seek refuge from the cold. At one point electric power came close to being lost in the Montréal water treatment plant, which would have left approximately 1.5 million people without drinkable water and, for many, the possibility of boiling water at home (Chang et al., 2007). There is also the risk of widespread and long-lasting contamination when nuclear power plants, oil refineries and chemical industries are damaged. Natural events, with impacts that would have otherwise been confined, become major sources of peril when they interface with technological systems (Boin and McConnell, 2007).

Like most research on disasters, this volume is mostly about resilience. How do city residents best to survive disasters? How do cities to bounce back and return to a prior state of system equilibrium? And, perhaps most importantly, how can city leaders and other policy-makers anticipate future disasters and take appropriate measures capable of alleviating their impacts? (Allenby and Fink, 2005; Haimes, 2009; Klein, Nicholls and Thomalla, 2003; Vugrin et al., 2010). To be effective, resilience strategies targeting natural hazards must be adapted to the threats confronting a given urban area. The measures suitable to a city located in an active earthquake zone differ from those appropriate to an urban area on a hurricane-prone coast (Kreimer, Arnolo, and Carlin, 2003). Still, the same fundamental steps will be found in all resilience strategies targeted at natural hazards: preparedness, response, and recovery (Gilbert, 2010). In the case of climate change, resilience could also include mitigation, in the form of limits on emissions responsible for the greenhouse effect and resulting climate extremes. While collectively such measures could eventually have a global impact, their effect on any given specific area will not be felt for a long time.

The process that has been relied upon to improve civil aviation safety could provide a model for addressing urban resilience failure in the face of natural hazards. The risk of flying accidents has been considerably abated through the carrying out of a formal investigation whenever an incident occurs, the quick dissemination of its findings, and the requirement that airlines conform to the ensuing recommendations from transportation safety agencies. The transposition of this model to the resilience of cities in the face of natural hazards could make it possible to identify causes of resilience failure as well as solutions to these problems. The dissemination of this knowledge and its integration to resilience planning would result in a reduction of the adverse impacts of natural hazards. There is a major obstacle to the application of this model to the urban resilience sphere, however: The model defines problems and solutions in purely technical terms, whereas decisions related to urban resilience are taken in a political economy context. In reality, even in the field of civil aviation, directives to improve aeronautical safety are not motivated exclusively by technical considerations. They do indeed take into account implementation costs and their consequences on the profitability of airlines.

The political economy perspective is preoccupied with decision making concerning priorities in the allocation of resources within society, along with the consequences of these decisions on economic development and wellbeing. At the heart of this perspective is the adoption of priorities to guide government responses to demands requiring the allocation of resources. Throughout history, societies have had to make trade-offs in the allotment of resources between immediate and long-term needs—eating grain now or keeping it for next year’s sowing, for example. Also, with special relevance to preparedness for natural hazards, there is the issue of whether resources should be targeted exclusively at high probability risks or also be made available for less likely events. Market economies encounter endless debates regarding the amount of money that can be drawn from the private economy to be used by the state to provide collective goods such as education, healthcare, infrastructure and defense. In a market economy, governments must refrain from extracting too many resources from the private economy for fear that this will slow development and, consequently, have ill effects on the economy as a whole, and ultimately on the long-term capacity for the state to raise money (e.g., Drazen, 2000; Tabb, 1999; Usher, 2003).

Since the late 1970s, the persistent rise of neoliberalism has curtailed the importance of the state. This represents a challenge to reliance on the precautionary principle in policy-making, inherent in the concept of resilience. Neoliberalism promotes self-reliance, risk taking and values market processes over state intervention. It calls for the shrinkage of the state, as resources are primarily channeled towards market processes, especially the financial sector, which can itself be a major source of economic volatility as it occupies a larger share of the economy. What is more, neoliberalism entails a shift away from policy objectives that are not consistent with direct support of the market economy (Burgess et al., 1997; Duménil and Lévy, 2011). The risk-prone nature of neoliberalism, the accentuated position of financial capital within the economy, and a depletion of resources at the disposal of the state all contradict the precautionary principle and the achievement of urban reliance (Peck, 2010). There is an inherent contradiction between neoliberal values and their political and economic ramifications, on the one hand, and urban resilience, on the other (Filion, 2014).

It is important to realize that neoliberalism is one among different factors responsible for risk-prone behavior, lack of preparedness and insufficient recovery efforts. Another such factor is at the opposite end of the intervention spectrum from the neoliberal retrenchment of the state. It manifests itself when governments show a great deal of readiness in providing funding to repair damages inflicted by repeated disasters. The moral hazard resulting from such unrestricted compensation prevents a full consideration, when reconstruction takes place, of the likelihood of a repetition of prior natural disasters, as the financial risk associated with further such disasters is not borne by those who make redevelopment decisions.

It is unlikely that even under advancing neoliberalism, governments will totally neglect the fostering of resilience. There are two reasons for this. In the first place, for all its distrust of the state, neoliberalism values its role in securing the preconditions for an efficient operation of economic markets. The prevention of damaging disturbances to the economy caused by natural hazards constitutes an obvious precondition in this regard. In the second place, there are dire political consequences to the incapacity to prepare for, and respond effectively to, a natural disaster. Such a failure can reflect negatively on the public perception of an administration’s capacity to govern (Stehr, 2006). The botched federal response to Hurricane Katrina became a blemish on the Bush administration, a mistake President Obama was careful not to repeat when Hurricane Sandy hit the northeast coast just before the 2012 election. Historically, natural hazards have been linked to changes of regimes and even the collapse of civilizations (Diamond, 2005). For example, abnormally cold weather conditions associated with El Niño and an Icelandic volcanic eruption, resulting in crop failures, are seen as contributors to the French Revolution (Grove, 1998; 2007; Wood, 1992). Given these political repercussions of disasters, one should not be surprised that in certain circumstances, a political calculus would lead to an overreaction to a disaster event, for fear that doing less would result in an electoral backlash (Stehr, 2006).

There is a powerful social inequity dimension to urban resilience. Individuals who have access to resources are more likely to reside in buildings that can resist natural events, can choose to live in urban areas that are less exposed to such events, and to possess the means to evacuate an area affected by a disaster. The experience of Hurricane Katrina has painted a vivid picture of how closely vulnerability correlates with poverty. Not only is access to private resources a factor of inequality in the face of natural disasters, but so are preparedness and recovery strategies. They too can reflect the uneven political and economic influence of different social groups, and the resulting lopsided treatment given by governments to these groups and the respective geographical areas they occupy (Berke, Kartez, and Wenger, 2008; Tierney, 2006).

Up to this point, attention has mostly centered on the efforts of the state at attempting to foster urban resilience....