Disaster Urbanization: The City Between Crisis and Calamity
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.6092/issn.1971-8853/12405Keywords:
disasters, urbanization, crisis, critical urban theory, neoliberalization, planetary urbanization, vulnerabilityAbstract
This paper asks what critical urban theory can add to the sociology of disasters. If the fundamental insight of disaster studies is that there’s no such thing as a natural disaster, the starting point for critical urban studies is that capitalist urbanization is a disaster waiting to happen. Disasters are promoted and inflected by the specific forms of crisis and vulnerability created by neoliberal urbanization. Disasters are also ways in which urban space is produced and remade, in a process that can be called disaster urbanization. A critical account of the relationship between contemporary urbanization and disaster can help us better understand the disaster-prone, unevenly urbanizing future.
References
Adikari, Y., Osti, R., & Noro, T. (2010). Flood‐Related Disaster Vulnerability: An Impending Crisis of Megacities in Asia. Journal of Flood Risk Management, 3(3), 185–191. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1753-318X.2010.01068.x
Ahmed, S., Dávila, J., Allen, A., Haklay, M., Tacoli, C., & Fèvre, E. (2019). Does Urbanization Make Emergence of Zoonosis More Likely? Evidence, Myths and Gaps. Environment and Urbanization, 31(20), 443–460. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956247819866124
Ajibade, I. (2017). Can a Future City Enhance Urban Resilience and Sustainability? A Political Ecology Analysis of Eko Atlantic City, Nigeria. International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, 26, 85–92. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijdrr.2017.09.029
Anderson, B. (2010). Preemption, Precaution, Preparedness: Anticipatory Action and Future Geographies. Progress in Human Geography, 34(6), 777–798. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0309132510362600
Anguelovski, I. (2014). Neighborhood as Refuge: Community Reconstruction, Place Remaking, and Environmental Justice in the City. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Bates, L.K. (2006). Post-Katrina Housing: Problems, Policies, and Prospects for African-Americans in New Orleans. The Black Scholar, 36(4), 13–31. https://doi.org/10.1080/00064246.2006.11413366
Bhagat, A. (2020). Governing Refugee Disposability: Neoliberalism and Survival in Nairobi. New Political Economy 25(3), 439–452. https://doi.org/10.1080/13563467.2019.1598963
Birch, K., & Muniesa, F. (Eds.). (2020). Assetization: Turning Things into Assets in Technoscientific Capitalism. Cambridge: MIT Press. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/12075.001.0001
Breger Bush, S. (2016). Risk Markets and the Landscape of Social Change: Notes on Derivatives, Insurance, and Global Neoliberalism. International Journal of Political Economy, 45(2), 124–146. https://doi.org/10.1080/08911916.2016.1185315
Brenner, N. (Ed.). (2014). Implosions/Explosions: Towards a Study of Planetary Urbanization. Berlin: Jovis.
Brenner, N., & Schmid, C. (2015). Towards a New Epistemology of the Urban?. City: Analysis of Urban Change, Theory, Action, 19(2-3), 151–182. https://doi.org/10.1080/13604813.2015.1014712
Brenner, N., Peck, J., & Theodore, N. (2010). Variegated Neoliberalization: Geographies, Modalities, Pathways. Global Networks, 10(2), 182–222. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1471-0374.2009.00277.x
Brenner, N., & Theodore, N. (Eds.). (2002). Spaces of Neoliberalism: Urban Restructuring in North America and Western Europe. Oxford: Blackwell. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781444397499
Brenner, N., & Theodore, N. (2005). Neoliberalism and the Urban Condition. City: Analysis of Urban Change, Theory, Action, 9(1), 101–107. https://doi.org/10.1080/13604810500092106
Bulkeley, H., & Betsill, M.I. (2005). Rethinking Sustainable Cities: Multilevel Governance and the ‘Urban’ Politics of Climate Change. Environmental Politics, 14(1), 42–63. https://doi.org/10.1080/0964401042000310178
Butler, J. (2012). Precarious Life, Vulnerability, and the Ethics of Cohabitation. The Journal of Speculative Philosophy, 26(2), 134–151. https://doi.org/10.5325/jspecphil.26.2.0134
Buxton, M., Haynes, R., Mercer, D., & Butt, A. (2011). Vulnerability to Bushfire Risk at Melbourne’s Urban Fringe: The Failure of Regulatory Land Use Planning. Geographical Research, 49(1), 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1745-5871.2010.00670.x
Calhoun, C. (2004). A World of Emergencies: Fear, Intervention, and the Limits of Cosmopolitan Order. Canadian Review of Sociology/Revue Canadienne de Sociologie, 41(4), 373–395. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1755-618X.2004.tb00783.x
Carpenter, S., & Grünewald, F. (2016). Disaster Preparedness in a Complex Urban System: The Case of Kathmandu Valley, Nepal. Disasters, 40(3), 411–431. https://doi.org/10.1111/disa.12164
Castán Broto, V., & Robin, E. (2020). Climate Urbanism as Critical Urban Theory. Urban Geography. https://doi.org/10.1080/02723638.2020.1850617
Castillo-Oropeza, O.A., Delgado-Hernández, E., & García-Morales, A. (2018). Gentrification and Disaster in la Condesa Zone. Bitácora Urbano Territorial, 28(2), 35–43. https://doi.org/10.15446/bitacora.v28n2.70157
Cohen, D.A. (2020). Confronting the Urban Climate Emergency: Critical Urban Studies in the Age of a Green New Deal. City: Analysis of Urban Change, Theory, Action, 24(1–2), 52–64. https://doi.org/10.1080/13604813.2020.1739435
Connolly, C., Keil, R., & Ali, S.H. (2021). Extended Urbanisation and the Spatialities of Infectious Disease: Demographic Change, Infrastructure and Governance. Urban Studies, 58(2), 245–263. https://doi.org/10.1177/0042098020910873
Connolly, C., Ali, S.H., & Keil, R. (2020). On the Relationships between COVID-19 and Extended Urbanization. Dialogues in Human Geography, 10(2), 213–216. https://doi.org/10.1177/2043820620934209
Conroy, W. (2019). The (Im)Mobilities of Mutual Aid. Acme: An International Journal for Critical Geographies, 18(4), 875–891. Retrieved from https://acme-journal.org/index.php/acme/article/view/1714
Cui, Y., Cheng, D., Choi, C.E., Jin, W., Lei, Y., & Kargel, J.S. (2019). The Cost of Rapid and Haphazard Urbanization: Lessons Learned from the Freetown Landslide Disaster. Landslides, 16(6), 1167–1176. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10346-019-01167-x
Cutter, S.L. (1996). Vulnerability to Environmental Hazards. Progress in Human Geography, 20(4), 529–539. https://doi.org/10.1177/030913259602000407
Danewid, I. (2020). The Fire This Time: Grenfell, Racial Capitalism and the Urbanisation of Empire. European Journal of International Relations, 26(1), 289–313. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F1354066119858388
Davis, M. (2010). Who Will Build the Ark?. New Left Review, 61, 29–46.
Deville, J., Guggenheim, M., & HrdličKová, Z. (2014). Concrete Governmentality: Shelters and the Transformations of Preparedness. The Sociological Review, 62(1, suppl.), 183–210. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-954X.12129
Elliott, R. (2017). Who Pays for the Next Wave? The American Welfare State and Responsibility for Flood Risk. Politics & Society, 45(3), 415–440. https://doi.org/10.1177/0032329217714785
Elliott, R. (2021). Underwater: Loss, Flood Insurance, and the Moral Economy of Climate Change in the United States. New York: Columbia University Press. https://doi.org/10.7312/elli19026
Ernstson, H., & Swyngedouw, E. (2019). Politicizing the Environment in the Urban Century. In H. Ernstson & E. Swyngedouw (Eds.), Urban Political Ecology in the Anthropo-Obscene: Interruptions and Possibilities (pp. 3–21). London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315210537-1
Faas, A.J. (2016). Disaster Vulnerability in Anthropological Perspective. Annals of Anthropological Practice, 40(1), 14–27. https://doi.org/10.1111/napa.12084
Fenton, A., Lupton, R., Arrundale, R., & Tunstall, R. (2013). Public Housing, Commodification, and Rights to the City: The US and England Compared. Cities, 35, 373–378. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2012.10.004
Ferreri, M., Dawson, G., & Vasudevan, A. (2017). Living Precariously: Property Guardianship and the Flexible City. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 42(2), 246–259. https://doi.org/10.1111/tran.12162
Fields, D. (2017). Urban Struggles with Financialization. Geography Compass, 11(11), e12334. https://doi.org/10.1111/gec3.12334
Fothergill, A., Maestas, E.G.M., & Darlington, J.D. (1999). Race, Ethnicity and Disasters in the United States: A Review of the Literature. Disasters, 23(2), 156–173. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-7717.00111
Fothergill, A. (1998). The Neglect of Gender in Disaster Work: An Overview of the Literature. In E. Enarson & B.H. Morrow (Eds.), The Gendered Terrain of Disaster: Through Women’s Eyes(pp. 11–25). Wesport: Praeger.
Fraser, N. (2016). Contradictions of Capital and Care. New Left Review, 100, 99–117.
Glaeser, E. (2021). The Future of Cities: The Age of Urban Miracles Is Not Over. City A.M., 18 February. https://www.cityam.com/the-Future-of-Cities-the-Age-of-Urban-Miracles-Is-Not-Over/
Gotham, K.F. (2014). Racialization and Rescaling: Post‐Katrina Rebuilding and the Louisiana Road Home Program. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 38(3), 773–790. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2427.12141
Gray, G.C. (2009). The Responsibilization Strategy of Health and Safety: Neo-Liberalism and the Reconfiguration of Individual Responsibility for Risk. The British Journal of Criminology, 49(3), 326–342. https://doi.org/10.1093/bjc/azp004
Greenberg, M. (2021). Seeking Shelter: How Housing and Urban Exclusion Shape Exurban Disaster. Sociologica, 15(1), 67–89. https://doi.org/10.6092/Issn.1971-8853/11869
Gu, D. (2019). Exposure and Vulnerability to Natural Disasters for World’s Cities. Population Division, United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Technical Paper No. 2019/4. https://www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/publications/pdf/technical/TP2019-4.pdf
Guggenheim, M. (2014). Introduction: Disasters as Politics – Politics as Disasters. The Sociological Review, 62(1, suppl.), 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-954X.12121
Hackworth, J. (2007). The Neoliberal City: Governance, Ideology, and Development in American Urbanism. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Hamideh, S., Freeman, M., Sritharan, S., & Wolseth, J. (2021a). Damage, Dislocation, and Displacement after Low-Attention Disasters: Experiences of Renter and Immigrant Households. Natural Hazards Center Quick Response Grant Report Series, 304. https://hazards.colorado.edu/quick-response-report/damage-dislocation-and-displacement-after-low-attention-disasters
Hamideh, S., Peacock, W.G., & Van Zandt, S. (2021b). Housing Type Matters for Pace of Recovery: Evidence from Hurricane Ike. International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, 57, 102149. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijdrr.2021.102149
Hardy, R.D., Milligan, R.A., & Heynen, N. (2017). Racial Coastal Formation: The Environmental Injustice of Colorblind Adaptation Planning for Sea-Level Rise. Geoforum, 87, 62–72. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2017.10.005
Hartman, C.W., & Squires, G.D. (Eds). (2006). There Is No Such Thing as a Natural Disaster: Race, class, and Hurricane Katrina. London: Routledge.
Jacobs, F. (2019). Black Feminism and Radical Planning: New Directions for Disaster Planning Research. Planning Theory, 18(1), 24–39. https://doi.org/10.1177/1473095218763221
Juran, L., & Trivedi, J. (2015). Women, Gender Norms, and Natural Disasters in Bangladesh. Geographical Review, 105(4), 601–611. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1931-0846.2015.12089.x
Kamel, N. (2012). Social Marginalisation, Federal Assistance and Repopulation Patterns in the New Orleans Metropolitan Area Following Hurricane Katrina. Urban Studies, 49 (14), 3211–3231. https://doi.org/10.1177/0042098011433490
Kammerbauer, M. (2013). “Schismo-Urbanism”: Cities, Natural Disaster, and Urban Sociology. Disasters, 37(3), 401–419. https://doi.org/10.1111/disa.12005
Konings, M. (2016). Governing the System: Risk, Finance, and Neoliberal Reason. European Journal of International Relations, 22(2), 268–288. https://doi.org/10.1177/1354066115593393
Kotkin, J. (2020). After Coronavirus, We Need to Rethink Densely Populated Cities. Fortune, 1 April. https://fortune.com/2020/04/01/Coronavirus-Dense-Cities-Urban-Rural/
Kreps, G.A. (1985). Disaster and the Social Order. Sociological Theory, 3(1), 49–64. https://doi.org/10.2307/202173
Lakoff, A. (2007). Preparing for the Next Emergency. Public Culture, 19(2), 247–271. https://doi.org/10.1215/08992363-2006-035
Lancione, M. (2019). The Politics of Embodied Urban Precarity: Roma People and the Fight for Housing in Bucharest, Romania. Geoforum, 101, 182–191. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2018.09.008
Lee, J.Y. & Van Zandt, S. (2019). Housing Tenure and Social Vulnerability to Disasters: A Review of the Evidence. Journal of Planning Literature, 34(2), 156–170. https://doi.org/10.1177/0885412218812080
Levine, J.N., Esnard, A.M., & Sapat, A. (2007). Population Displacement and Housing Dilemmas Due to Catastrophic Disasters. Journal of Planning Literature, 22(1), 3–15. https://doi.org/10.1177/0885412207302277
Long, J., & Rice, J.L. (2019). From Sustainable Urbanism to Climate Urbanism. Urban Studies, 56(5), 992–1008. https://doi.org/10.1177/0042098018770846
Madden, D., & Marcuse, P. (2016). In Defense of Housing: The Politics of Crisis. London: Verso.
Madden, D. (2020). Housing and the Crisis of Social Reproduction. E-Flux, 25 June. https://www.e-flux.com/architecture/housing/333718/housing-and-the-crisis-of-social-reproduction/
Medwinter, S.D. (2020). Reproducing Poverty and Inequality in Disaster: Race, Class Social Capital, Ngos, and Urban Space in New York City after Superstorm Sandy. Environmental Sociology, 7(1), 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1080/23251042.2020.1809054
Meriläinen, E.S., Fougere, M., & Piotrowicz, W. (2020). Refocusing Urban Disaster Governance on Marginalised Urban People through Right to the City. Environmental Hazards, 19(2), 187–208. https://doi.org/10.1080/17477891.2019.1682492
Morin, V.M., Ahmad, M.M., & Warnitchai, P. (2016). Vulnerability to Typhoon Hazards in the Coastal Informal Settlements of Metro Manila, the Philippines. Disasters, 40(4), 693–719. https://doi.org/10.1111/disa.12174
Paprocki, K. (2018). Threatening Dystopias: Development and Adaptation Regimes in Bangladesh. Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 108(4), 955–973. https://doi.org/10.1080/24694452.2017.1406330
Peacock, W.G., Van Zandt, S., Zhang, Y., & Highfield, W.E. (2014). Inequities in Long-Term Housing Recovery after Disasters. Journal of the American Planning Association, 80(4), 356–371. https://doi.org/10.1080/01944363.2014.980440
Perry, R.W. (2007). Defining Disaster: An Evolving Concept. In Rodríguez, H., Quarantelli, E.L., & Dynes, R.R. (Eds.), Handbook of Disaster Research(pp. 3–22). Berlin/Heidelberg: Springer.
Philo, C., Parr, H., & Söderström, O. (2019). “On Edge?”: Studies in Precarious Urbanisms. Geoforum, 101, 150–155. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2019.04.020
Pinson, G., & Journel, C.M. (2016). The Neoliberal City. Theory, Evidence, Debates. Territory, Politics, Governance, 4(2), 137–153. https://doi.org/10.1080/21622671.2016.1166982
Pyysiäinen, J., Halpin, D., & Guilfoyle, A. (2017). Neoliberal Governance and “Responsibilization” of Agents: Reassessing the Mechanisms of Responsibility-Shift in Neoliberal Discursive Environments. Distinktion: Journal of Social Theory, 18(2), 215–235. https://doi.org/10.1080/1600910X.2017.1331858
Quarantelli, E.L. (2000). Emergencies, Disasters and Catastrophes are Different Phenomena. Preliminary Paper 304, Disaster Research Center, University of Delaware, Newark, USA.
Radeloff, V.C., Helmers, D.P., Kramer, H.A., Mockrin, M.H., Alexandre, P.M., Bar-Massada, A., Butsic, V., Hawbaker, T.J., Martinuzzi, S., Syphard, A.D., & Stewart, S.I. (2018). Rapid Growth of the Us Wildland-Urban Interface Raises Wildfire Risk. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 115(13), 3314–3319. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1718850115
Ranganathan, M., & Bratman, E. (2021). From Urban Resilience to Abolitionist Climate Justice in Washington, DC. Antipode, 53(1), 115–137. https://doi.org/10.1111/anti.12555
Rodriguez, H., Trainor, J., & Quarantelli, E.L. (2006). Rising to the Challenges of a Catastrophe: The Emergent and Prosocial Behavior Following Hurricane Katrina. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 604(1), 82–101. https://doi.org/10.1177/0002716205284677
Satterthwaite D. (2009). The Implications of Population Growth and Urbanization for Climate Change. Environment and Urbanization, 21(2), 545–567. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956247809344361
Shatkin, G. (2019). Futures of Crisis, Futures of Urban Political Theory: Flooding in Asian Coastal Megacities. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 43(2), 207–226. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2427.12758
Shi, L. (2020). The New Climate Urbanism: Old Capitalism with Climate Characteristics. In V. Castán Broto, E. Robin, & A. While. (Eds.) Climate Urbanism(pp. 51–65). London: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53386-1_4
Shokry, G., Connolly, J.T., & Anguelovski, I. (2020). Understanding Climate Gentrification and Shifting Landscapes of Protection and Vulnerability in Green Resilient Philadelphia. Urban Climate, 31, 100539. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.uclim.2019.100539
Smith, N. (2006). There’s No Such Thing as a Natural Disaster. Social Science Research Council. https://items.ssrc.org/Understanding-Katrina/Theres-No-Such-Thing-as-a-Natural-Disaster/
Solnit, R. (2009). A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster. New York: Viking.
Sovacool, B.K., Baker, L., Martiskainen, M., & Hook, A. (2019). Processes of Elite Power and Low-Carbon Pathways: Experimentation, Financialisation, and Dispossession. Global Environmental Change, 59, 101985. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2019.101985
Taş, M., Taş, N., Durak, S., & Atanur, G. (2013). Flood Disaster Vulnerability in Informal Settlements in Bursa, Turkey. Environment and Urbanization, 25(2), 443–463. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956247813501134
Thomas, K., Hardy, R.D., Lazrus, H., Mendez, M., Orlove, B., Rivera‐Collazo, I., Roberts, J.T., Rockman, M., Warner, B.P., & Winthrop, R. (2019). Explaining Differential Vulnerability to Climate Change: A Social Science Review. Wiley Interdisciplinary Research: Climate Change, 10(2), e565. https://doi.org/10.1002/wcc.565
Thomas, K.A., & Warner, B.P. (2019). Weaponizing Vulnerability to Climate Change. Global Environmental Change, 57, 101928. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2019.101928
Tierney, K. (2014). The Social Roots of Risk: Producing Disasters, Promoting Resilience. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press.
Tierney, K. (2019). Disasters: A Sociological Approach. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Twigg, J., & Mosel, I. (2017). Emergent Groups and Spontaneous Volunteers in Urban Disaster Response. Environment and Urbanization, 29(2), 443–458. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956247817721413
Van Holm, E.J., & Wyczalkowski, C.K. (2019). Gentrification in the Wake of a Hurricane: New Orleans after Katrina. Urban Studies, 56(13), 2763–2778. https://doi.org/10.1177/0042098018800445
Vale, L.J., & Campanella, T.J. (2005). The Resilient City: How Modern Cities Recover from Disaster. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780195175844.001.0001
Wallace, D., & Wallace, R. (2008). Urban Systems During Disasters: Factors for Resilience. Ecology and Society, 13(1), 1–14. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-02386-130118
Watt, P. (2018). “This Pain of Moving, Moving, Moving”: Evictions, Displacement and Logics of Expulsion in London. L’Année Sociologique, 68(1), 67–100. https://doi.org/10.3917/anso.181.0067
Wray, A., Fleming, J., & Gilliland, J. (2020). The Public Realm during Public Health Emergencies: Exploring Local Level Responses to the COVID-19 Pandemic. Cities & Health. https://doi.org/10.1080/23748834.2020.1790260
Yiftachel, O. (2020). From Displacement to Displaceability: A Southeastern Perspective on the New Metropolis. City: Analysis of Urban Change, Theory, Action, 24(1–2), 151–165. https://doi.org/10.1080/13604813.2020.1739933
Zeiderman, A. (2016). Endangered City: The Politics of Security and Risk in Bogotá. Durham: Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9780822374183
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2021 David Madden
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
