Global Report on Human Settlements 2007 - PoA-ISS

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simply ‘give up’ in the face of risks they feel they are unable
to manage. The latter behaviours fall within the selfdestructive
behaviours of institutions and societies which
have declined and, in some cases, disappeared. 22 Both of
these cases, however, demonstrate the importance of local
culture and civil society, subjects that will be treated later in
this chapter – as well as in Chapters 7 and 8 – in relation to
the issue of resilience.
It is also important to stress that the responses of
government to disasters are now themselves globally visible.
The leadership of the mayor of New York after 11 September
2001 was widely praised and considered as an example of
effective government. In contrast, the mayor of Mumbai, at
risk of losing his job after having been sharply criticized for
the Mumbai Municipal Corporation’s weak response to the
monsoon flooding in July 2005, remarked some months
later, after the world saw the poor performance of US institutions
in responding to Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans:
‘Thank heavens for New Orleans.’ Confidence in public
institutions is therefore itself at risk, with major implications
in other arenas as well. Dozens of articles appeared in the
Indian press asking why public institutions had not been
better prepared to deal with the extreme impacts of largely
predictable monsoon rains. 23
Indeed, there is evidence that political changes are
common following disasters as questions are raised about
the effectiveness of government responses and the capacities
of leadership. Some of the cases of political change
following disasters, including Turkey, Mexico, Chile,
Nicaragua and Guatemala, are presented in Chapter 7.
These three examples of global forces – the impact of
the global economy, the global environment, and the interaction
of global uncertainty with the weakening of national and
local institutions – are illustrative of the linkages between
global, national and urban levels. Each demonstrates how
vulnerability to threats to urban safety and security can be
affected by forces that previously were not considered to be
so significant in reducing local risks. The global level, therefore,
must now be considered in the mapping of urban risk.
National level
A wide spectrum of national factors affects vulnerability to
problems of urban safety and security and, specifically, the
problems of crime and violence, security of tenure, and
natural and human-made disasters. These problems start
with the level of income of individual countries and
societies. In general, data shows that richer countries have
lower levels of crime and violence, although there are many
exceptions to this pattern, such as the higher homicide
levels in the US or in Russia. Chapter 3 presents evidence on
the incidence of different types of crime and violence by
region of the world and examines the correlations with
various socio-economic, political, demographic and cultural
factors. 24 The importance of national cultural factors
deserves special mention because, for example, the availability
and use of firearms is highly cultural, as illustrated in the
large differences between the UK, the US and Canada.
Insecurity of tenure and the likelihood of illegal
occupancy of public and private land are also highly
negatively correlated with national income. So, too, is
vulnerability to natural and human-made disasters, as
demonstrated by the fact cited in Chapter 1 that 98 per cent
of the victims of disasters since 1990 have been in developing
countries. National per capita income, therefore, seems
to be a robust and significant, if not entirely determinant,
proxy for vulnerability to these three threats to urban safety
and security. However, this statement also requires some
qualification reflecting local cultural differences across
cities.
This finding also correlates strongly with the general
finding that many attributes of welfare – longevity, literacy,
health status, housing quality, access to water supply and
sanitation, among others – correlate positively with national
Figure 2.2
Location of major
population centres
Source: United Nations, 1997
In general, data
shows that richer
countries have lower
levels of crime and
violence, although
there are many
exceptions to this
pattern