Global Report on Human Settlements 2007 - PoA-ISS

Vulnerability, risk and resilience: Towards a conceptual framework
33
many cities, involving shifts in land-use patterns over time
and exposure to industrial hazards.
The fictitious story in Box 2.2 unfortunately captures a
set of realistic cumulative dynamics through which efforts to
manage urban safety are overwhelmed by shifting maps of
risk over 30 years. The capacity of public institutions to
manage these processes is limited, although the decision to
build a residential neighbourhood close to a factory could be
questioned. However, given the property values of land inside
the first ring of the metropolitan area, the housing project
made sound economic sense and allowed the taxation of
property to help finance the public infrastructure.
Two dimensions of the urban level deserve special
attention in regard to the challenges of urban safety and
security: urban spatial processes and institutional capacity at
the metropolitan and municipal levels.
■ Urban spatial processes
As suggested in the story in Box 2.2, the major fact about
urban land use is that it changes. The functions performed in
any given location shift over time. These functions, whether
residential, productive or administrative, depend upon many
factors, including those at the global and national levels. 40
Patterns of spatial change and land use frame the context in
which urban safety and security issues actually exist, thus
emphasizing the importance of urban planning.
One of the most noted changes in urban space over
the last two decades has been the growth of private urban
space in the form of gated communities, a logical conclusion
to the argument for defensible space. While these communities
have, in part, been a response to growing urban crime
and concerns about security, their impacts are far greater,
leading to an increasing polarization of urban space and
segregation between urban poor and middle- and upperincome
groups.
The case of metropolitan Buenos Aires is a good
example of this phenomenon. Studies of the growth of gated
communities show that, by 2000, there were 434 private
communities in metropolitan Buenos Aires. By August 2000,
some 500,000 people lived in an area of 323 square
kilometres, or an area 1.6 times larger than the downtown
federal capital area, which houses 3 million people. 41 This
level and disproportionate land share of gated communities
is more intense than similar developments in other Latin
American cities; but it shares common features. 42
Analytically, these areas can be differentiated by their date of
settlement, the level of income of the population and, as a
result, the scale and costs of residential plots and housing. 43
Most significantly, they represent a segregation and privatization
of urban space. They are also direct consequences of
the widening gap in incomes and wealth within the metropolitan
population and are reflected in the growing social
exclusion of large numbers of people. 44 This is well captured
in the phrase ‘la construccion del nosotros y de los otros’
(meaning ‘the construction of ourselves and the others’) in a
study of the lifestyles of the gated communities. 45 This
phrase also describes the psychological and cultural basis of
fear that led to, and then is reinforced by, the privatization of
urban space.
The socio-spatial fragmentation within one city is well
illustrated in a description that links intra-urban inequality to
the different velocities of mobility and connectivity of three
households living in metropolitan Buenos Aires: one leaving
their computer at home in a gated community, driving in
their car along a highway to downtown white collar employment,
probably in the financial sector, talking on their
cell-phones; a second leaving their neighbourhood and
taking a bus to work downtown in the service economy
unconnected to computer technology; and a third not
leaving their neighbourhood at all. 46
Urban spatial change, therefore, frames the vulnerability
of urban groups to various risks in specific locations,
whether from crime, evictions or disasters. As noted below,
location in space is not necessarily coincident with the jurisdictions
of urban institutions responsible for ensuring safety
and security.
■ Metropolitan and municipal institutional
capacity
While the issue of institutional capacity is important at all
levels, it is particularly lacking at both the metropolitan and
municipal levels, especially in developing countries. The
institutional framework governing cities is complex, with
national institutions often establishing norms – for example,
for infrastructure standards – or providing federal revenue
through states or provinces to the municipal or urban level.
Municipal institutions are usually dependent upon these
revenue flows, are often weak technically, except in large
cities with long traditions of technical and professional training,
and normally spend most of their resources on
personnel expenditures followed by the costs of waste
collection. Local institutions in developing countries rarely
have the capital for investment in large-scale infrastructure
provision such as water supply or electricity.
Within a multilevel institutional framework and
frequently overlapping jurisdictions, urban safety and
security are important responsibilities, but most capacities in
policing or disaster preparedness are notoriously weak.
These problems are described in some detail in Chapters 4
and 8.
One aspect of weak institutional capacity is the
frequent lack of effective institutions at the metropolitan
level. Very few cities have managed to establish
metropolitan-level capacity to manage the positive and
negative externalities of urban population density and
habitat. These externalities affect the environment, the
design and management of infrastructure, or the multiple
flows that come in and out of a metropolitan area, to name a
few. 47 The historical dominance of downtown municipalities
and their unwillingness to give up their long-held prerogatives
in order to build metropolitan forms of cooperation is a
major problem at the urban level, whether in Buenos Aires,
Dakar, Lagos or São Paulo. Despite the great claims made for
decentralization of responsibility to peripheral municipalities,
this process also does not guarantee effective capacity
and performance. Responsibility without adequate financial
resources – the problem of mandate without resources –
often results in poor performance. This has direct conse-
One of the most
noted changes in
urban space over the
last two decades has
been the growth of
private urban space
in the form of gated
communities, a
logical conclusion to
the argument for
defensible space
Institutional
capacity … is
particularly lacking
at both the
metropolitan and
municipal levels,
especially in developing
countries