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Current threats to urban safety and security19cities of richer countries. This reflects the logic of concentrationand economies of scale. The complex patterns ofcausation affecting technological disasters will be examinedin greater detail in Chapter 4.THE CHALLENGE OFIMPROVING UNDER-STANDING: PERCEPTION,EVIDENCE ANDMETHODOLOGYTaken together, the three threats to urban safety and securityexamined in this report pose many challenges for understandingand action. Of particular importance in this respectare the effects, or implications, of perception, evidence andmethodology. While these three threats to urban safety andsecurity are intrinsically different in character, they all sharethe fact that their underlying causes are popularly misunderstood.Not surprisingly, it is difficult to mobilize sustainedpolitical support for their remedy, whether at the international,national or local levels. The assertion, for example,that crime and violence or disasters are frequentlypredictable is upsetting, even shocking, to the public; yet,evidence presented in this report would support this conclusion.To characterize some disasters as ‘disasters by design’,in terms of the inadequacies of infrastructure design andweak institutional capacity to address them, has producedimportant political reactions in places such as New Orleansor Mumbai. Yet, as shown in the previous section, in-depthanalyses of cases demonstrate that conventional wisdom isfrequently misinformed about the origins and mechanisms ofthese three threats to urban safety and security.The role of perceptionThe perception of insecurity in cities depends largely uponthe substantial amount and constant flow of information thaturban residents receive from many sources. This informationdirectly challenges the reality that most places in most citiesare safe, at least from crime and violence. The media plays acritical role in this process. As noted in Chapter 3, studies inthe UK have demonstrated that readers of ‘tabloids’ weretwice as likely to be worried about violent crime, burglaryand car crime as readers of ‘broadsheets’. The content andstyle of the media, whether newspapers or television, havean enormous impact on public perception of the conditionsthat people believe are prevalent in their cities. Whetherthese perceptions are exaggerated or not, they depend uponindividual media sources, how stories are communicated andhow public authorities respond.In the era of global communications, the role of themedia is central to both local and international perceptionsof safety and security in specific cities: for example, whetherit was dangerous to visit New York in the 1980s, but safertoday, or whether there is a greater likelihood of crime in Riode Janeiro or São Paulo today. While terrorism has become amajor preoccupation in many cities around the world since11 September 2001, media attention seems to focus oncrime and violence. Globally, media practices seem to buildupon promoting a ‘culture of fear’ in order to sell newspapersor to guarantee television audiences. These practicesgenerate what one report has called ‘fearscapes’: publicspaces where people fear the lack of urban security. 83 Incontrast, in other cities, the media tries to actively play downsuch sensational news. Responsible reporting and coveragecan play a major role in promoting urban security and safety.The importance of media was visible at a global scalein the perception of poor governmental response toHurricane Katrina in New Orleans and the subsequent crimeand violence. It was striking for the world to see governmentalineffectiveness and the concurrent outbreak of crime andviolence among the poor in New Orleans. A global and,indeed, national audience was given the impression that asignificant outbreak of crime and violence had occurred inNew Orleans, a subject that is still a matter of debate. Thereis little doubt, however, that media coverage of someincidents and their repeated televising all over the worldcertainly created the impression of lawlessness in NewOrleans.At the same time, intensified media coverage alsosuggested that the impact of Hurricane Katrina had beenpredicted and could have been largely avoided throughbetter preparedness. It helped to challenge the globalconventional wisdom about natural disasters being neither‘human made’ nor ‘predictable’.In addition to media, the personal experiences ofindividuals and households, and word-of-mouth communicationamong people within and across neighbourhoods,comprise a central process in describing threats to security.Individual experience confirms apparently similar eventsreported in the media, leading to a broader sense of vulnerabilityeven if statistical evidence does not confirm such atrend.A potentially useful approach to assess the level ofurban insecurity in specific cities and/or neighbourhoodswould be to ask the residents of a particular area for theirassessment of specific threats. This has been done in somecities struck by a disaster. In most cases, residents are ableto use their local knowledge to identify the origins of theproblem and where the risks lie. They usually conclude thatthe event was ‘human made’. This is certainly the case inNew Orleans, but also in Mumbai. 84 It also applies quiteforcefully in the case of fears of evictions. Municipal authoritiesin some cities repeatedly issue warnings of evictionagainst squatters and slum dwellers, regardless of the stateof legal appeals and procedures. They create climates of fearand apprehension. In Lima, Peru, there are stories of womenfearing to leave their homes vacant in order to avert demolitionand destruction of their belongings. Indeed, one of thebenefits of secure title in some of the barriadas, or slums, ofLima has been the increased mobility of women.Judged by coverage in the media, crime in some citiesis rapidly growing, with the sense of insecurity very presentand constantly reinforced by individual stories. Yet, incomparative terms, it is frequently difficult to see how onecity is ‘more dangerous’ than another. For example, by 2000,The perception ofinsecurity in citiesdepends largelyupon the substantialamount and constantflow of informationthat urban residentsreceive from manysourcesJudged by coveragein the media, crimein some cities israpidly growing,with the sense ofinsecurity verypresent andconstantlyreinforced byindividual stories