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Vulnerability, risk and resilience: Towards a conceptual framework29simply ‘give up’ in the face of risks they feel they are unableto manage. The latter behaviours fall within the selfdestructivebehaviours of institutions and societies whichhave declined and, in some cases, disappeared. 22 Both ofthese cases, however, demonstrate the importance of localculture and civil society, subjects that will be treated later inthis chapter – as well as in Chapters 7 and 8 – in relation tothe issue of resilience.It is also important to stress that the responses ofgovernment to disasters are now themselves globally visible.The leadership of the mayor of New York after 11 September2001 was widely praised and considered as an example ofeffective government. In contrast, the mayor of Mumbai, atrisk of losing his job after having been sharply criticized forthe Mumbai Municipal Corporation’s weak response to themonsoon flooding in July 2005, remarked some monthslater, after the world saw the poor performance of US institutionsin responding to Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans:‘Thank heavens for New Orleans.’ Confidence in publicinstitutions is therefore itself at risk, with major implicationsin other arenas as well. Dozens of articles appeared in theIndian press asking why public institutions had not beenbetter prepared to deal with the extreme impacts of largelypredictable monsoon rains. 23Indeed, there is evidence that political changes arecommon following disasters as questions are raised aboutthe effectiveness of government responses and the capacitiesof leadership. Some of the cases of political changefollowing disasters, including Turkey, Mexico, Chile,Nicaragua and Guatemala, are presented in Chapter 7.These three examples of global forces – the impact ofthe global economy, the global environment, and the interactionof global uncertainty with the weakening of national andlocal institutions – are illustrative of the linkages betweenglobal, national and urban levels. Each demonstrates howvulnerability to threats to urban safety and security can beaffected by forces that previously were not considered to beso significant in reducing local risks. The global level, therefore,must now be considered in the mapping of urban risk.National levelA wide spectrum of national factors affects vulnerability toproblems of urban safety and security and, specifically, theproblems of crime and violence, security of tenure, andnatural and human-made disasters. These problems startwith the level of income of individual countries andsocieties. In general, data shows that richer countries havelower levels of crime and violence, although there are manyexceptions to this pattern, such as the higher homicidelevels in the US or in Russia. Chapter 3 presents evidence onthe incidence of different types of crime and violence byregion of the world and examines the correlations withvarious socio-economic, political, demographic and culturalfactors. 24 The importance of national cultural factorsdeserves special mention because, for example, the availabilityand use of firearms is highly cultural, as illustrated in thelarge differences between the UK, the US and Canada.Insecurity of tenure and the likelihood of illegaloccupancy of public and private land are also highlynegatively correlated with national income. So, too, isvulnerability to natural and human-made disasters, asdemonstrated by the fact cited in Chapter 1 that 98 per centof the victims of disasters since 1990 have been in developingcountries. National per capita income, therefore, seemsto be a robust and significant, if not entirely determinant,proxy for vulnerability to these three threats to urban safetyand security. However, this statement also requires somequalification reflecting local cultural differences acrosscities.This finding also correlates strongly with the generalfinding that many attributes of welfare – longevity, literacy,health status, housing quality, access to water supply andsanitation, among others – correlate positively with nationalFigure 2.2Location of majorpopulation centresSource: United Nations, 1997In general, datashows that richercountries have lowerlevels of crime andviolence, althoughthere are manyexceptions to thispattern