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Vulnerability, risk and resilience: Towards a conceptual framework31will provide some relief services and also contribute torecovery. But their ability to do so depends both uponnational fiscal capacity, as well institutional and technicalcapacity. Nevertheless, in many cases the causes of theseproblems may lie outside national boundaries – for example,from political problems such as the settling of politicalrefugees from Darfur in Chad or Rwandans in Congo. Theissue of refugees also intersects with the issue of security oftenure because, in many cases, refugees occupy land on atemporary basis, and often for extended periods of time,regardless of its legal status.A similar case is the losses from periodic floods inMozambique even though the rivers originate in neighbouringcountries. As noted in Chapter 1, even with majorinternational assistance, aid levels have never covered thecosts of more than 10 per cent of the losses. This conclusionsuggests that countries, particularly the poorest, will have tosimply absorb these losses and accept that progress inimproving the welfare of their populations will once again beheld back. ‘Living with the floods’, a phrase from the publicdebate in Mozambique, reflects this resignation in the faceof the repeated force of nature. 31As noted earlier, from a macro-economic perspective,urban safety and security are also private goods that areconsumed by individuals and households. Indeed, there isgrowing evidence that safety and security from crime in somecities and from natural disasters in other cities are majorprivate priorities for many households. Comparative studiesof the effects of structural adjustment in developingcountries demonstrate that the impacts of macro-economicchange through changes in prices, job opportunities andpublic expenditures have enormous cumulative impacts onurban households, and particularly the poor. A comparativestudy of Guayaquil, Manila, Lusaka and Budapest demonstratedhow these impacts increased the vulnerabilities of thepoor by undercutting important household and communityassets, 32 including labour, economic and social infrastructure,housing, household relations, and social capital at thecommunity level. As macro-economic conditions deterioratedand poverty deepened at the community level, urban securitybecame a high priority for poor households as crime andviolence dramatically increased, from domestic violence todrug-related crime.An additional aspect of crime that affects the macroeconomiclevel is the issue of corruption, which is addressedin Chapter 3. Extensive evidence now exists on the impactof corruption on macro-economic performance. Indices ofcorruption developed by Transparency International havebeen extended through surveys of individual regions andcountries to assess the impact of perceptions of corruptionon business practices and levels of investment. BusinessEnvironment and Enterprise Performance Surveys are beingconducted by the European Bank for Reconstruction andDevelopment, as well as the World Bank, since 1999 in 27countries, mostly in Central and Eastern Europe and thecountries of the former Soviet Union. 33 Analytic work inother regions has advanced as well, with institutions such asthe World Bank hardening its approach to this controversialissue.If corruption refers mostly to crime involving publicinstitutions and officials, another prevalent and growingcriminal phenomenon affecting the macro-economic level isorganized crime, which is discussed in Chapter 3. While it isdifficult to assess the scale and penetration of organizedcrime into national economies, there are some areas, such asthe drug trade, where organized crime is a major force. Onestudy by the United Nations Drug Control Programmeestimated that US$1 billion of illicit capital circulates everyday in the world’s financial institutions. 34The urban levelThe next level of analysis at which urban safety and securitycan be assessed is the urban level itself. The essence of theurban is its relation to context: physical, spatial, environmental,social, cultural, economic and political. The meaning ofurban safety and security is highly contextual because, whileit is indisputably affected by global and national factors, themost institutionally meaningful unit of analysis, as well asarena for action, is the urban region or city.One of the discourses on urban safety has been thedesign of ‘defensible space’ (i.e. how cities and neighbourhoodscan be designed to reduce the factors that contributeto crime and violence itself). This includes neighbourhoodlayouts, the integration of public space with other uses, suchas shopping, in order to increase circulation of people atvarious times in the day, or how transit systems can reducethe isolation of specific transit stops and locations. Extensivestudies have been undertaken in the US and major Europeancities on the relation between transit and security. 35 Theseissues are discussed in some detail in Chapter 3.Security of tenure is an interesting case at the urbanlevel because the occupancy of land is a central fact in theurban landscape, with implications for poverty, inequality,human rights and discrimination against specific groups,including non-enforcement of internationally recognizedrights, as well as national law. The urban context is importanthere, as illustrated in Chapter 6, which shows howvarious countries have addressed insecurity of tenure andthe safeguarding of human rights. The South Africa case, forexample, shows that formalization may be hard to achieveeven with legislation, and that such formalization can imposesignificant costs on the poor. Brazil, too, has made an effortto enact legislation; but the scale and depth of both urbanpoverty and intra-urban inequality inhibits increasing accessto security of tenure. The Indian case is also contradictory,with rights protected by law and the courts; yet, state andlocal government policy is much more politicized and influencedby political and economic interests, such as the realestate industry.As noted earlier in this chapter, vulnerability to disastersat the urban level is unevenly distributed and reflectshistorical settlement patterns, as well as varying degrees ofpreparedness and attention given to different classesof people. It has been observed that the New Orleansexperience demonstrated, to a global audience, visiblediscrimination in the immediate responses to the securityneeds of African–American, white and Creole residents, inUrban safety andsecurity are alsoprivate goods thatare consumed byindividuals andhouseholdsWhile it is difficultto assess the scaleand penetration oforganized crime intonational economies,there are someareas, such as thedrug trade, whereorganized crime is amajor forceOne of thediscourses on urbansafety has been thedesign of ‘defensiblespace’