ancient cities

Zukin, Sharon. 1980. “A Decade of the New Urban
Sociology.” Theory and Society 9:575–601.
Ca t a s t r o p h E
Worldwide, cities face increasing risk of catastrophes.
The Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004, with
more than 240,000 deaths, and Hurricane Katrina
of 2005, considered the most costly disaster in
U.S. history at over $200 billion, captured world
attention. Most of these losses were sustained in
urban areas with high concentrations of people
and property located in extremely low-lying hazardous
areas. These devastating events are likely
precursors to more frequent and severe catastrophes
to strike cities in the foreseeable future.
Catastrophic events can be conceptualized
according to their source. Some events result from
largely uncontrollable forces of nature such as
earthquakes, hurricanes, and tsunamis. Other
events are caused by combinations of natural
forces and human action. For example, dredging
and filling in wetlands for urban development
often results in loss of the capacity of watersheds
to store stormwater runoff, which increases the
risk of flooding for downstream communities. Still
other catastrophes result from deliberate human
will like terrorism, arson, and armed conflicts.
Catastrophic events can be slow-onset, multiepisodic
events or rapid-onset, single episodic
events. Slow-onset catastrophes result from clusters
of traumatic episodes (e.g., protracted drought
due to long-term absence of precipitation, largescale
abandonment of inner cities due to prolonged
divestment in built environments or recurring
crime). Rapid-onset events include terrorist attack,
hurricane landfall, and earthquakes.
Catastrophes need to be distinguished from
disasters when considering the rising global environmental
risk to cities. Both catastrophe and
disaster refer to crisis events of sufficient enormity
to cause disruption to infrastructure (sewer, water,
electricity, and roads), local economies, housing,
and everyday functioning of cities. Yet, a clear distinction
exists between them that must be understood
when assessing the risk to cities. Several
dimensions of these crises help us to make the distinction.
First, there is the scale of destruction.
Catastrophe
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Most or all of a city’s built environment is heavily
impacted in a catastrophe, but only partial destruction
occurs in a disaster. The damage in New
Orleans from Hurricane Katrina was catastrophic,
as 80 percent of the city was flooded. The 1902
volcanic eruption of Mount Pelée buried the entire
city of St. Pierre on the island of Martinique in the
Caribbean. Nearly 30,000 residents perished, and
only one man survived: a prisoner in solitary confinement.
In contrast, disasters strike only parts of
a city. The Mexico City earthquake of 1985, considered
a major disaster, caused destruction of only
2 percent of the residential housing stock. The
damage caused by the attack on the World Trade
Center on September 11, 2001, was confined to
only a few city blocks in lower Manhattan.
Second, there is the degree of accessibility of
aid. Aid for emergency response and recovery is
much more problematic in a catastrophe compared
to a disaster. An entire region of communities is
devastated and unable to contribute to the need for
personnel, supplies, and communication. In a
disaster there is usually only one major target for
the convergence of assistance, but in a catastrophe
many nearby localities are targets and often compete
to gain the attention of external aid donors.
After Katrina, the devastated cities in southern
Mississippi (Biloxi, Gulfport, Pass Christian) could
have anticipated a flow of assistance from the
major metropolitan city, New Orleans, but the
catastrophic conditions throughout the region precluded
this possibility.
Third, there is the severity of disruption of
everyday lives. Daily activities of a city are severely
affected in a catastrophe but not in a disaster. Most
if not all places of work, recreation, worship, and
education are completely shut down, and lifeline
infrastructure systems that supply electricity, water,
communication and transportation services are
severely disrupted for months or even years. Even
in major disasters, no such massive disruption of
community life occurs even if particular neighborhoods
are devastated. In the 1985 Mexico City
earthquake, life in many contiguous areas went on
almost normally. This was also the case following
the Loma Prieta earthquake of 1989 when the San
Francisco Bay region experienced the collapse of
the Oakland expressway and the closure of the San
Francisco Bay Bridge. These incidents did not cause
a major disruption of the regional transportation