Risky Cities: The Physical and Fiscal Nature of Disaster Capitalism (Nature, Society, and Culture)

"Over half the world's population lives in urban regions, and increasingly disasters are of great concern to city dwellers, policymakers, and builders. However, disaster risk is also of great interest to corporations, financiers, and investors. Risky Cities is a critical examination of global urban development, capitalism, and its relationship with environmental hazards. It is about how cities live and profit from the threat of sinkholes, garbage, and fire. Risky Cities is not simply about post-catastrophe profiteering. This book focuses on the way in which disaster capitalism has figured out ways to commodify environmental bads and manage risks. Notably, capitalist city-building results in the physical transformation of nature. This necessitates risk management strategies -such as insurance, environmental assessments, and technocratic mitigation plans. As such capitalists redistribute risk relying on short-term fixes to disaster risk rather than address long-term vulnerabilities"-- Provided by publisher Dedication 6 Contents 8 Abbreviations 10 Introduction 14 1 Living with Disaster and Capitalism 29 2 Sinkholes and the Risky Foundations of Cities 51 3 The Logistical Nightmare of Trash and Urban Nature 70 4 Fire, the Wildland–Urban Interface, and Feedback Loops 90 5 Assessing and Managing Risk 108 Conclusion: Regenerative Urbanism 128 Acknowledgments 138 Notes 140 Index 178 About the Author 187