Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
can be related to environmental hazards, such as the need to avoid developments in
floodplains, since these need land use permissions that normally lie within the ju-
risdiction of cities, issues dealt with in the discussion on Resilient Cities (Chap. 9).
However, it is still worth noting that many urban development projects still take
place in hazardous floodplains, while many other environmental factors have been
ignored in recent years. For example, it is almost inconceivable that many nuclear
plants in Japan in particular were built near major faults, or on shores within reach
of tsunamis, even though the country has a world-leading record in developing
standards for buildings that will withstand all but the severest earthquakes. The
devastating March 2011 earthquake and tsunami which affected such a large area of
Honshu and destroyed a nuclear plant may well have been a transformative event
that has changed perceptions and public policy, ensuring that far more attention will
be paid to the effects of environmental hazards in future urban developments, issues
discussed in Chap. 9.
3527
Needs
Fainstein's emphasis on housing is only one of the requirements needed to cre-
ate better urban places. A more vigorous and explicit redistributive approach at a
municipal level should ensure that everyone has access to what are usually called
Basic Needs, but extended to deal with the more specific ten principles involved in
Capability Building shown in Fig.
3.2
and including: employment; assuring non-
exploitive labour practices; health care; education; safety, including non-coercive
social protection and control by police services; food and water supplies; housing.
Also, there is usually a need for better welfare policies for the really disadvantaged,
as well as freedom from coercive practices, not only by police, to allow individu-
als to reach their full potential. Certainly western democracies provide many of
these services. But the question is often what sort of approach should be adopted
to provide these needs to people who are the most disadvantaged at an urban level,
for many of these services are primarily dealt with by national policies or perhaps
mainly financed by the state and administered locally. A welcome sign of increas-
ing municipal activism in this area can be seen by the May 2104 decision of Seattle
to mandate a minimum wage of $ 15 an hour in the city which contrasts with the
federal minimum of $ 7.25. However even this has several exceptions and will only
be implemented over a 3 year period. Opponents argue it will decrease employment
and hasten a move to mechanisation. The impetus for this change came from the
recent election of an avowed socialist to city council who supported the many pro-
tests by service workers in corporate fast-food businesses in many parts of America
in recent years. The $ 15 minimum was used as a battle cry to draw attention to the
fact that existing wages kept people in poverty, whereas the CEO of McDonald's,
for example, is paid $ 9 million a year and Walmart, which refuses unionization,
earns around $ 27 billion annually in profit.
