Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
reduce the impact of disasters it has been shown that their scale means that urban
places alone do not have the financial or other resources to solve these problems.
So massive aid, in both finance and personnel, from the national government of the
affected area and from international agencies, is usually needed in the rescue and re-
covery phases from disasters. By contrast there are two forms of insecurities in cit-
ies that have been reduced because of urban government action. One relates to the
major decline in the dangers that used to come comes from the collapse of buildings
and infrastructures. In developed countries at least, improved building regulations
have solved many of these problems, with regulations and safety standards that are
usually enacted by cities or at least monitored by city employees. However it has
often been the national state that established the legislation within which munici-
palities operate. Similarly the threat of fires has been drastically reduced by better
construction techniques and materials as well as skilled fire-fighting bodies. Unfor-
tunately, too many cities of the less developed world do not have adequate building
regulations, effective inspections, or fire protection services. This means that the
collapse of buildings, infrastructure and the destruction from fires is ever present.
Yet it is important not to be too complacent about the developed world situation.
In many cities the combination of an aging infrastructure and the limited financial
ability of municipalities mean that there are often backlogs in the maintenance and
replacement of infrastructure. Such problems need to be solved in the next decade
to prevent increased levels of threat to the residents of cities. Another set of prob-
lems to the security of urban populations come from public health hazards, which
are summarized in the Healthy City discussion (Chap. 13).
A more general set of security problems come from riots and external threats.
Throughout history urban places have been the sites of civic unrest, from localized
riots, to these that have overthrown the state and set up new governments. It is diffi-
cult to generalise about these movements, many of which are episodic, since in some
cases they are allowed to take place peacefully; in others the state authorities repress
them with all the military apparatus of the state and kill hundreds if not thousands
of protestors. In a democracy, protests by marches or demonstrations of aggrieved
people, is a legitimate form of action. Yet even originally peaceful protests have
often turned to violence, sometimes escalating into riots in many areas, as seen in
the 2011 English riots (Davies
2014
). By the late twentieth century protests against
the meetings of international leaders of the major developed countries became a
regular part of the urban scene. If these demonstrations are unchecked, participants
and bystanders are often injured and killed. But since part of the police role is to
keep order and ensure safety in cities, the police and security services have to get
involved. Policing these demonstrations is not as easy task, for attempts to monitor
and control the crowds has often been over-zealous or involve deliberately pro-
vocative acts which can increase the level of violence against the demonstrators and
the arrest and subsequent incarceration of citizens, often on flimsy grounds. Such
problems may be exacerbated by deliberate acts of violence by police employed
by repressive regimes determined to keep control, which sometimes leads to resis-
tance and even civil war. Not only does this add to insecurity in the cities involved,
but there are very considerable costs of extra policing and often the involvement
