Risky Cities : : The Physical and Fiscal Nature of Disaster Capitalism / / Albert S. Fu.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter EBOOK PACKAGE COMPLETE 2022 English
• VerfasserIn: Fu, Albert S.,
• Place / Publishing House: New Brunswick, NJ : : Rutgers University Press, , [2022]; ©2022
• Year of Publication: 2022
• Language: English
• Series: Nature, Society, and Culture
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (174 p.) :; 7 b&w images

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.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Abbreviations -- Introduction -- 1 Living with Disaster and Capitalism -- 2 Sinkholes and the Risky Foundations of Cities -- 3 The Logistical Nightmare of Trash and Urban Nature -- 4 Fire, the Wildland–Urban Interface, and Feedback Loops -- 5 Assessing and Managing Risk -- Conclusion: Regenerative Urbanism -- Acknowledgments -- Notes -- Index -- About the Author