Sustainable cities: Safety and security

Abstract

The major cities of highly industrialized societies are the nodes that connect a mass network of critical infrastructure services. Thus the cities themselves comprise the most critical infrastructure of the society. The resilience and robustness of the infrastructure of cities is thus essential to their sustainability. Since most of enterprises providing these services are privately or corporate owned and are highly competitive, their drive for economic efficiency also tends to make cities increasingly vulnerable to three kinds of disasters: technogenic, natural, and intentional. This paper explores the factors that govern the willingness or reluctance of private and corporate owners of critical services to invest in catastrophic risk reduction and the degree of public-private cooperation required to make cities more sustainable. Ultimately some changes in the political relationship between cities and states and the national governments that exercise sovereign authority over them will be required, as cities become the primary structure for the social and economic lives of people everywhere. © 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.