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Home : Community Economic Development : World Urban Forum : The Secure City

The Secure City

Part Two: Threats to Urban Security

Pandemics

There is something significantly different about this period of history that allows remote and isolated problems to spread around the globe in unpredictable ways.¹

In February 2003, a young woman prepared for a journey that would take her on a flight from Beijing to Vancouver en route to Toronto to visit family and friends. After a few days, she would fly from Toronto to Florida for a relaxing cruise in the Caribbean.

The woman was completely unaware that she was a carrier of the corona virus commonly known as SARS.² Her trip would have serious ramifications for several hundred people, as she became a member of a small group who created an incredible chain of events that would be felt in 24 countries and affect the health of more than 8,000 people.³ By the time the SARS crisis had abated in less than fifteen weeks, 774 people would die, hundreds of thousands were quarantined, many would lose their livelihood, and entire health care systems would be on the verge of paralysis.⁴ A siege mentality set in as cities lost the capability to contain the threat.⁵

SARS began as a localized health problem that spread with alarming speed and relative ease to become a global phenomenon with significant economic, political, social and cultural impact.⁶ Despite the Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network, countries were ill prepared to deal with the outbreak of SARS that continues to be a threat to global health security.

Pandemics such as SARS are not just recent phenomena, but in the past, cities and regions were not as connected or inter-dependent. Today they are much more susceptible to external threats, while their capacity to anticipate and respond effectively is increasingly constrained. As countries around the world prepare for an outbreak of SARS in 2004, a new avian flu virus may prove instead to be the next major pandemic.⁷ This virus has already spread from chickens in Thailand and Vietnam to ducks in China, and epidemiologists and the World Health Organization fear that the virus will combine with an existing human flu to create an easily transmissible form that has a high mortality rate because humans lack a natural immunity.

There are separate considerations here. On the one hand, the "connectedness" of populations today creates ideal conditions for the spread of illness. On the other hand, so far, public health systems and medical technology have provided something of a barrier. There are still isolated cases of Plague in North America, but they don't spread. Had SARS occurred 80 years ago, it may have killed far more people, as the Spanish influenza of 1918 did. SARS was controlled – it is interesting to wonder how this happened, as compared for instance to HIV, which is uncontrollable because of its very nature, just as Plague was uncontrollable because of its nature 700 years ago. The deciding factor seems to be whether medical technology and the effectiveness of public health systems are enough of a bulwark in the case of each individual pathogen. In this respect, then, cities had the same kinds of health problems 80 and 700 (and no doubt 2000) years ago, when illness also seemed able to spread rapidly via travellers and animals from one population centre to another.

In 2003, prior to the SARS outbreak, 134 million travelers passed through airports in Hong Kong, Tokyo, Bangkok, Seattle and Vancouver. How well equipped are cities to cope with a pandemic that scientists predict is inevitable?⁸ In the aftermath of SARS, there has been little follow-up analysis into the effectiveness of our emergency preparedness systems and governance structures to respond to emergencies of this magnitude. What are we doing to become better prepared?⁹ Anecdotal evidence points to significant disconnects in the policy and planning responses among agencies with jurisdiction and responsibility to coordinate an integrated response. ¹⁰

Global Terrorism

Some events shatter the order of things - the routines and regularities of our lives that we rely upon for our sense of safety and our sense, most importantly, of who we are and where we are going. Some events change our perceptions forever. The world never looks the same again afterward. Suddenly, the reliable landmarks of life seem strange and distorted - recognizable, yet simultaneously weirdly unrecognizable.11

We have become the children of terrorism as fear and vulnerability pervade so many aspects of our daily routines. ¹² We live with the knowledge that the probability of a terrorist attack is high, but we don't know when, where, or how the threat will directly affect us.

For most of its recent history, the United States believed it would never see a war waged on its own soil. September 11, 2001 changed everything when fanatics attacked two of the most recognizable symbols of urban global capitalism. People of forty-seven nationalities were killed in the World Trade Center. Barely a year later, the US had implemented National Security Presidential Directive 17, and Homeland Security Policy Directive 4, containing the essence of the "Bush Doctrine", the national security strategy that includes the "War on Terrorism" and the Patriot Act. The defense budget alone is currently estimated at USD $400 billion annually, and depending upon the strategy chosen by the President from the options provided by The Council on Foreign Relations, this could grow by and additional $100 to $200 billion per year. ¹³ While some argue against the direction of this doctrine and call for a US foreign policy that is more closely aligned with international efforts to combat terrorism, the January 20 th, 2004 State of the Union Address leaves no doubt as to the intended course: " America will never seek a permission slip to defend the security of our country ".¹⁴

This goes beyond rhetoric. It has raised an important issue for many in Canada about the Charter of Rights and Freedoms now that landed immigrants are required to show an identification card if they want to enter the USA. Until the Patriot Act (and Canadian Security of Information Act), under the Charter, landed immigrants were afforded the same rights and privileges as citizens. By refusing to challenge the US on the unilateral imposition of border restrictions, Canada may have inadvertently reduced landed immigrants to second-class citizens. Critics also question the intrusiveness of the information being collected.¹⁵

The escalating war of attrition being waged against coalition forces by terrorist organizations vividly illustrates the capacity of networks of individuals who are neither bound by nor confined to any one nation state, to undermine the way we live. They have dramatically influenced how we come to view the world beyond the security of our own institutions and conventions. This war is no longer something that happens elsewhere or to someone else.

Terrorist groups are developing global networks that permeate national boundaries with relative ease. Conflicts that were historically limited in place and effect have become global in scale and impact.¹⁶ But is the response appropriate? Where does it make sense to allocate scarce resources? Do we shore-up borders and airports but not ports?¹⁷ Critical installations need to be defended against terrorism, but will this be in lieu of fixing services and infrastructure to make them more resilient?

Making cities secure should be among the highest priorities. Currently however, it would appear that the intellectual capital, political rhetoric and discretionary money is going into missile defense and attempts to shore up porous borders at the expense of investment where it is most needed. One of the clearest examples of a political agenda being hijacked can be seen in the way several national governments have used the aftermath of the September 2001 terrorist attacks on selected cities in the USA, as a pretext to invade other countries and re-deploy billions of dollars into strategic national defense budgets while doing very little to empower cities to systematically address their vulnerabilities.

How do you prepare New York for another attack? Is it by increasing defense budgets by 7% to build more missiles in response to a 1% threat, but adding little to the budgets of cities to ensure the port facilities, water systems, power grids and critical support services are maintained and upgraded?

Across the continent, governments, institutions and agencies are being re-organized to be more responsive to external threats and to provide more integrated prevention. But the costs are enormous and the results ambiguous. In a recent example, the Department of Homeland Security issued a warning of an elevated threat of attack inside the USA in December 2003, and the country moved to a state of Orange Alert. This resulted in cities across North America increasing spending by billions of dollars as staff vacations were cancelled, surveillance was increased and security upgraded at strategic installations and symbolic landmarks. The cities bore the major brunt of a decision announced by a federal agency. Budgets were skewed, plans and priorities had to be altered, and the always contentious battle for scarce resources among different levels of government was brought into sharp relief as cities tried to figure out how to provide increased security.

Canada is not exempt. Our cities are at the forefront of the impact of threats and attacks, but they are ill equipped to respond effectively. There is limited redundancy in the infrastructure, support systems are too centralized, and risk assessment and prevention strategies are fragmented. The delicate balance between individual self-reliance and dependency is threatened when the power goes out, the water quality gets tainted, or the transportation system becomes paralyzed.

Urbanization: Coastal Cities on the Edge

At the beginning of this century, more than three billion people in the world were living in urban centres, a figure that will rise to five billion in less than 30 years. Experts agree that cities will have to cope with almost all of the population growth to come in the next two decades. In one of the most dramatic and largest human migrations of modern times, the majority of these people are moving in droves to coastal towns and cities, particularly in Asia and Africa. ¹⁸

Analysts point to the explosion in global trade (a five-fold increase from 1950-1990), the internationalization of finance, production, and services, technological transformations, abundant cheap labour, and reduced boundaries as forces contributing to the phenomenal growth we are experiencing. In many cases, a coastal location adds a significant competitive and marketing advantage.

While this level of growth generates massive economic benefit to the regions, it is not without significant cost – in terms of urban sprawl, waste management, resource depletion, pollution etc. The problems are of scale as well as scope, and test the capacity of fragile ecosystems to withstand the onslaught. While demographic and environmental data suggest that the pace of change is most dramatic in the tropics, we are also witness to the burgeoning growth of megacities – cities of more than 10 million inhabitants.¹⁹ A recent report from the UN Population Division notes that 14 of the world's 17 megacities are located in coastal areas, 11 of them in Asia, with Tianjin, Istanbul, Lagos and Cairo expected to become members shortly. These figures are daunting, but tell only one part of the story. Upwards of 40 percent of the "second-tier" cities, with populations ranging from 1–10 million, are also located on or near coastlines. The threat to human security is significant.

The damage to coastal ecosystems from urban regions that cannot contain development or cope with the waste and pollution they create raises significant safety and security problems. A recent environmental study graphically illustrates the growing tensions that exist as urbanization and environmental forces collide :

Many coastal cities are growing rapidly across river deltas, draining wetlands, and building on floodplains, cutting coastal forests, and increasing sediment loads into estuaries. Sprawling urbanization across watersheds – which can include areas of hundreds of miles inland – harms streams, creeks, and rivers that flow into coastal waters ... by virtually every measure of ecosystem health, the streams, creeks, marshes, and rivers surrounded by hardened watersheds are less diverse, less stable, and less productive.²⁰

Natural catastrophes such as hurricanes, fires, floods etc. are devastating when they come into contact with populated areas. The problems are compounded in squatter settlements and unregulated developments in the poorest communities where structures are unstable; there is inadequate infrastructure, and levels of overcrowding compound the devastation and human suffering. Similar problems occur in floodplains where unregulated and even sanctioned settlements can be eradicated by flooding or rain induced mudslides. Last summer in British Columbia, forest fires destroyed hundreds of new houses that were built to accommodate the surge in population growth in the interior of the province. The epitome of individual security - the home - wiped out in a matter of minutes as natural and human forces collide.

Environmental Degradation

Many of air pollution's health effects, such as bronchitis, tightness in the chest, and wheezing, are acute or short term, and can be reversed if air pollution exposures decline. Other effects appear to be chronic, such as lung cancer and cardiopulmonary disease. As dangerous as polluted outdoor air can be to health, indoor air pollution actually poses a greater health risk on a global level. By far the greatest threat of indoor pollution occurs in the developing countries, where some 3.5 billion people -- mostly in rural areas, but also in many cities -- continue to rely on traditional fuels for cooking and heating. http://www.cnie.org/pop/pai/water-21.html

There is a clear and reflexive relationship between human society and the environment. ²¹ Air pollution is getting worse in most large cities, particularly in the developing world, a situation driven by population growth, industrialization, and increased vehicle use. Despite pollution control effects, air quality in megacities such as Beijing, Delhi, Jakarta, and Mexico City is approaching the same dangerous levels that were recorded in London in the 1950s. Some estimates suggest that as many as 1.4 billion urban residents breathe air that exceeds the WHO air guidelines. ²² The health consequences of exposure to dirty air are considerable. On a global basis, estimates of mortality due to outdoor air pollution run from around 200,000 to 570,000 annually.

Deteriorating water quality is also a particular threat. In developing countries where hundreds of millions of people lack access to clean drinking water, the vast majority of sewage is discharged into surface waters without wastewater treatment.²³ People often have to compete for access to polluted water to satisfy their drinking needs. Access to potable water has become a hotly contested issue of human rights. ²⁴

Closer to home, we can see these complex and reflexive relationships between human and environmental activity in recent remarks by Gordon Campbell, Premier of British Columbia, to delegates at the Union of British Columbia Municipalities annual convention:

We've had 9/11, and the War in Iraq, and the falling tourism market. We've had the softwood lumber dispute and the rising Canadian dollar. We've discovered a whole new set of initials since last year's convention here. How many people had ever heard of SARS, last year? It wasn't even in our minds. And although we knew about BSE, we sure didn't think it was going to touch us. We've got drought in the south and floods in the north. The pine beetles are ravishing 4 million hectares of land through the north and the Interior, all the way down to the Kootenays. We've had the worst forest fire season in the history of the province.

The security of the individual and the security of the community are intrinsically linked to the services and systems that support them.

Vulnerabilities in the Urban System

Social reforms of the 19 th Century resulted in comprehensive public health systems that enabled societies to prevent the spread of disease and ensure health protection for the majority of citizens. As these systems evolved in scope and complexity, they became increasingly demanding on the public purse and susceptible to the arguments of rational planning in favour of centralization, spatial concentration and administrative central planning. One of the unintended consequences of this trend is the potential for systemic paralysis and the immobilization of core emergency response measures if centralized systems are cut-off or become quarantined.

Thomas Homer-Dixon argues persuasively that the structure of the city is becoming increasingly dependent on highly centralized networks and infrastructure. The growing complexity and interdependence of technological systems makes it more likely that damage to one system component will radiate outwards to other components. We can see such knock-on effects when infrastructure systems are compromised. At the same time, much of the impetus for community-based participation in the design of urban security has been eroded or ceded to top-down, centralized governance.

While the "imperial outreach" of the city has created highly integrated networks and infrastructure, it has also produced a new set of vulnerabilities – one break in the chain and the entire system can collapse or be paralyzed. Power grids, pipelines, water supplies, financial nodes and critical emergency response services are linked together in such a way that an attack on one of them (by natural or human agency) can have significant cascading effects on the others. Our growing dependence on computer networks increases the risk, and the probability, of direct attack on this critical infrastructure.

From the perspective of the secure city, a pressing design issue becomes: decentralized models support the capacity for self-management, built-in redundancy and adaptable systems. Why are we not incorporating more of these models into our city planning?

The examples cited above identify threats to urban security at the global scale that are, to a greater or lesser extent, being tackled by public policy interventions. As the scale shifts to the local community and individual scales, there is a paradox: on one hand is a public perception that threats to our security are increasing as urban life gets more complex and people feel more alienated. On the other hand is a view from the professional ranks that these issues are being addressed through land use planning and design solutions. The truth lies in-between. Individual perceptions and fears are being fuelled by news media that seems to have an almost insatiable appetite for sensational reporting on criminal activities linked to gangs and organized crime, and a more recent emphasis on ethnic violence. Drive-by shootings, the infiltration of public spaces by drug traffickers and the concomitant escalation of personal and property crimes seems to take up more and more space in the local and national news. Locally, the image of Vancouver as ranking consistently among the world's most desirable or livable cities appears in stark contrast to a growing public perception that neighbourhoods are under siege, the streets are not safe, and people are being forced to resort to more and sophisticated methods of defending their personal space and private property. This is reflected in a renewed interest in the design of defensible space, a term used by Jane Jacobs and Oscar Newman among others to indicate a link between human interactions, urban design and crime prevention. Recent research and planning guidelines now emphasize a hierarchy of spaces, from public to private that can be created through barriers such as walls, fences, gates, lighting, vegetation, and surveillance, as well as increased levels of community involvement that can help to create social ties and sustain a sense of community.

Community Safety

When the United Nations declared 1987 as the International Year of Shelter for the Homeless, there was extensive examination of the causes of homelessness across Canada. National and regional conferences brought together community advocates, officials from every level of government, media, and a broad cross-section of ordinary men and women whose lives had been significantly altered by one or more root cause (poverty, unemployment, mental illness, lack of affordable housing, crime, drug abuse, etc.).²⁵ Several conclusions emerged from these meetings: homelessness was not restricted to one sector of Canadian society; many innovative ideas and creative solutions were being proposed to address the underlying conditions and alleviate the problems; and there was some recognition that homelessness is a collective responsibility that demands a collective response.

Seventeen years later, the Vancouver Sun newspaper is running a 7-part series on homelessness, and the CBC is airing a weeklong series on radio and television. The main conclusion: the problem is getting worse and there are no quick fix solutions.²⁶ In January 2004, the Mayor of Vancouver convened a community forum to discuss issues of neighbourhood safety and livability. It drew representation from a wide range of community advocacy groups, business, service providers, homeless, as well as senior members of the Vancouver Police Department. The forum was prompted by pressure being put on the City by residents, businesses, social agencies and other levels of government to respond to a perceived increase in "quality-of-life" crimes in Vancouver (aggressive panhandling, open drug use and sales, squatting on public land, and property crimes).²⁷

A briefing paper circulated by the City at the forum stated: Causes include housing cost increases that outpace income levels, putting more people at risk of homelessness. Changing rules for government income assistance leave many people with less money or no money from that source. The economic and social effects of drug and alcohol use and addiction continue to take their toll on people, families and neighbourhoods. More complex personal, social and cultural factors also play a part for many individuals, and they often have difficulty finding the right combination of treatment to help them overcome these barriers.28 Source: Lincoln Clarkes

The challenge, according to Mayor Campbell, is to find the appropriate mix of enforcement, cooperative action, treatment and assistance, "a challenge that has been taken up by cities from Toronto to San Francisco, Atlanta to Winnipeg". The Mayor is candid: " The solutions are as complex as the causes ".

The Neighbourhood Forum on Livability and Safety will follow a precedent that the City used to develop an integrated strategy for dealing with drug problems that were widely acknowledged to be getting out of control in Vancouver's downtown and eastside communities. The Mayor intends to set up a caucus of Vancouver's politicians from all levels of government to collectively address issues of crime, poverty and safety. This parallels the much-publicized 4 Pillars approach to drug problems in Vancouver that was created through The Vancouver Agreement to bring together municipal, regional, provincial and federal governments, community agencies, concerned citizens, the media, and a broad range of support groups as well as critics.²⁹

Landscapes of Fear

One discussion thread in the forum has a clear link to human and urban security. According to the Mayor and others, problems linked to the use of crystal methamphetamines are at crisis levels, and will eclipse all the previous drug problems such as crack cocaine and heroin that have been vividly illustrated in recent documentaries made about the landscape of despair that is becoming Vancouver's Downtown Eastside.³⁰ Crystal-meth produces a vicious spiral. Users are often afraid because they are living on the street. They don't want to sleep because this makes them vulnerable to attack. The drug helps them stay awake but the side effects are toxic. To avoid the downside, they do whatever is necessary to maintain their habit. The cycle perpetuates around one of the most addictive and destructive street drugs on the market.

At the same time, communities feel under siege because of what is perceived to be a dramatic increase in crime, drug abuse, and poverty. Areas that are in transition with boarded up buildings, deteriorating streetscapes and a lack of housing and job opportunities are perceived to be dangerous and a haven for lawlessness. Residents are afraid to move freely throughout the city. There is a sense (real or perceived), of a growing divide between the haves and have-nots that can be traced in part to the unintended consequences of public policies and planning models that do not address the inter-dependencies among the problems. Homelessness, poverty, unemployment, lack of affordable housing, and inadequate services rarely occur in isolation.

There is a growing clamour for stronger police presence and aggressive enforcement of city by-laws to "clean up the streets". However, while it is widely acknowledged that the enforcement component of the 4 Pillars Drug Strategy has had an impact in certain parts of the city, these problems will not be resolved through enforcement alone, or in the absence of the other pillars: treatment, prevention and harm reduction strategies.

Making cities secure depends upon our capacity to deal with the threats facing them, which in turn depends upon the capability of the planning, design and policy models we employ to cope with the forces that are shaping the cities and causing the threats. The Vancouver Agreement and subsequent 4 Pillars Drug Strategy raise interesting questions for our focus on a secure city agenda, suggesting promising areas for investigation into the dynamic interplay between root causes and sustainable solutions.

http://www.vancouveragreement.ca/Agreement.htm

 

Governments generally allocate budgets in ways that tend to separate issues rather than address their connectedness. Constitutional and jurisdictional boundaries make it difficult to create a seamless web of resources for issues such as homelessness that cut across traditional areas of policy demarcation (employment, health, housing, education, social services etc.). Cities are at the forefront of threats to human security. We see it in the form of terrorist attacks, but what about more systemically, through the devastation brought about by the destruction associated with drug trafficking and crime? When a cartel can generate $50 million or more in profit from the distribution of illicit drugs, where is the logic in allocating limited resources to national defense strategies and ignoring domestic, city-based problems that are destroying the fabric of communities in every region of the world?

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