Pax Urbana

Complexity and Vulnerability

in Modern Cities: How do we
make them more resilient? Impact of Sea Level Rise on Small Island States and Coastal Countries
28 | TERRAGREEN | MAY 2013
The Urban Ape
T
he year 2008 witnessed a remarkable
threshold in the history of humanity;
for the frst time in the 200,000-year
history of our species, and in the 10,000-
odd year history of civilization, there are
more people living in cities and urban areas
than people living rural communities in the
countryside. Out of the seven billion people
living on the planet today, over three and a
half billion live in cities. In 1900, around 14
per cent of the worlds human population
lived in cities and only 12 cities worldwide
had populations exceeding 1 million
people. A hundred and dozen years later,
51 percent of us live in urban areas of some
sort and 400 cities have populations that
exceed 1 million people19 of whom have
populations in excess of 10 million. This is
an extraordinary shift in the way we live,
one that alters a paradigm that has existed
for thousands of years. The consequences
of this recent change will take time to play
out in full, but we are already witnessing
some of the repercussions of this global
shift in lifestyles. While cities ofer numerous
advantages in trade, communication,
culture, and social interaction, they are also
hungry, thirsty, and demand energy, this
results in cities requiring a constant infux
of resources to keep afoat. Most modern
cities today are not planned; they grew
organically from smaller settlements that
happened to be in geographically strategic
locations. Their growth was a result of
them being opportunely located near a
valuable natural resource such as a harbour,
Modern cities are highly complex
systems, a giant mesh of interconnected
networks and systems that together
form the basis of what we call urban
living. A city is a giant machine that
depends on the consistent performance
of thousands, even millions, of little
individual cogs for the whole to function
effectively. However, with this complexity
comes vulnerability, modern cities are
now more prone to attack and disaster
than those of yore. With more people
living in cities than in any time in human
history, the necessity to ensure that
these urban environments are resilient
and capable of surviving independently
is crucial. The principles of sustainable
development, when merged with ideas
in urban planning and renewable energy
can help with that. Harish Alagappa
investigates
29 TERRAGREEN | MAY 2013 |
or near gold mines, or oil felds, or being
at a strategic crossroad that allowed it to
dominate overland trade routes. No city
was designed to be capable of sustaining
the kinds of populations that live in them
today, and this makes them especially
vulnerable. Cities are not simple structures,
they are a complex web of interconnected
systems that cater to the never-ending
demands of their denizens and institutions,
and this web is constantly being built and
rebuilt, all the while being required to work
during the interregnum. This complexity,
when compounded with the fact that most
modern cities do not produce much in
terms of the physical resources required to
keep the people living in them alive and in
good stead, is a constant challenge to urban
planners and policy-makers. The complexity
and vulnerability of modern cities pose a
threat to the very fabric of civilization, a
word that in itself comes from the Latin for
city. With imminent issues resulting from
resource scarcities and climate change
on the horizon, and the resultant social,
political, and potentially military disruptions
that may emanate from them, ensuring
that cities, and the large mass of humanity
living within them, are sustainable, safe, and
resilient is going to be crucial to preventing
a catastrophic global collapse.
The Birth of a City
Four out of the fve most populous cities
on EarthShanghai, Istanbul, Karachi,
and Mumbaiare ports. Seven of the ten
most populated cities on Earth are located
at the sites of natural harbours, and the
remaining three are on the banks of major
river systems. This should tell us the frst
basic truth about cities; much like the
wildlife they end up destroying, they grow
spontaneously over a long period of time
from relatively humble beginnings. Human
beings have lived in semi-permanent and
even permanent settlements since over
20,000 years ago, much before the invention
of agriculture. The township of atalhyk,
located in Southern Turkey, was one of the
early humanity largest settled townships.
The people of atalhyk were probably
a mix between hunter-gatherers and early
farmers, but the town represented a huge
leap forward in the way human beings lived
and interacted with each other and with
their surrounding environment.
The township was not very diferent
from many of the slums and shantytowns
we see popping up in cities all over the
world, like the vast slums of Mumbai or the
favelas of Rio de Janeiro, because similar
to these slums, they were built by people
looking to settle down, who did not have
many resources or extensive knowledge
of building, and to whom safety came in
numbers. The frst requirement for a city,
it turns out, is a sense of community, that
inefable trait of humanity that fnds solace
and comfort in the presence of our fellow
men and women. atalhyk was an
exercise in laissez-faire socialism, there is no
archaeological evidence of administrative,
military, or religious authority. The men
and women of atalhyk seemed to
share similar rightsperhaps for the last
time in a major city until the middle of the
20th Centuryand there is no evidence
of warfare or institutionalized religion. It
was, in essence, the kind of community
Cities are not simple structures,
they are a complex web of
interconnected systems that cater to the
never-ending demands of their denizens
and institutions, and this web is constantly
being built and rebuilt, all the while being
required to work during the interregnum.
This complexity, when compounded with
the fact that most modern cities do not
produce much in terms of the physical
resources required to keep the people
living in them alive and in good stead, is a
constant challenge to urban planners and
policy-makers
Complexity and
Vulnerability in
Modern Cities
30 | TERRAGREEN | MAY 2013
that would have warmed the cockles of
the heart of a die-hard, Das Kapital-reading,
proletariat-advocating Marxist. Of the
social and political structure of perhaps
humanitys frst city, BBC journalist, historian,
and political commentator Andrew Marr
said of atalhyk (tongue frmly in cheek)
that the problem with such authority-free
communes or settlements is that they are
inherently unstable social structures and
disintegrate very rapidly, the residents of
atalhyk could only maintain it for it
some 1,500 years.
While atalhyk was the largest urban
settlement in the era before civilization
proper, the real genesis of city life began in
the valley of the rivers Tigris and Euphrates
in the Middle East, in the modern-day
countries of Syria and Iraq. Here, we saw
some of the earliest large settlements that
grew into centres of Civilization; a word
that comes from the Latin civiliswhich
also gives us words such as civil, civic,
civilianwhich in itself comes from the
Latin civis, meaning citizen, and civitas,
meaning city. In the ancient world, to
be civil-ized was to be living in a city.
Civilization was born in the city, or the city
was borne out of civilization. The cyclical
relationship between the two can be seen
even today, it is common for city-dwellers
in countries around the world to think of
the rural brethren as slightly duller, blunt
instruments who lack the sophistication,
intelligence, and social graces of the people
living in cities.
The birth of the city came from
the conglomeration of people, goods,
and ideas. The worlds frst cities as we
know them were probably formed by
the people of the ancient civilization of
Sumerwhose other contributions to
human history include writing, the wheel,
pottery and many morenear the banks
of the Euphrates River, downstream near
their mouths in the Persian Gulf. Cities
such as Uruk, Lagash, Eridu, Ur, and Kish
were settlements that served as both
administrative and trading centres. These
cities were the largest and most important
in the world for hundreds, even thousands
of years between around 500 to 700 BCE
What makes a city possible in the frst
place is the idea of what I like to call energy
profts. If one looks at the work a farmer
does in taking care of his or her land,
planting and harvesting food crops, and
subsequently selling those crops in the
market (or paying some as tribute, as was
common in the ancient world), the amount
of food the farmer produces is far greater
than what he and his family need to survive.
Indeed the average farmer in the ancient
world could produce enough food to feed
ten or more people for the entire year. What
this does is leave the remaining nine or so
people free to pursue other things. Farming
is a labour-intensive activity, and farmers
have little time to pursue hobbies. However,
people who do not need to farm can work
as potters and end up inventing the wheel,
or as traders who need a system to keep
track of transactions and end up inventing
writing, or as kings and priests who promise
salvation and protection, but are really
only out to pillage and loot what they
can for themselves. Traders would build
settlements in places that allowed them the
quickest access to multiple trading locations
simultaneously, which would grow rich
from the trade. These settlements would
attract artisans and more traders, trading
more diverse and exotic goods. Kings would
set up their courts there, soldiers would be
needed to guard it, and priests would set up
temples. And hey presto, before you could
say urban development, a city is born.
While atalhyk was the largest
urban settlement in the era before
civilization proper, the real genesis of city
life began in the valley of the rivers Tigris
and Euphrates in the Middle East, in the
modern-day countries of Syria and Iraq.
Here, we saw some of the earliest large
settlements that grew into centres of
Civilization; a word that comes from the
Latin civilis which also gives us words
such as civil, civic, civilian which in itself
comes from the Latin civis, meaning
citizen, and civitas, meaning city. In the
ancient world, to be civil-ized was to be
living in a city
31 TERRAGREEN | MAY 2013 |
Complexity
The frst major concern consequential to the
complexity of major cities emerges from the
fact that the mesh of interconnectedness
that defnes these cities is gargantuan
in size and intricate in its layout. No one
can clearly comprehend the vastness of
the networks that underlie the seemingly
normal and mundane orderliness of
most cities. Yet, every aspect of civic
administration afects a dozen others, and
those dozen provide feedback to the frst
in an infnite loop of mutating data. Within
this mesh of interconnected networks, the
famous principle of the Butterfy Efect can
come into play. The primary thrust of the
Butterfy Efect is that complex systems
display Sensitive Dependence on Initial
Conditions; that is, a minor change in the
initial conditions can have a chain reaction
that can trigger a much more substantial
outcome. The name Butterfy Efect comes
from a famous example elucidated by
noted American mathematician Edward
Norton Lorenz in 1972, which states that
the fapping of a butterfys wings in Brazil
can cause a tornado in Texas. Similarly, in
a complex system such as a large urban
conglomeration, a small change in the initial
conditions can have potentially devastating
consequence. Nowhere has this point been
as clearly illustrated as the global economic
recession that we are all in the midst. The
worlds banks and fnancial markets, a
closely interconnected mesh of information,
were brought to their knees by what should
have been a localized problem; increased
interest rates caused people to fault on the
houses mortgage payments which resulted
in the sub-prime mortgage lending crisis
that eventually created the global economic
recession. The inability of sub-prime lenders
to recover their loans in the United States
of America led to a spiralling chain reaction
that ended up destroying one of Britains
biggest banks and some of the USAs oldest
fnancial institutions, which has since
afected countries such as India and China,
as the developed worldthe primary
market for their Indias service economy and
Chinas manufacturing economyis now
able to aford fewer goods and services,
which is afecting the growth of these two
emerging giants. As economic growth in
these countries stall, infation increases,
causing civil unrest and unhappiness with
the ruling government in democratic India.
As odd as it may sound, Indias 2014 General
Election could have been decided by a sub-
prime mortgage crisis in the United States
in 2007.
The complex interconnectedness of a
citys various life support systems implies
that it is possible to cripple a major citys
entire civic infrastructure by disabling just
one aspect of the system. This vulnerability
is even more profound when one considers
the fact that there have been attempts to
do the same on numerous occasions
On March 20, 1995, Japanese cult
group and terrorist organization Aum
Shinrikyo (currently renamed to Aleph)
whose members believe a doctrine of
absorbing the worlds sins and preparing
for an imminent doomsdayattacked the
Tokyo underground metro rail network by
releasing the dangerous and extremely
poisonous neurotoxin Sarin in a gas form
in crowded train compartments. Thirteen
people died and over a thousand sufered
breathing problems as a consequence
of the attack. The death toll was limited
because the mixture was impure and the
quantities used were small (around 900ml).
A single pinhead of pure Sarin is enough
to kill a fully-grown adult. Nevertheless
the attack was an indication of how one
aspect of a major citys infrastructure can
be crippled, leading to a chain reaction that
can eventually shake the foundations of
civilization itself. Modern cities are heavily
dependent on the input and constant
exchange of energy and information,
both from outside to within the city
and also throughout the city via its civic
network. With the advent of the internet,
the possibility of cyber-attacks has again
highlighted the defenceless nature of
modern cities. Without almost all major
functions handled by computers that are
connected to the internet, a well planned
and executed act of violence on a citys
cyber infrastructure can have devastating
consequences.
The impact of the super-storm Sandy
on the United States eastern coast was
devastating; cities such as New York and
New Jersey were subject to foods, storm
surges, and damages worth billions of
dollars. As Americas major cities reeled a
chilling realization came to the fore, this
was just the beginning. The impasse on
climate change has resulted in even greater
amounts of carbon being pumped into
our atmosphere, afecting global climate in
ways whose impacts are difcult to foretell.
However, scientists agree that the question
is no longer that of trying to stop climate
change, but of adapting to it. With greater
variability in global climate will come more
stress on the infrastructure of our cities in
the form of storms, hurricanes, droughts,
and heat waves. A key point of mitigating
the impacts of climate change and adapting
to an uncertain and changing climactic
Complexity and
Vulnerability in
Modern Cities
32 | TERRAGREEN | MAY 2013
future will be making cities resilient and
adaptable to these impacts. It will be
necessary for global leaders, architects,
civic engineers, and urban planners to
fnd ways in which some of the worlds
major cities can be adapted to surviving
in this brave new world. As cities expand
outwards and the distance between two
urban conglomerations is eroded to form
a megapolis, the energy consumed and
the potential threat of climate change
disaster will increase exponentially. These
megapoli can be shining beacons of mans
conquest of nature and his ability to not
depend on the environment for survival,
but rather shape his environment around
him. However, while we do not have a full
understanding of the impacts of climate
change and their efects on global urban
denizens, it will be crucial for city ofcials
across the world to build systems that will
be able to absorb these shocks and emerge
stronger as a consequence.
A Delicate
Jugular Vein
Cities usually grow on the shores of
seas along major trading routes near nice,
large natural harbours that can take the
load of many ships entering and leaving
at once; or near river valleys that provide
a transportation route and a source of
water for the citys denizens. As humanity
marched forward, the organization grew
ever more complex. Farmerswhose high
energy-proft toil allowed everyone else
in the city to do something other than
trying to fnd foodsoon found him or
her muscled out of contention as cities
grew larger and more complex. Farming
communities are spread out over vast
distances occupying large tracts of land,
and as all city-dwellers know, the single
most valuable commodity in a city is space.
As transportation networks grew, all roads
would lead to the city, be it Rome, Harappa,
or Trantor. These roads, these transportation
networks are now the key to the survival of
a city. Fast forward to today and look at a
city like Delhi. The food that feeds the citys
11 million inhabitants comes from farms
stretching from Punjab to Uttar Pradesh.
The electricity that powers the city comes
from thermal power plants all over Northern
India as well as Hydroelectric Dams in the
Himalayas. Despite the fortune of having a
river fow through it, large-scale industrial
pollution on the likes of which one rarely
sees people do to their own river and
primary source of fresh water, has left the
River Yamuna almost entirely incapable of
supporting life and her waters are regarded
as dangerously toxic. Thus, for water, Delhi
has to depend on the Delhi Jal Board (DJB),
which sources fresh water from the Ganges
and Yamuna Rivers (further upstream),
before the cities of the North Indias plains
leave them polluted beyond recognition
Despite these eforts, Delhi still falls
close to over 300 million gallons a day
(MGD) short of meeting the needs of the
inhabitants of the Indian capital. This is
made up for by private citizens using tube
wells and pumps to access groundwater.
However, 11 million people accessing the
limited groundwater of a city that receives
only moderate rainfall can have dangerous
long-term repercussions on the soil. Cities
today are complex organisms that are
closely connected through a series of
sinewy nerves that form its electricity, food,
water, and information networks. As more
people migrate to these cities, and as now,
The inability of sub-prime lenders
to recover their loans in the United
States of America led to a spiralling chain
reaction that ended up destroying one
of Britains biggest banks and some of
the USAs oldest financial institutions,
which has since affected countries such
as India and China, as the developed
world the primary market for their
Indias service economy and Chinas
manufacturing economy is now able
to afford fewer goods and services,
which is affecting the growth of these two
emerging giants. As economic growth in
these countries stall, inflation increases,
causing civil unrest and unhappiness
with the ruling government in democratic
India. As odd as it may sound, Indias
2014 General Election could have been
decided by a sub-prime mortgage crisis
in the United States in 2007.
33 TERRAGREEN | MAY 2013 |
there are more human beings living in cities
than in the countryside, the vulnerability of
these cities is only increasing every day.
The law of diminishing returns can
also play a key role in the instability of
complexity global cities in the near future.
Cities are kept alive by the act of constantly
pumping energy into them, energy in the
form of electricity, automotive fuel, food,
water, and other supplies. Few global cities
possess these resources, or the means
to convert raw resources into fnished
products used by the people, within city
limits. All the things that the city needs
to survive has to be brought to it. These
networks are critical to a citys survival,
without a seemingly never-ending of trucks,
trains, planes, and ships bringing in food to
feed millions, pylons carrying Mega Watts of
electrical energy, pipelines bringing in water
and natural gas and drainage systems that
clear the city of flth, most cities would not
be able to survive for very long, especially
not ones that are noted for being centres
of fnance or communication as opposed
to manufacturing or trade. The city of
Sarajevo, the capital of the nation of Bosnia
and Herzegovina, was the epicentre of the
Bosnian War in the 1990s. After the fall of
the Soviet Union, the various communist
governments (commonly referred to as the
Commonwealth of Independent States)
that constituted the erstwhile USSR each
went through a bout of revolution and
political upheaval, but few places were as
brutally afected as the former Socialist
nation of Yugoslavia. As various political
and social factions within the country
began to clamour for independent states,
Sarajevo became the focal point for the
newly independent state of Bosnia and
Herzegovina. Blockaded and constantly
attacked by Serbs who wished to form
the independent state of the Republic
Srpska (the Serbian Republic), the people
of Sarajevo witnessed the collapse of urban
infrastructure over a period of almost 4
years. The siege, which began in April
1992, cut-of supplies of food, water, fuel,
electricity, and all the other essentials that
a city needs to survive. Surrounded by
military forces, there were ration queues
for water, constant bombardments, no
medical supplies, and few military supplies
to defend themselves. By the time the city
was liberated in February 1996, over 11,000
people had died, and a further 56,000
were wounded. The Siege of Sarajevo was
a showcase of how dependent a city is on
supplies from the outside, and how fragile
the intricate web of interconnectedness is
in modern urban settlements.
Moving Forward
The question of complexity and
vulnerability in modern cities is a difcult
proposition for urban planners, but
solutions are being solicited. One of the
major issues faced by modern cities is water,
the most essential ingredient for human
life. Rainwater harvesting is becoming
more and more common in cities that
experience substantial rainfall, this is an
essential piece of civic planning that needs
to be implemented in cities in India, where
rainfall is not distributed over the year but
occurs specifcally during the monsoon
months from June to September. Energy
generation is an issue worldwide, and
cities consume most of energy produced
on Earth. Renewable energy technologies
can help make cities more self-sufcient in
their energy needs, utilizing solar energy,
and since most major cities are located on
the coast, the potential of ofshore wind
and tidal energy to power a city are ideas
that many experts in the feld of sustainable
development and renewable energy
technology are seriously considering as
solutions to ensuring modern cities are
energy secure. Perhaps the biggest issue
for cities in the 21st century will be that
of food. With more than half the global
population now living in cities, the pressure
on agrarian populations to sufciently be
able to provide over 3.5 billion people with
their most basic need, food, is immense.
Making cities food secure is a challenge that
would require the substantial assistance
of science to engineer food crops that
give higher yields and are more resistant
to failure, along with pesticides, fertilizers,
and germicides that not only protect the
crop and help it grow, but also protect the
farmer and the consumer and help the soil
maintain its richness. As greater energy is
put into a city, the greater is the energy that
will be required to maintain it at where it
is, and ensuring this energyin the form
of electricity, fuel, food, and wateris not
halted will be the responsibility of future
urban planners and administrators. Cities
are the foundation of civilization, they allow
people from various cultures, communities,
and with diferent ideologies to interact
and exchange ideas. Humanitys most
fascinating ideals, democracy, writing,
civic administration, and the rule of law, all
emerged from the vibrant intermingling of
minds and bodies that one witnesses in the
great cities of the world. As these cities now
appear to consume most of humanity, it is
our responsibility to ensure their continued
security and resilience. #
Complexity and
Vulnerability in
Modern Cities