Rutgers University Press Risky Cities: The Physical and Fiscal Nature of Disaster Capitalism (Nature, Society, and Culture)

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. Review "Fu offers a theoretically rich and empirically grounded analysis of how disaster capitalism and unsustainable urban development transforms environmental bads into economically valuable goods. These transformations have devastating consequences, further exacerbating social and environmental inequities in a highly urbanized and warming world. Risky Cities is essential reading for anyone with interests in urban political economy, environmental social science, and global studies."--Andrew Jorgenson "Professor of Sociology, Boston College""I see Risky Cities becoming the landmark work on how 'everyday' urban risks are produced and then commodified--and what we might do to arrest this process."--Tim Haney "Board of Governors Research Chair in Resilience & Sustainability, Mount Royal University, Calgary" About the Author Albert S. Fu is professor of sociology at Kutztown University of Pennsylvania. He has previously published articles in Cities, City & Community, Critical Sociology, International Journal of Urban & Regional Research, and Urban Studies.