Complex Catastrophes and Megacities: Scale and Scope Problems of Adaptability in large U.S.-Mexico B

By its nature, by its constitution, by its problems, and by its reaction to problems, the city, especially its more elusive modern variant, the megacity, is a fascinating collage of enormously complex stories. Take the subject of this report – the adaptability of large US-Mexico border cities to the onslaught of complex catastrophes – many complex stories may be gleaned such as differences in adaptive capacities among rural and urban communities, differences in adaptive capacities of urban communes both sides of the border, or even differences in institutional response to complex catastrophes both sides of the border; all laden with deep complexities. Historically, the story of large natural disasters, the type that causes the greatest amount of destruction and requires enormous resources and near global collaboration to mitigate is often always associated with rural populations in poor countries. While this is mostly accurate, the long-term predominance of rural disasters obfuscate the fact that cities, including megacities have been, and are remerging, as major arenas for natural disasters (Mitchell 1999). This potentially changes and challenges both existing scientific knowledge about the connections between cities and complex catastrophes and the adequacy or otherwise of institutions for managing complex catastrophes in cities; knowledge useful to US military planners and associated institutions.

Specifically, available data suggests that large cities are as vulnerable (if not more) to natural extremes as rural communities. In 1995, for instance, Kobe, Japan, a large city believed to be prepared for any natural disaster, was hit by an earthquake that killed 6000 people and produced over $100 Billion in losses (Mitchell 1999). Apart from earthquakes, large cities have been affected by landslides (Rio de Janeiro, Caracas, and Hong Kong); river floods (Bangkok, Colombo, Kharkov, Khartoum, Phnom Penh, Tijuana, Guayaquil, Quito, Seoul, Dhaka); subsidence (Mexico City, Bangkok); tropical storms (Manila, Shanghai, Taipei); and wildfires (Sydney) among others (Mitchell 1999). Within the United States, enormous natural disasters have occurred in urban areas with devastating regularity over the past two decades. Large cities like San Francisco (earthquake, 1989); Miami (hurricane, 1992); Oakland (earthquake, 1989; wildfire, 1992); New York, Washington D.C. and other cities of megalopolis (blizzards, 1993, 1996, 2006); Oklahoma City (tornado, 1999); Los Angeles (earthquakes and wildfires, 1994); New Orleans (hurricane, 2005); and New York City and Atlantic City (hurricane, 2012), have experienced natural disasters of enormous proportions. Considering that the ecological footprint of cities is much larger than their structural area, the costs of these disasters in terms of lives lost and damage to property and the ecology, are unquantifiable.

In addition, experts believe the next big armed conflicts will occur in spaces that are “urban, connected, and littoral” and adversaries, friends, and neutrals will compete for influence in these environments that manifest a range of natural disaster conditions in ways that exhibit hybrid state and non-state characteristics (Kilcullen 2012). For instance, due to the nature of cities, particularly the deficit of resource infrastructure relative to their teeming millions, many “black spots” exist in megacities, which create additional security challenges for the state. Bartos Stanislawski coined the term to describe areas in the city that are “outside of effective governmental control and controlled, instead, by alternative, mostly illicit, social structures” (Stanislawski 2010). This means that in addition to complex natural catastrophes, cities and particularly megacities, are prone to and often are cites of internecine contests between non-state actors, including transnational criminal organizations who seek to clandestinely control lucrative territories and routes for illicit activity.

Due to the impact of complex (natural and man-made) catastrophes on cities, which typically are affected by and react to catastrophes differently from rural communes, and because the trend in the last two decades is towards greater urbanization, the U.N. is giving highest priority to addressing disasters in cities, particularly megacities. The U.N. estimates that by 2025, about 5 billion people will live in cities, many of which will explode in size and quadruple their present population size. For instance, Lagos, Nigeria’s and Africa’s largest city is expected to increase its population by 50 percent in the next decade (UN-Habitat 2010). Similarly, China’s urbanization ratio – that is the ratio of the urban population to the entire population – increased from 17.9 percent in 1978 to 49.7 percent in 2010 and this ratio is expected to reach 60.3 percent by 2020 and to exceed 80 percent by 2030 (Yue, Liu and Fan 2012). In the US, the New York City Metropolitan Area, which is the 6th largest megacity in the world, has 17 million people and by 2025, the city with the megalopolis surrounding the five boroughs – the largest conurbation in the US – will grow by about 30 percent of its present size, confirming the present decade (and perhaps the next) as “the decade for cities” (CUIRCE 2005; Carey 2014).

The “urban revival” – when the broad picture of population growth is considered – and the underlying urbanization impulse and logics, are creating unprecedented challenges for cities, including an attendant “urban divide” that, in turn, creates and feeds multiple deprivations such as unequal or differentiated growth, urban sprawl, environmental degradation, socio-economic inequities, socio-political exclusion, and violence. Moreover, the changing distribution of large cities is associated with changing patterns of economic behavior and the wealthier countries have most of the larger cities. This means that countries that have achieved the greatest economic success have tended to be more urbanized. The link between urbanization and country’s economic strength creates the additional burden of the juxtaposing of wealth and poverty within cities but also in terms of linking global poverty distribution to the trajectory of migration. Historically, migrants typically flow out of poor countries into large cities in wealthy countries, both further depressing the economies of the sending countries and distorting the social structures of the receiving countries.

Naturally, therefore, this study on the contemporary crises of urbanization – as the challenges of urbanization/urbanism in their deep complexities may be called – is joining an active debate about whether urbanization, specifically the growth of megacities, is creating mega-problems that could be avoided or mitigated with suitable policies. The question we address is, are megacities because of their size, attracting and or creating mega problems but without the appropriate institutional and behavioral assertions to mitigate or adapt these problems? This question, which situates within the larger debate about urbanization, is not so much about urbanization per se – whether the push towards greater urbanization is desirable or beneficial – but rather about whether these megacities have in-built functional adaptive capacities (or mechanisms to create one) during a complex catastrophe. Answers to this question are especially important to military planners, intelligence analysts, and disaster management principals, who must anticipate large-scale catastrophes in large cities and plan strategies to mitigate their effects on civilian populations and national defense priorities. But, despite what the US military knows about large cities, there is still a great deal that it does not know, particularly how cities, which are not passive receptors of ongoing change but active participants and instigators of change, will or are likely to react to complex catastrophes, including man-made disasters. Also, although large cities typically accommodate a range of actors, including nefarious and non-nefarious non-state actors, little is understood about how these actors, individually and collectively, contribute to the contemporary crises of the city or how they react and or adapt to these crises. This means that in order to meaningfully engage in megacities, the US military must leverage knowledge about megacities, their behavioral and institutional elements, their interactants, and the networks of these interactants; information vital to the defense of the US homeland.

Thus, this study on large US-Mexico border cities or pseudo-megacities anticipates and extends knowledge about how the intersection of conurbation, urbanization/urbanism, and complex catastrophes affects (or potentially affects) US national defense priorities. Although a megacity is defined as any city with more than 10 million people, this study combines several large cities on both sides of the U.S./Mexico border, including San Diego, and Calexico on the US side and Tijuana and Mexicali on the Mexico side – an international metropolitan conurbation straddling the border of the adjacent U.S. state of California and Mexico’s Baja California. This conurbation with a population of about 6 million people is the largest bi-national conurbation shared between the U.S. and Mexico and the fourth largest in the world (World Gazetter 2011). The size of this conurbation, its asymmetrical regional growth and development that is compounding the urban divide, and unique trans-border challenges are creating or accelerating conditions, including socio-economic and environmental externalities favorable to great upheaval in the event of a complex catastrophe (i.e. terrorist bombing, earthquake, disease outbreak, etc.). But how will this pseudo-megacity (or large border cities generally) that is already susceptible to complex urbanization/urbanism and migration shocks, respond to a complex catastrophe? How will complex catastrophes and responses to it affect U.S. national defense priorities? These are some of the questions this study attempts to answer.