 Sustainable cities: Safety and securityLewis M. Branscomb Technology in Society, 2006, vol. 28, issue 1, 225-234 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. Keywords: Critical infrastructure; Disaster management; Sustainability of cities (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:teinso:v:28:y:2006:i:1:p:225-234 DOI: 10.1016/j.techsoc.2005.10.004 Access Statistics for this article Technology in Society is currently edited by Charla Griffy-Brown More articles in Technology in Society from Elsevier |
Is your work missing from RePEc? Here is how to contribute.
Questions or problems? Check the EconPapers FAQ or send mail to .
EconPapers is hosted by the
School of Business at Örebro University.