cities & violence

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Fri Jan 18 09:54:28 PST 2002


"Cities and Warfare: The Impact of Terrorism on Urban Form"

BY: EDWARD L. GLAESER

Harvard University

Department of Economics

National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)

The Brookings Institution

JESSE M. SHAPIRO

Harvard University

Department of Economics

National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)

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Paper ID: Harvard Institute of Economic Research Paper No. 1942

Contact: EDWARD L. GLAESER

Email: Mailto:eglaeser at harvard.edu

Postal: Harvard University

Department of Economics

Room 315A

Littauer Center

Cambridge, MA 02138 USA

Phone: 617-495-0575

Fax: 617-495-8570

Co-Auth: JESSE M. SHAPIRO

Email: Mailto:jmshapir at fas.harvard.edu

Postal: Harvard University

Department of Economics

Littauer Center

Cambridge, MA 02138 USA

ABSTRACT:

What impact will terrorism have on America's cities?

Historically, large-scale violence has impacted cities in three

ways. First, concentrations of people have an advantage in

defending themselves from attackers, making cities more

appealing in times of violence. Second, cities often make

attractive targets for violence, which creates an incentive for

people to disperse. Finally, since warfare and terrorism often

specifically target means of transportation, violence can

increase the effective cost of transportation, which will

usually increase the demand for density. Evidence on war and

cities in the 20th century suggests that the effect of wars on

urban form can be large (for example, Berlin in World War II),

but more commonly neither terrorism nor wars have significantly

altered urban form. As such, across America the effect of

terrorism on cities is likely to be small. The only exception to

this is downtown New York which, absent large-scale subsidies,

will probably not be fully rebuilt. Furthermore, such subsidies

make little sense to us.



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