What makes a city fragile?
There are eleven factors that “undermine metropolitan capacity and legitimacy,” according to a global ranking devised by the creators of this new world map of 2,100 cities that have more 250,000 or more residents. Some have their hands full with local issues like crime, unemployment, and pollution; others are grappling with the consequences of war, unable to provide even the most basic services required for the safety and well-being of their residents. Still others face threats from climate change andweather-related disasters.
The Igarapé Institute in Brazil, United Nations University, the World Economic Forum, and 100 Resilient Cities together developed this planet-spanning index of urban fragility. According to their metric, the most fragile cities in the world are Mogadishu, Somalia and Kabul, Afghanistan. On the other end of the scale are Canberra, Australia, and Oslo, Norway. The 328 “low fragile” cities tend to cluster in Western Europe and Japan. But, as the website explains:
All cities, irrespective of their location, exhibit properties of fragility and resilience. Fragility intensifies where risks and stresses accumulate, undermine services and expose citizens to chronic and acute vulnerability.
The cities on the map are scored from 1 to 4, ranging from least (yellow) to most fragile (red). They’re based on 11 indicators in these basic categories of risks: rapid and unregulated urbanization, inequality, poverty, unemployment, policing problems, lack of security, and natural hazard exposure. “The intention is not to single out the most and least fragile cities, though it is hoped that it will help strengthen policies that will help cities build resilience,” the website notes.
[For more of this story, written by Tanvi Misra, go to http://www.citylab.com/housing...e-cities-are/501233/]
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