The Resilient City: How Modern Cities Recover from Disaster

The Resilient City: How Modern Cities Recover from Disaster LAWRENCE J. VALE THOMAS J. CAMPANELLA, Editors OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS THE RESILIENT CITY THE RESILIENT CITY HOW MODERN CITIES RECOVER FROM DISASTER LAWRENCE J. VALE AND THOMAS J. CAMPANELLA EDITORS 1 2005 1 Oxford New York Auckland Bangkok Buenos Aires Cape Town Chennai Dar es Salaam Delhi Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kolkata Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Mumbai Nairobi Saõ Paulo Shanghai Taipei Tokyo Toronto Copyright ᭧ 2005 by Oxford University Press, Inc. Published by Oxford University Press, Inc. 198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 www.oup.com Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The resilient city : how modern cities recover from disaster / edited by Lawrence J. Vale and Thomas J. Campanella. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN-13 978-0-19-517584-4; 978-0-19-517583-7 (pbk.) ISBN 0-19-517584-0; 0-19-517583-2 (pbk.) 1. Urban renewal—History. 2. Disasters—History. I. Vale,Lawrence J., 1959– II. Campanella, Thomas J. HT170.R46 2005 307.3'416'09—dc22 2004049246 “Countin’ on a Miracle” by Bruce Springsteen. Copyright ᭧ 2002 Bruce Springsteen. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission. 987654321 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper Preface ■ There has already been a surfeit of books about September 11, 2001; this is not another one. But it is nonetheless a product of that fateful day, if only indirectly. As the enormity of that morning’s tragedies unfolded, the two editors of this volume wandered incredulously between adjacent offices at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), scrambling to gather new information about what was tran- spiring. In the days and weeks that followed, along with millions of Americans and people around the world, we struggled to make sense of what had taken place. One of us lost a childhood playmate, a former neighbor, fellow alumni from high school, a friend of a friend; the other lost an acquaintance and the relative of a friend, and we found that nearly all of our students were connected in some way to a victim of the terrorist attacks. As urbanists and planners we were particularly shocked by the destruction of the World Trade Center. Yes, it was the ill-loved colossus that Wolf von Eckhardt decried (even before it was built) as “an in- strument of urbicide,”1 but the extreme violence of 9/11 muted even the harshest critics. Whatever we once thought about the buildings, we now mourned them and joined in the wide-ranging speculation about what they represented. For many, the terrorist attacks were an assault on the ideals of progress and modernity, the values of liberal democ- racy, the sanctity of human life, and the commitment to an open society that has made the United States the most free and culturally diverse nation in history. But they were also attacks on the city and all that cities represent. We were particularly perturbed to learn that Mohammed Atta, re- puted organizer of the hijacker gang that crashed the planes into the WTC and the Pentagon, had studied architecture and city planning in Germany. His advisor at the Technical University of Hamburg-Harburg claimed that Atta possessed a particularly keen interest in the history of cities and town planning.2 He had spent several months in Cairo in 1995 documenting urban renewal efforts near the Old City’s gates, and was angered by new commercial development that, he believed, “in- volved little more than knocking down a poor neighborhood to im- prove the views for tourists.”3 He feared that global capitalism was trivializing or obliterating historic landscapes in the Islamic world, a subject he explored in his master’s thesis: “The Conflict between Islam and Modernization in Aleppo.” Atta’s thesis subject was, ironically, one of the most resilient cities in history. The 4,000-year-old settlement, located in present-day Syria, has survived a bewildering array of disasters through the ages. A cross- roads of trade routes since the second millennium b.c., the city was successively ruled by the Hittites, Assyrians, Arabs, Mongols, Mame- lukes, and Ottomans. The Persians destroyed much of Aleppo in 540 a.d. It was besieged by the Crusaders in 1124 a.d. and invaded by the Mongols in 1260 a.d. Ninety percent of its population was killed in yet another attack in 1400 a.d. It was constantly plagued by the plague, destroyed by an earthquake in the 1820s, and even invaded by mice. Yet ancient Aleppo regenerated itself again and again, and flourishes still.4 It is this spirit of resilience that inspired the present book. We wanted to know what sorts of questions others had asked in the past when confronted with disaster, and how they had managed to perse- vere. By October 2001, we began planning for a colloquium, with a book to follow. The colloquium—“The Resilient City: Trauma, Recov- ery, and Remembrance”—was held weekly during the spring of 2002 at MIT, and drew a large and enthusiastic audience. Some of this at- tendance was virtual and global, thanks to the staff of the MIT World initiative, who filmed and digitized the content for download on the Resilient City Web site (http://resilientcity.mit.edu) and also linked it to the worldwide architectural community of ArchNet. We then solic- vi Preface ited additional chapters to round out the contents of this anthology. The process of organizing and producing this book was, in the end, both a scholarly and a therapeutic exercise. Many people deserve thanks for helping make this book possible. We are particularly grateful for the initial enthusiasm of William Mitch- ell, Anne Whiston Spirn, and Bish Sanyal, and for the generous financial support from the dean’s office of the School of Architecture and Planning at MIT and the MIT chancellor’s office. We are also grateful for fellowship funds provided by the Helena Rubinstein Foundation, which supported the travel and research for the book’s chapters on Gernika and Tangshan. We benefited enormously from the fifteen MIT students who par- ticipated in our parallel seminar on the urban design politics of resilient cities: Zabe Bent, Hope Fang, Jasper Goldman, Jessica Katz, Julie Kirschbaum, Aaron Koffman, Justine Minnis, Greg Morrow, Karl Munkelwitz, Keon-Soo Nam, Sonia Parisca, Jason Schupbach, Desireé Sideroff, Shinu Singh, and Florian Urban. Our colleagues in the Departments of Architecture and Urban Studies and Planning at MIT and City and Regional Planning at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, have offered perceptive crit- icism and advice throughout this project—especially Julian Beinart, Eran Ben-Joseph, Phil Berke, Ray Burby, Phil Clay, Diane Davis, Bob Fogelson, Dennis Frenchman, Dave Godschalk, Mark Jarzombek, Bill Mitchell, Bish Sanyal, and Anne Whiston Spirn. Laurie Everett, project manager at MIT World, helped make our colloquium presentations available on the Internet, as did Alexis Sanal, who designed and built the Resilient City Web site. Gaurav Srivastava and Melissa McMahon assisted with literature reviews, and Janice O’Brien’s organizational skills helped to keep both the editors and the contributors on track. Duncan Kincaid and John Cook helped with the processing of many illustrations, and Karen Yegian assisted with nu- merous financial matters. Susan Ferber, our editor at Oxford University Press, deserves our special gratitude for championing this book early on and for her superb editorial attention to the many voices of this manuscript. We are also grateful for additional editorial assistance from Stacey Hamilton and Merryl Sloane. Finally, our own resilience has been carefully nurtured by the love, support, and encouragement of our families and friends. Preface vii Notes 1. Quoted in Michael Tomasky, “The World Trade Center: Before, During, and After,” New York Review of Books, 28 March 2002, 18. 2. Liz Jackson, “A Mission to Die For: Interview with Dittmar Machule, 18 October, 2001,” ABC Four Corners, 12 November 2001. 3. Jim Yardley, “A Portrait of the Terrorist,” New York Times, 10 October 2001. 4. Alexander Russell, The Natural History of Aleppo, vol. 2 (London: Robin- son, 1794), 335–361. viii Preface Contents Contributors xi Introduction: The Cities Rise Again 3 lawrence j. vale and thomas j. campanella PART I Narratives of Resilience 1 Making Progress: Disaster Narratives and the Art of Optimism in Modern America 27 kevin rozario 2 “The Predicament of Aftermath”: Oklahoma City and September 11 55 edward t. linenthal 3 The City’s End: Past and Present Narratives of New York’s Destruction 75 max page PART II The Symbolic Dimensions of Trauma and Recovery 4 Patriotism and the Reconstruction of Washington, D.C., after the British Invasion of 1814 97 anthony s. pitch 5 Double Restoration: Rebuilding Berlin after 1945 117 brian ladd 6 Warsaw: Reconstruction as Propaganda 135 jasper goldman 7 A Delayed Healing: Understanding the Fragmented Resilience of Gernika 159 julie b. kirschbaum and desire´ esideroff 8 Resurrecting Jerusalem 181 julian beinart PART III ThePolitics of Reconstruction 9 Resilient Tokyo: Disaster and Transformation in the Japanese City 213 carola hein 10 “Resist the Earthquake and Rescue Ourselves”: The Reconstruction of Tangshan after the 1976 Earthquake 235 beatrice chen 11 Reverberations: Mexico City’s 1985 Earthquake and the Transformation of the Capital 255 diane e. davis 12 A Vital Void: Reconstructions of Downtown Beirut 281 hashim sarkis 13 After the Unrest: Ten Years of Rebuilding Los Angeles following the Trauma of 1992 299 william fulton 14 Cyborg Agonistes: Disaster and Reconstruction in the Digital Electronic Era 313 william j.

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