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Extreme Cities The Peril and Promise of Urban Life in the Age of Climate Change Ashley Dawson

rbanization are not natural; they are the pr ingly unrestrained capitalism, involving neoliberal efforts to abolish public regulation and to throttle the public sector while empowering private sector forces of various kinds. In addition, the last major disruptive factor mentioned by Rodin, climate s a planetary disruption inextrica- 72 As Naomi Klein has pointed out, efforts to reduce carbon emissions have failed so dramatically precisely because of the hegemony of neoliberal doctrines that skewer all regulatory efforts.73 The discussion of "resilience," just like the concepts of sustainable development change, should itself be seen a bly intertwined with carbon-based capitalism. 174

tuonullc markets as complex adaptive systems. Paralleling Holling, Hayek argued that it was ultimately impos- sible for central planners to control or even to predict the gyra- tions of the market effectively.7s In his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, "The Pretense of Knowledge" (1974), Hayek argued that public expectations concerning the ability of science to analyze and then mold society were vastly exaggerated, partially as a result of the magnitude of achievement in the natural sciences during the modern period.76 Deep knowledge of society, Hayek argued, tends to dampen rather than stimulate aspira- tions for improvement. Yet the public is so hungry for hope that it is willing to believe virtually any flimflam pronounced in the name of "expert knowledge." While this might sound like a 175