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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 ance and emerge with wyeater levels h cmpheriny, Yose fen Hayek the role of the state is on to ep aside, as some ih W colleagnes argued at the time. It was to radically tranetenm uni ery to better allow for free markets to organize themselves. "H man is to do more harm than god in his effeorts to impreve social ordes," he wrote in The Pretense of Knowledge, "he will therefore have to use what knowledge he can achieve, nr to shape the results as the craftsman shapes his handiswork, but rather to cultivate growth by providing the appropriate envi- ronment, in the manner in which the gardener does this for his art an plants," Today, these arguments, once considered marginal, are central to neoliberal discussions of resilience, where the role of the state is to create optimal conditions for individuals and companies to ente rather than trying to achieve centralized control. But inwere disqualified, denied, or gave up on receiving assistance.,$8 The inclusion of ICF International in Rockefeller's 1oo Resilient Cities initiative is a reminder of how disaster-relief efforts organ- ized under the brand of resilience actually work. Despite all of the shiny rhetoric concerning competition and effective service provision, such privatized relief and recovery cfforts are chiefly effective at developing inventive new forms of corruption, at lining the pockets of corporate executives and shareholders at the expense of the public and suffering disaster victims.89 Of course, many well-meaning individuals and organizations are involved in efforts to build community resilience. It is a I7

communities that feel menaced by rising tides, seawalls ulti- mately are doomed to catastrophic failure, cither when storm waters overtop the wall or when currents gradually erode the earth on the seaward side of the wall, eventually leading the wall to collapse. Breakwaters, by contrast, create a "thickened edge" designed to absorb wave energy, diminishing waves by as much as 4 feet during storms like Hurricane Sandy as well as reducing base flood elevations, according to studies conducted by the Living Breakwaters team.9 The calmer waters promoted by breakwaters also encourage sedimentation, which helps to replenish the beaches that offer vital protective barriers to beachfront communities. As the first part of its title suggests, Living Breakwaters inno- vates on existing breakwater schemes by seeding the project's 13,000 feet of concrete and recycled glass composite barriers with baby oysters, known as oyster "spat." As these oysters ically it is hoped that they Sofiía Gallisá Muriente, who acted as one of the Occupy Sandy field coordinators at YANA during the months after the storm, ran into this culture of abandonment following the hurri- cane. While attending a meeting of the city's Office of Emergency Management in Brooklyn, as part of an effort to get people in the Rockaways certified in disaster management, Sofía was told by one of the top officials present that it was official federal government policy that disaster victims should not be disaster responders.43 The Office of Emergency Management, Sofía learned, had "no program, no ability, and no interest in training people to help others." Government authorities insisted on seeing their constituents as passive, both during and after disas- ter. Solnit argues that this construction is an essential compo nent of everyday forms of disaster, in which our ideas of our collective possibility are whittled down and privatized by