Table Of ContentThe Resilient City:
How Modern Cities
Recover from Disaster
LAWRENCE J. VALE
THOMAS J. CAMPANELLA,
Editors
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
THE RESILIENT CITY
T H E R E S I L I E N T C I T Y
H O W M O D E R N C I T I E S R E C O V E R F R O M D I S A S T E R
L A W R E N C E J . V A L E A N D T H O M A S J . C A M P A N E L L A
EDITORS
1
2005
1
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1. Urbanrenewal—History. 2. Disasters—History. I. Vale,LawrenceJ.,1959–
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Preface
■ TherehasalreadybeenasurfeitofbooksaboutSeptember11,2001;
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 incredulouslybe-
tween 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
ofwhathadtakenplace.Oneofuslostachildhoodplaymate,aformer
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
thatnearlyallofourstudentswereconnectedinsomewaytoavictim
of theterroristattacks.
Asurbanistsandplannerswewereparticularlyshockedbythede-
struction of the World Trade Center. Yes, it was the ill-lovedcolossus
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
theharshestcritics.Whateverweoncethoughtaboutthebuildings,we
nowmournedthemandjoinedinthewide-rangingspeculationabout
what they represented. For many, the terrorist attackswereanassault
on the ideals of progress and modernity, the values of liberaldemoc-
racy,thesanctityofhumanlife,andthecommitmenttoanopensociety
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
citiesrepresent.
WewereparticularlyperturbedtolearnthatMohammedAtta,re-
puted organizer of the hijacker gang that crashed the planes into the
WTCandthePentagon,hadstudiedarchitectureandcityplanningin
Germany.HisadvisorattheTechnicalUniversityofHamburg-Harburg
claimed that Atta possessed a particularly keen interest in the history
ofcitiesandtownplanning.2HehadspentseveralmonthsinCairoin
1995documentingurbanrenewaleffortsneartheOldCity’sgates,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
subjectheexploredinhismaster’sthesis:“TheConflictbetweenIslam
andModernizationinAleppo.”
Atta’s thesis subject was, ironically, one of the most resilientcities
inhistory.The4,000-year-oldsettlement,locatedinpresent-daySyria,
hassurvivedabewilderingarrayofdisastersthroughtheages.Across-
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 invadedby the
Mongolsin1260a.d.Ninetypercentofitspopulationwaskilledinyet
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
booktofollow.Thecolloquium—“TheResilientCity: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 andglobal,thankstothestaffoftheMITWorld
initiative, who filmed and digitized the content for download on the
Resilient City Web site (http://resilientcity.mit.edu) and also linked it
totheworldwidearchitecturalcommunityofArchNet.Wethensolic-
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,
bothascholarlyandatherapeuticexercise.
Many people deserve thanks for helping make this book possible.
WeareparticularlygratefulfortheinitialenthusiasmofWilliamMitch-
ell,AnneWhistonSpirn,andBishSanyal,andforthegenerousfinan-
cial support from the dean’s office of the School of Architecture and
Planning at MIT and theMIT chancellor’soffice.Wearealsograteful
for fellowship funds provided by the Helena Rubinstein Foundation,
which supported the travel and research for the book’s chapters on
GernikaandTangshan.
WebenefitedenormouslyfromthefifteenMITstudentswhopar-
ticipatedinourparallelseminarontheurbandesignpoliticsofresilient
cities: Zabe Bent, Hope Fang, Jasper Goldman, Jessica Katz, Julie
Kirschbaum, Aaron Koffman, Justine Minnis, Greg Morrow, Karl
Munkelwitz,Keon-SooNam,SoniaParisca,JasonSchupbach,Desire´e
Sideroff,ShinuSingh,andFlorianUrban.
Our colleagues in the Departments of Architecture and Urban
Studies and Planning at MIT and City and Regional Planning at the
UniversityofNorthCarolina,ChapelHill,haveofferedperceptivecrit-
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, MarkJarzombek,Bill
Mitchell,BishSanyal,andAnneWhistonSpirn.
Laurie Everett, project manager at MIT World, helped make our
colloquiumpresentationsavailableontheInternet,asdidAlexisSanal,
who designedandbuilt the ResilientCityWebsite.GauravSrivastava
and Melissa McMahon assisted with literature reviews, and Janice
O’Brien’sorganizationalskillshelpedtokeepboththeeditorsandthe
contributorsontrack.DuncanKincaidandJohnCookhelpedwiththe
processing of many illustrations, and Karen Yegian assisted with nu-
merousfinancialmatters.SusanFerber,oureditoratOxfordUniversity
Press, deserves our special gratitude for championing this book early
on and for her superb editorial attention to the many voices of this
manuscript.Wearealsogratefulforadditionaleditorialassistancefrom
Stacey Hamilton and Merryl Sloane. Finally, our own resilience has
been carefully nurtured by the love, support, and encouragement of
ourfamiliesandfriends.
Preface vii
Notes
1. Quoted in Michael Tomasky, “The World Trade Center:Before,During,
andAfter,”NewYorkReviewofBooks,28March2002,18.
2. Liz Jackson, “A Mission to DieFor:Interview with DittmarMachule,18
October,2001,”ABCFourCorners,12November2001.
3. Jim Yardley, “A Portrait of the Terrorist,” New York Times, 10 October
2001.
4. AlexanderRussell,TheNaturalHistoryofAleppo,vol.2(London:Robin-
son,1794),335–361.
viii Preface
