Cities can’t be crippled by urban terrorism
Theglobeandmail.com
Nov. 16, 2015
By Marcus Gee
If you live in a big city, you can be forgiven for feeling a little nervous today. Cities are exceptionally vulnerable to terror attack, as Friday’s events showed.
They are also exceptionally resilient.
The reasons for their vulnerability are obvious. They offer a wealth of targets: stadiums, theatres, public squares, shopping malls, train stations, monuments, restaurants, clubs, galleries and gathering places of all kinds. They hold great symbolic value. By hitting Paris, Friday’s attackers struck a blow not just at the capital of France but at the whole of the Western world. Cities represent the mixing of cultures and the liberal lifestyles that religious fanatics despise. An ISIS statement called Paris the “capital of prostitution and obscenity.”
It’s no accident that many of the notorious terrorist attacks of recent years have been in big cities, from New York to Madrid, Mumbai to London. Each one has staged a complete and rapid recovery.
In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, many doubted that Lower Manhattan would ever bounce back. Today the new world trade centre and its related towers loom over a thriving district that draws people to live as well as work. The population of the area has gone from 20,000 at the time of the attacks - and just 10,000 a few months after - to more than 70,000 today.
London came back with a roar from its 7/7 transit attacks in 2005. The magnificent business-as-usual response of Londoners was a rebuke to the idea that cities can be terrorized into paralysis. Amid the grief and the horror, urban life went on much as before - just as it had during the long campaign of Irish Republican Army bombings. Today, central London, with its feast of terrorist targets, swarms with tourists and office workers. Real estate values, a sign of confidence, are sky high.
The idea that urban terrorism would force people to move to lower-density communities less prone to attack has proved spectacularly wrong. So has the notion that cities might abandon the skyscraper after 9/11. Just look at the skyline of Shanghai, Dubai or Toronto.
The magnetic pull of modern cities has proven far stronger than the power of fear. Terrorism has done nothing to impede the rush to live in them. The rapidly gentrifying Paris neighbourhood targeted on Friday is a prime example of the lure of urban living. Young people love it for its lively street life and its gritty authenticity. Even a horror like this won’t crimp the revival of central cities.
Cities have an almost uncanny ability to heal themselves. They are complex, dynamic organisms, difficult to cripple or even to slow down for any length of time. Lives must be lived, services provided, money made. If injured, they give themselves a shake and go on.
Even a traumatizing attack like Friday’s is a pinprick in a city of millions. Pragmatic city dwellers know that the probability of being attacked by terrorists is vanishingly low in the vastness of a big city. Carrying on isn’t so much an act of courage as an act of common sense.
Cities have emotional strength, too. The fanatic views cities as atomized places where all sense of community has vanished and shallow individualism reigns. In fact, modern cities in crisis are capable of remarkable feats of solidarity. Witness the unity of Londoners under the Blitz or Bostonians after the marathon bombing. Or witness the throngs who marched in grief and defiance after the Charlie Hebdo attack earlier this year. Today, people are already returning to the streets of Paris, determined to show that they will not be cowed or driven apart.
Cities are a marvel of human invention at any time. Under attack, they reveal humanity at its best - coming together, picking up the pieces, moving forward.