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

by Ashley Dawson Narrated by L.J. Ganser

Overview

How will climate change affect our lives? Where will its impacts be most deeply felt? Are we doing enough to protect ourselves from the coming chaos? In Extreme Cities, Ashley Dawson argues that cities are ground zero for climate change, contributing the lion's share of carbon to the atmosphere, while also lying on the frontlines of rising sea levels. Today, the majority of the world's megacities are located in coastal zones, yet few of them are adequately prepared for the floods that will increasingly menace their shores. Instead, most continue to develop luxury waterfront condos for the elite and industrial facilities for corporations. These not only intensify carbon emissions, but also place coastal residents at greater risk when water levels rise.



In Extreme Cities, Dawson offers an alarming portrait of the future of our cities, describing the efforts of Staten Island, New York, and Shishmareff, Alaska residents to relocate; Holland's models for defending against the seas; and the development of New York City before and after Hurricane Sandy. Our best hope lies not with fortified sea walls, he argues. Rather, it lies with urban movements already fighting to remake our cities in a more just and equitable way.



As much a harrowing study as a call to arms, Extreme Cities is a must-listen for anyone concerned with the threat of global warming, and of the cities of the world.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

★ 08/28/2017
Dawson (Extinction: A Radical History), a professor of English at CUNY, takes aim at the empty rhetoric of “green cities” in this forcefully argued and eye-opening polemic. The book’s locales are marked by “stark economic inequality”—the growing gap between those who can afford to insulate themselves from the consequences of climate change and those who cannot. Using New York City as his primary case study, Dawson argues that cities are both on the front lines of climate change and contribute disproportionately to it. Much-touted “fixes” to urban congestion and fragility, such as waterfront development and privately developed affordable-housing projects, serve only to reinforce social and economic inequalities while causing waves of what he dubs “environmental blowback.” Moreover, rising sea levels will likely also necessitate a retreat from coastal cities. For Dawson, countering the threat of climate change must involve dismantling the system of global capitalism that has pushed civilization to the brink of “climate chaos.” The book’s synthesis of reportage, urban history, and climate science can result in the oversimplification of certain issues, but Dawson doesn’t shy away from tough conclusions and makes clear that real climate justice must build “on anti-imperialist, antiracist, and feminist movements.” Dawson makes a convincing case that, unless urban dwellers and civic leaders engage in a fundamental reconceptualization of the city and whom it serves, the future of urban life is dim. (Oct.)

From the Publisher

Books on climate change are a dime a dozen now, but few, if any, truly reckon with the potential scale of the disasters that await. Dawson reveals the inadequacies of current plans to deal with the problems that cities around the world will face. Forget such buzzwords as ‘green cities,’ ‘resilience,’ and ‘sustainable development’—the age of ‘disaster communism’ is here.”
—Publishers Weekly (“Best Books 2017”—Top 10)

Extreme Cities is a ground-breaking investigation of the vulnerability of our cities in an age of climate chaos. We feel safe and protected in the middle of our great urban areas, but as Sandy and Katrina made clear, and as this fine book reveals anew, the massive shifts on our earth increasingly lay bare the social inequalities that fracture our civilization.”
—Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org and author of Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet

“The way we design and live in cities will determine humanity’s ability to avoid an anthropogenic mass extinction event in the coming century. Dawson makes this vividly clear in Extreme Cities, laying out in detail the nature of the problem and some possible positive actions we can take. Crucial to his argument is the fact that technological solutions will not be enough, so that we need to drastically reform the capitalist economic system to properly price and value the biosphere and human lives. His point that social justice is now a necessary survival strategy makes this not just a meticulous history and analysis of our situation, but also an exciting call to action.”
—Kim Stanley Robinson, author of The Red Mars Trilogy and New York 2140

“Cities both in the North and the South are already suffering the effects of climate change. Government and business fitfully recognize and respond, but in ways that reinforce existing injustices and as often as not make things worse. Dawson shows how social movements have combined action on disaster relief with forms of equitable common life to produce models for radical adaptation from which we can all learn. This is a brilloant summation of what we know and what we can do build a new kind of city in the ruins of the old.”
—McKenzie Wark, author of Molecular Red: Theory for the Anthropocene

“A powerful argument in a dire situation: that we revise our cities to the new game changer, or climate change will revise urban existences as we know it.”
—Kazi Khaleed Ashraf, director-general of Bengal Institute of Architecture, Landscapes and Settlements

“A sophisticated and provocative exploration of the unfolding impact of climate change on urban environments.”
—Christoph Lindner, Professor of Urban Theory and Visual Culture, University of Oregon

“A revelatory confrontation between two forms of 'surplus liquidity': the rent-seeking excess of circulating global capital and the more literal liquidity of the rising tides of climate change. The setting is the city and this meticulously researched and argued book probes the nexus of myopia, greed, environmental disaster—and hope—that has placed the urban habitat of billions of us in extremis.”
—Michael Sorkin, author of All Over the Map: Writing on Buildings and Cities

“A sobering account of how planetary urbanization has put us on a collision course with the natural world.”
—Jonathan Hahn, Sierra Magazine

“A must-read for everyone who wants to understand the politics of climate change in an increasingly urban planet, and to explore the possibilities for radical change beyond all technological fixes and governmental adjustments that only reproduce the system as it is.”
—Marco Armiero, director of the Environmental Humanities Laboratory, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden

“A superb essay of political ecology, Extreme Cities demonstrates that there is nothing more depending on nature than the city, offering both a diagnosis and a possible therapy for one of the greatest challenges of our time.”
—Serenella Iovino, editor of Material Ecocriticism and Environmental Humanities: Voices from the Anthropocene

“Extreme Cities takes the critical long view to challenge city decision-makers to deal seriously with the clash of business-as-usual development, threats from climate change, and persistent social inequality to develop real transformations to drive cities toward sustainability and resilience.”
—Timon McPhearson, Director, Urban Systems Lab at The New School, New York City

“With the majority of humanity located in cities, it behooves us to consider urban ecologies as recent and future sites of non-natural disasters as well as inspiring places of collective resilience and struggles for justice. Dawson’s book is a guiding light.”
—T.J. Demos, Professor of History of Art and Visual Culture at UC Santa Cruz, Director of its Center for Creative Ecologies

“The definitive study of an urban—and planetary—system pushed to the breaking point. Extreme Cities paints a terrifying, but also hopeful, picture, weaving together accounts of iron-fisted states, greedy real estate developers, and the communities that challenge their rule.”
—Jason W. Moore, author of Capitalism in the Web of Life

“A profoundly sobering picture of climate change’s uneven urban toll, both across global expanses and within particular neighborhoods, while also spotlighting instances of radical, on-the-ground resistance to such trends.”
—Emily Scott, Postdoctoral Fellow, Institute for the History and Theory of Architecture, ETH Zuric and co-editor of Critical Landscapes: Art, Space, Politics

“Dawson makes a convincing case that, unless urban dwellers and civic leaders engage in a fundamental reconceptualization of the city and whom it serves, the future of urban life is dim.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“A substantive contribution to the growing dialogue about our response—or lack thereof—to climate change.”
—Kirkus

“Dawson is well attuned to the ways that upheavals and disasters disproportionately affect the socioeconomically disadvantaged. As Donald Trump continues to roll back protection measures and disavow the US’s role in global cooperation to mitigate the effects of climate change, [Extreme Cities] is a clear-eyed reminder of who, and what, will be left most vulnerable as a result.”
—Fast Company

“Extreme Cities is an angry book—as it should be … Ashley Dawson outlines the existential dilemma facing coastal cities, and the refusal of various powerbrokers to acknowledge that reality, in bold and frequently horrifying terms.”
—Chris Barsanti, Rain Taxi

“Invoking terms such as ‘climate apartheid,’ he greatly expands what people traditionally think of as relevant climate policy language. Recognizing that climate change mitigation and adaptation are interwoven with—and exacerbated by—social inequities and other problems plaguing modern cities is sobering, but this realization provides hope that humanity can move toward greater resilience to environmental problems by addressing non-climatic factors that will improve cities in the presence or absence of climate change.”
—Choice

Extreme Cities takes on the needed work of slowing down to chronicle and consider this meantime, without shying away from its messiness … More than simply lay out the existence of disparities, it illuminates the relationship between them.
—Liz Koslov, Public Books

“[Ashley Dawson] cuts through the green capitalist hype and shows instead that life under climate change has grown increasingly precarious for working-class people living in major urban centers in the twenty-first century … A sweeping narrative that ties together disparate calamities.”
—Zachary Alexis, International Socialist Review

Kirkus Reviews

2017-08-07
A book that conveys much more of the peril than the promise of today's urban life in the age of climate change.After Donald Trump made the ill-advised decision to pull the United States out of the Paris climate agreement, much has been made of the city as a bulwark against climate change, but Dawson (English/CUNY; Extinction: A Radical History, 2016, etc.) explains why today's cities may be too simple an antidote to our future problems. While experts often note that the per capita carbon emissions of city-dwellers are lower than in rural areas, the author points out that not only do cities supply a disproportionate contribution to the planet's overall carbon budget, but within cities like New York, just a few luxury high rises account for the bulk of that contribution. This leads inevitably to what Dawson calls "climate apartheid," a future in which "wealthy elites" profit from environmental crises while those already struggling face disaster. Using examples of imperiled cities around the world, but returning repeatedly to New York in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, the author documents the failures of city planners, governments, urban recovery efforts, and even local first responders when faced with environmental challenges. While based in solid research, the conclusions Dawson draws are often so hypercritical and contentious that they might become unconvincing. The book is a call for a revolutionary shift, not just regarding the structure and function of cities, but also requiring a massive overhaul of economic, governmental, and social structures around the world. Dawson argues that our current capitalistic societies must be dismantled in order to make way for a more equitable future in which environmental conditions become increasingly unstable. A tough read that will mostly appeal to critics of neoliberalism, but also a substantive contribution to the growing dialogue about our response—or lack thereof—to climate change.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940169999532
Publisher:	Tantor Audio
Publication date:	01/30/2018
Edition description:	Unabridged

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