Feral cities - The New Strategic Environment

Naval War College Review, Autumn, 2003 by Richard J. Norton

The second category involves the city's economy. Cities "in the green" would enjoy a productive mix of foreign investment, service and manufacturing activities, and a robust tax base. Cities afforded a "yellow" rating would have ceased to attract substantial foreign investment, be marked by decaying or heavily subsidized industrial facilities, and suffer from ever-growing deficits. Cities "in the red" would have no governmental tax base. Any industrial activity within their boundaries would be limited to subsistence-level manufacturing and trade or to illegal trafficking--in smuggled materials, weapons, drugs, and so on.

The third category is focused on city services. Cities with a "green" rating would not only have a complete array of essential services but would provide public education and cultural facilities to their populations. These services would be available to all sectors without distinction or bias. Cities with a yellow rating would be lacking in providing education and cultural opportunities but would be able to maintain minimal levels of public health and sanitation. Trash pickup, ambulance service, and access to hospitals would all exist. Such a city's water supply would pass minimum safety standards. In contrast, cities in the "red" zone would be unable to supply more than intermittent power and water, some not even that.

Security is the subject of the fourth category. "Green" cities, while obviously not crime free, would be well regulated by professional, ethical police forces, able to respond quickly to a wide spectrum of threats. "Yellow" cities would be marked by extremely high crime rates, disregard of whole families of "minor crimes" due to lack of police resources, and criminal elements capable of serious confrontations. A "yellow" city's police force would have little regard for individual rights or legal constraints. In a "red" city, the police force has failed altogether or has become merely another armed group seeking power and wealth. Citizens must provide for their own protection, perhaps by hiring independent security personnel or paying protection to criminal organizations.

A special, overarching consideration is corruption. Cities "in the green" are relatively corruption free. Scandals are rare enough to be newsworthy, and when corruption is uncovered, self-policing mechanisms effectively deal with it. Corruption in cities "in the yellow" would be much worse, extending to every level of the city administration. In yellow cities, "patchwork" patterns might reflect which portions of the city were able to buy security and services and which were not. As for "red" cities, it would be less useful to speak of government corruption than of criminal and individual opportunism, which would he unconstrained.

CITY "MOSAICS"

The picture of a city that emerges is a mosaic, and like an artist's mosaic it can be expected to contain more than one color. Some healthy cities function with remarkable degrees of corruption. Others, robust and vital in many ways, suffer from appalling levels of criminal activity. Even a city with multiple "red" categories is not necessarily feral--yet. It is the overall pattern and whether that pattern is improving or deteriorating over time that give the overall diagnosis.