Richard Norton of the Naval War College has written about this new menace.
He defines a 'feral city" as a metropolis with over a million people in a state whose government has lost the ability to maintain the rule of law within the city's boundries yet remains a functioning actor in the greater international system.
He offers Mogadishu as the world's first such place, and points out that many other urban areas are on their way to such devastation.
Margaret Atwood, in her superb, breathtaking novel "Oryx and Crake," takes you into a feral city, in an imagined dystopian future that seems increasingly likely to occur.
Her book is riveting and compelling.
I suspect it didn't do all that well commercially precisely because it seems all too likely to occur, and was therefore too frighteningly realistic to become a best-seller.
We like our fears best when they seem unlikely to really take place.
Yesterday's Washington Post Travel section Q&A featured a response to a reader thinking about a trip to Rio.
From the "A":
- Rio de Janeiro saw a wave of bold attacks against tourists in November, including the shooting of a Spaniard during a mugging, the stabbing of a Japanese woman in front of the well-known Copacabana Palace hotel and the robbery of 20 Angolans on a group tour.
Peter Tarlow, an international travel security consultant, recently returned from Rio, where he gave a lecture to the city's police officers.
Tarlow said Rio's favelas, or slums, in the past had been contained to the hills above Rio but are now creeping closer to the city's popular tourist areas.
Tarlow suggests that you don't walk anywhere alone and always carry enough money to satisfy a robber if you're approached.
On the beach, don't leave anything unattended; if you want to swim, have one person stay on shore to watch your possessions.
The State Department also warns Americans to avoid city buses, to be cautious when using ATMs and not to venture into the favelas.
Ken Stier of the New York Times wrote about these frightening places in the December 12 New York Times magazine; his story follows.
- Feral Cities
This year, the American military was forced to relearn painful lessons in urban warfare.
Article comments
1 - Harry Forbes
Regression is certainly possible, and for a long time, but I don't believe it has to be permanent. I'm more optimistic. See Caludia Rosett's latest at OpinionJournal.com posted December 15.
An excerpt:
In such statements is a world of promise for the people of nations where the moment of democratic truth has not yet arrived. Ukraine is telegraphing around the globe a reminder that freedom brings with it the great gift of dignity. That is precisely why it is so stirring to watch such revolutions. They speak to the best part of the human spirit, because we are witnessing people, often against big odds and at great risk, recovering their self-respect.
2 - DrPat
Margaret Atwood is certainly practised at evoking dystopias. But as someone who has experienced two of the cities listed by Norton (without seeing any of the feral behaviors), I have to believe that Atwood's fiction is just that.
3 - Eric Berlin
I think this is an important article in terms of understanding present and future global problems.
There's certainly a lot to think about here, but one thing that comes to mind is how the US thinks about itself and its role in the world. For example, do we really need to pore billions into a missile defense shield? Or do we need to continue to develop a fleet military and superior intelligence networks?
In the United States itself, I think the argument can be made that there are feral neighborhoods in many of its cities. These kinds of problems are largely ignored or swept under the rug, for a variety of reasons.
The time for ignoring problems seems to have passed, however. Thanks for an important notice on what's (really) going on...
Eric Berlin
Dumpster Bust: Miracles from Mind Trash
http://dumpsterbust.blogspot.com