Legacy in the Landscape: How Urbanization Shapes Disaster Risk

by Stephanie E. Chang

Overview

With its focus on the city rather than the disaster event, this book situates natural disasters in the context of urban growth and change. It offers an original, interdisciplinary perspective by connecting the technical and socioeconomic dimensions of disaster risk and highlighting the commonalities of hazards such as river flooding, coastal flooding, and earthquakes. The book begins by proposing a novel Urban Risk Dynamics framework that emphasizes the roles of economy, landscape, and technology in influencing hazard, exposure, and vulnerability. This framework is then used to support the examination of six contrasting cities from around the world, offering generalized insights that apply to a wide range of urban risk contexts. The book will be of significant interest to students and researchers working in urban planning, civil engineering, Earth sciences, and environmental science, and to policy makers and practitioners concerned with reducing future disaster risk in cities.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781009633543
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	09/11/2025
Pages:	212
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 1.25(h) x 9.00(d)

About the Author

Stephanie E. Chang is a Professor at the University of British Columbia with a joint appointment in the School of Community and Regional Planning (SCARP) and the Institute for Resources, Environment, and Sustainability (IRES). Her recognitions include: a Shah Family Innovation Prize from the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute (EERI) in 2001; a Distinguished Lectureship from the EERI in 2011; and a Distinguished Research Award from the Integrated Disaster Risk Management Society (IDRiM) in 2018. She co-edited Modeling Spatial Economic Impacts of Disasters (Springer, 2004) and held a Canada Research Chair in Disaster Management and Urban Sustainability from 2004 to 2013.

Table of Contents

Preface; 1. Reconsidering disaster risk; 2. How cities evolve; 3. Cities and riverine flooding; 4. Cities and coastal flooding; 5. Cities and earthquakes; 6. Reconsidering disaster risk reduction; References; Index.