Front Cover -- Title -- Copyright Page -- Contents -- List of Figures, Tables and Boxes -- List of Acronyms and Abbreviations -- Section I: Cities and Environmental Risk -- 1. Tracing the Roots of Urban Risk and Vulnerability -- Introduction -- Sustainable Development, Disaster and the City -- Environmental Hazard and the City -- Outline of the book -- 2. Cities as Sites of Disaster -- Introduction -- Urban Growth and Disaster Exposure -- Disaster Impacts -- Summary -- 3. Social Vulnerability in the City -- Introduction -- A History of Human Vulnerability and Environmental Hazard -- Livelihoods and Vulnerability -- Social Adaptation and Ameliorating Vulnerability -- Case Studies of Livelihood and Vulnerability in Georgetown, Guyana -- Summary -- 4. Urban Governance and Disaster -- Introduction -- Political Actors -- Summary -- Section II: The Case Studies -- Case Study Selection -- 5. Maintaining Civil Society in a Liberal Democracy: Bridgetown, Barbados -- Introduction -- Democracy from Above: The Barbadian Path to Development -- Social Vulnerability Amid Economic Development -- Environmental Hazard -- Disaster Mitigation and Response Capacity -- The Pine Community -- Summary -- 6. Post-socialism and Barriers to Building a Civil Society: Georgetown, Guyana -- Introduction -- A Legacy of Mistrust: Guyana's Development History -- Urban Poverty and Hazard -- Urban Development and Governance -- Disaster Mitigation and Response Capacity -- Albouystown -- Summary -- 7. Patrimonial Regimes and the Maintenance of a Constructive Civil Society: Santo Domingo, The Dominican Republic -- Introduction -- Authoritarian Rule in the Dominican Republic -- Environmental Hazard -- Urban Governance and Adaptive Potential -- Disaster Management Capacity -- Los Manguitos -- Summary -- Section III: Towards Safer Cities -- 8. Action for Safer Cities.

The Social Roots of Urban Vulnerability and Resilience -- Urbanization, Environmental Change and Hazard -- A Structural View: Institutional Frameworks and Adaptive Potential -- Citizen Agency and Adaptive Potential -- Opportunities and Barriers to Building Adaptive Potential -- Urban Environmental Risk: A New Research Agenda for Policy Reform -- Appendix -- References -- Index.