A cutting exploration of how cities drive climate change while being on the frontlines of the coming climate crisis
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 necessary read for anyone concerned with the threat of global warming, and of the cities of the world.
Ashley Dawson is Professor of English at the Graduate Center, City University of New York. His field of specialization is postcolonial studies. Areas of interest of his include the experience and literature of migration, including movement from colonial and postcolonial nations to the former imperial center (Britain in particular) and from rural areas to mega-cities of the global South such as Lagos and Mumbai. He has also worked on contemporary discourses of US imperialism, on the rhizomatic organizing forms of the global justice movement, and on emerging global discourses of environmental governance.
Dawson is the author of Extreme Cities: The Peril and Promise of Urban Life in the Age of Climate Change (Verso 2017), Extinction: A Radical History (O/R 2016), The Routledge Concise History of Twentieth-Century British Literature (Routledge2013), and Mongrel Nation: Diasporic Culture and the Making of Postcolonial Britain (University of Michigan Press 2007), and co-editor of Against Apartheid: The Case for Boycotting Israeli Universities (Haymarket 2015), The State, Democracy, and the Struggle for Global Justice (Routledge 2009), Dangerous Professors: Academic Freedom and the National Security Campus (University of Michigan Press 2009), and Exceptional State: Contemporary US Culture and the New Imperialism (Duke University Press 2007).
He has published articles in journals such as African Studies Review, Atlantic Studies, Cultural Critique, Interventions, Jouvert, Postcolonial Studies, Postmodern Culture, Screen, Small Axe, and Social Text.
A cutting exploration of how cities drive climate change while being on the frontlines of the coming climate crisis
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 necessary read for anyone concerned with the threat of global warming, and of the cities of the world.
Author
Ashley Dawson is Professor of English at the Graduate Center, City University of New York. His field of specialization is postcolonial studies. Areas of interest of his include the experience and literature of migration, including movement from colonial and postcolonial nations to the former imperial center (Britain in particular) and from rural areas to mega-cities of the global South such as Lagos and Mumbai. He has also worked on contemporary discourses of US imperialism, on the rhizomatic organizing forms of the global justice movement, and on emerging global discourses of environmental governance.
Dawson is the author of Extreme Cities: The Peril and Promise of Urban Life in the Age of Climate Change (Verso 2017), Extinction: A Radical History (O/R 2016), The Routledge Concise History of Twentieth-Century British Literature (Routledge2013), and Mongrel Nation: Diasporic Culture and the Making of Postcolonial Britain (University of Michigan Press 2007), and co-editor of Against Apartheid: The Case for Boycotting Israeli Universities (Haymarket 2015), The State, Democracy, and the Struggle for Global Justice (Routledge 2009), Dangerous Professors: Academic Freedom and the National Security Campus (University of Michigan Press 2009), and Exceptional State: Contemporary US Culture and the New Imperialism (Duke University Press 2007).
He has published articles in journals such as African Studies Review, Atlantic Studies, Cultural Critique, Interventions, Jouvert, Postcolonial Studies, Postmodern Culture, Screen, Small Axe, and Social Text.
