 Good afternoon, everybody. My name is Tony Fox. I am an associate professor in the College of Maritime Operational Warfare working in the Civilian Military Humanitarian Response Program. Dave Pilotti, Professor Dave Pilotti, who is your host in absentia, is the director of that program and is today teaching a course up at Harvard. So I've been picked to do this yet again. I'm happy, though, to be here to listen to this lecture, which I think will be fascinating. Dr. Rick Norton is a graduate of Tulane University in New Orleans and also the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in Boston. Beyond that, he is a retired commander in the US Navy who served extensively on sea duty and cruisers and destroyers. His short tours included time in the Navy Legislative Affairs Office and on the Navy staff in the Pentagon. He is an authority on decision making. His regional areas of expertise include Africa and South America. But that's not the reason he's here tonight. The reason he's here to speak to you is because his work on this concept of feral cities is considered groundbreaking around the world. As a matter of fact, I recently read an article in a maritime affairs journal where the author giving homage to Dr. Norton entitled his work, Feral Maritime Zones. So the idea is spreading. Without further ado, Dr. Norton. Well, thank you very much. It's a real pleasure and an honor to be here. And doubly so since it's a beautiful spring day and hopefully of many, but the first in a long time. So your presence here is doubly appreciated. I'm going to talk about cities today. And there are several varieties of my speech, my presentation. The one I'm trying not to give is one that's really, really boring. So we'll see if I am successful or not. We have to start in a little bit of background. In the year 2000, I took a trip to talk to a refugee and migration conference in South Africa. And it was an eye-opening experience. And as a result of that, the idea for Feral Cities was born. A few years later, I published on it. The New York Times was kind enough to identify it as one of the ideas of the year. And it's kind of been one of the things I've been interested ever since. One of the things when you do, when you kind of find a new concept, or even if you're going to play with an old one, and my good friend Andres knows, if you try to find definitions, you have to have a definition. Even if it's something like terrorism, where there are more than 150 definitions. In this case, there were none. So I got to make mine up. And this is what I decided a Feral City would be. I'm not going to, I will read it. That's a really bad thing for a presenter to do. But a city in a state where the government has lost the ability to maintain the rule of law inside the city boundaries, yet remains a functioning actor in the cities, in the greater international, the city is active in the greater international political system. That's a really wordy definition. I think the description will do justice more than the definition does. Okay, first thing we're going to start with is we are all city animals. So I'm going to ask you to put up your hands who here lives in or has lived in a city. Okay, good. Of those who have lived in a city, how many would say the city I lived in was a safe and prosperous city? Fewer, okay? What if I asked this, the city I lived in had many dangerous places and you better know your business if you're going to live there. Okay, interesting, interesting. All right, but by the time of 2050 gets here, if the projections are all correct and everybody says they're correct, everybody from the UN to think tanks and other study groups. So we are going to be a metropolitan race or species. And you can see kind of the idea of where we're growing. Most of the growth will occur along the Indian Ocean and in Africa. Why? Because Europe, parts of Asia, and North America are already at the 70% mark. So we are already urban creatures and part of the world. All right, when you think of cities, you know, what do you think of? I personally like the approach that says cities are poems. They are poetry and steel and glass and reinforced concrete. They are mankind's greatest achievements. They are monuments to the very best in us. Where else can you get a slice of pizza at three o'clock in the morning? Or find a bookstore that sells nothing but mysteries. And great metropolises, New York, London, Paris, Tokyo, Shanghai, there is no form of food or entertainment you cannot find. In fact, New York Times Square in New York, there's a comic book store and one of the stores there. And there's a store devoted nothing to except Hershey's candy and other things as well. So cities are really impressive. However, I'm gonna use it after all. I'm told not to point this at you, it'll fry you. There's another piece of cities. These are the informal cities, the areas that grew up around cities. They are known by many different terms, favelas, barrios, garrisons, if you're from Jamaica, slums, they're part of city life. And depending on one's point of view, whether you think of the gleaming towers of steel or you think of the poverty of a slum, a lot depends on your experience and how you study this idea of cities. But these two pieces are interconnected, right? So 10 fastest growing cities in the world are in India. Anybody surprised by that? I was. I thought it would be China, but India moves faster, which is kind of interesting. And then there's this issue of fragility. Part of my argument is that cities, if they are properly supported, are great. And they make the state wealthy and the state helps the city. But we have this issue of fragility. And the idea of fragility is your city may take more from the state than it gives back. We're gonna talk about Mogadishu a lot, but let's talk about Lagos. 20 years ago, Lagos was consuming 42% of the power that Nigeria generated. In India today, more than 80% of India's power, it's electricity, gas, et cetera, goes to support urban environments. So if 80% is going to the urban environment, that leaves 20% for the rural environment. And you begin to get these very dramatic differences between people who live on farms and in the country and those who live on the cities. Cities are also magnets. That anybody when you were young moved to a city because life would be better there. Okay, couple, couple. I moved to New Orleans and it was eye-opening and wonderful and exotic and scary. But that happens all around the world. Now, one of the notions people had was that if the state was in trouble, the city would be in trouble. One of the things I found out is that's not true. You can have this fragile city, which is somebody else's term for a city which is not yet Farrell, and you find them in all kinds of places. And only the states that are in yellow by this pole are considered to be fragile. And then we take a guess at what the most fragile city by this pole in the world is. It's okay, by the way, there's no penalty if you're wrong. You're gonna wait me out. All right, fine. I'll give up. It's Karachi. Now, if you're from Pakistan, you may have a very different idea about that. But by this pole, by their methodology, Karachi is considered to be the city most at risk of failure. However, if you start thinking about what city is the poster city for being Farrell, not controlled by the state, Mogadishu keeps coming to mind. But it's important to remember that even in a Farrell city, the city that no longer exists under the control of the state, and Mogadishu is kind of a special rule because for many, many years there was no Somali state. But even during the height of the Civil War, at its very worst, life went on in Mogadishu. There are half a million people, not soldiers, not militia, who just lived their lives in Mogadishu. Perhaps many of them would have preferred to leave if they could, but the other economics, or family size, or whatever, they couldn't. And so life still went on. By the way, there's a kind of famous rubric, a methodology for determining how bad your city is, and it's the price of a hang grenade. And when you think about that, say, okay, so in Newport, what's the price of a hang grenade? I don't know where to go to get a hang grenade in Newport. So that's one thing. And I would guess if I did, it'd be pretty expensive. At the worst point in Mogadishu, $5 US bought you a hang grenade. And I don't know if everybody knew where the hang grenade store was because you could get one. We're gonna come back to Mogadishu. So I'm gonna go through this really quickly because otherwise it's an eye chart and there's a lot of strain. But for audiences where I gotta prove my bona fides, I really have thought about this, this was a chart I came up with and because the military loves red, yellow, green, I decided to pick those colors, green is good, red is bad. And the time I first came up with this idea, I had four categories, governance, economy, services, and security. But one of the things I learned in the years past that were cities that I thought were in peril of becoming feral, ooh, didn't mean to say that that way, but it's pretty cool. Those that were in peril of feral, of morality, didn't go. And I kept thinking, why is this? And I think the answer is in this concept called civil society. It's how we adhere to one other. It's the glue of a society. And it really works best when the government is not corrupt and the economy is good and the services are complete and your security is assured. But even when they're not, how we treat each other, our informal linkages, et cetera, can make up for a lot of that. So it was a fifth piece added to this. And I'll just go over one or two real quick governance. Good governance, you have effective legislation. The government directs resources correctly. It controls events in the city day and night, all parts of the city. And corruption, by the way, no city is free from any of this. Find the finest city in the world and there'll be some element of corruption. There'll be some places where it's dangerous to go at two in the morning. But it's what happens after and how rare is that. So if there is corruption, it's quickly detected and it's dealt with properly. Now as it gets worse, the state exercises only partial control, maybe in the daytime. This was the case of Durban, South Africa. It was pretty safe in Durban in the daytime. But at night, a small example, we were staying in a nice hotel, my wife and I for this conference, and we decided we wanted to go out and have Indian food because South Africa has great Indian food. And we asked the concierge, so where's the best Indian restaurant in town? And the concierge said, right to your left, it's our restaurant. I went, oh, of course it is. What's the second best Indian restaurant in town? And then he said, look, if you're really serious, let me call you an armored car and an armed escort. Well, that seems excessive. Because trust me, sir, if you wanna come back after, you know, have a good evening and come back alive, you need this, we need this. So we ate at the restaurant. But, and then in a bad city, the red city, the government negotiates with other actors for control of the city. Or at best they control a few places, like maybe the airport. And you may have had this experience in parts of the world. One of the nice things about lecturing at the War College is I lecture to people who are experienced world travelers. It's very different than when you lecture in Franklin, Indiana, and you say, have you been somewhere? Yeah, if you've been somewhere, it goes, yes, I've been to Indianapolis or I've been to Missouri. So it's, you're a great audience to do this to. Every year, we're talking about corruption. This is the Transparency Project, the Transparency International, we've been doing it for 25 years. And they say basically, where is corruption in the world? And there are 180 states. And for a while, Somalia has been down here at the 180 mark. And Denmark, so are there any Danes here? Congratulations, not only do you have the least corrupt government, but suppose we have the most pleasant country in which to live. There's actually a Danish word for coziness. And so the Danes are big on that. They're also the tallest people in the world, which may be why they're so happy. The United States, we're right down here. Number 22, our score is 71, we're not, we are more corrupt than France, go figure, and less corrupt, and less corrupt than the United Arab immigrants. So, you could argue maybe not the best place for us to be, but in some ways I think that shows maybe the poll can be relied upon. All right, economy. I thought when I started that feral cities would only have illegal economies. The idea that you can buy a hand grenade would kind of fit that image. But it turns out, I'm wrong. Now, partly, there's a great trade in illegal substances. This was the gun market. This is the cotton market. Every day cotton, mild narcotic, would be flown at about two o'clock by four o'clock. Everybody was stoned. So you wouldn't do your business in the morning. These were both booming economics. This young man with a shark is a fisherman. That's money on his shoulders. The problem with fish like this is their price also goes down as the day goes on. So sooner or later, there'll be a point where the market is willing, he's willing to sell to the person who's willing to buy. There's also a barter economy. This surprised me. Feral cities are robust in electronic communications because there's not a lot of footprint that goes with it. You don't have to build a factory. You don't have to build a lot of plant. You put up some towers, a little bit of generation. You can hook into satellite connectivity. Some countries have jumped entirely the phase of having phones, landlines. So that's a no good issue. And by the way, there's no regulation. If you could put the tower up, you can sell the phones. So for some businesses, that's a good thing. And then I was very touched by this. And for those who are students, if you live in Mogadishu, you'd still have to go to school. This is Mogadishu U. It's a college that works in Mogadishu. Even during the height of trouble, people would send their children to there to get education because education is a way up. It's a good thing to do. So stay in school, study hard, get good grades. Don't disappoint your parents like I did. And then it was a little different though. Teaching in Mogadishu U, the teachers would say sometimes they had to duck to the floor when machine gun bullets would come to the windows, et cetera. But it's always been a booming business and that's not meant to be a joke. All right, so economies do exist in these cities. People have a way of making do. Banking services. Some of you have studied how terrorists move money. Combination of the most modern and some of the most ancient ways of moving cash and credit. That's available to people in these cities. Services. I'm going to talk about Mumbai. Anybody from India? This is the slum of Darvai. It is the largest slum in the world. Last time I looked, two million people lived there. If you've seen Slumdog Millionaire, you've seen something to do with this, set there. By the way, people have, I've been chastised. You're making a sound so bad. People have families and they live a good life. Yes and no. So, obviously there is a gleaming city. This is part of that city in its own way. Services are tough. Who picks up the trash? Who cleans the water? Who teaches children? Who administers justice? Is this just an area of lawlessness inside of India's big city? Well, yes and no. One of the things that the Indian government does has empowered people's courts. So if you've seen the US version on television, this is the real thing. Where someone is selected from the community to serve as a judge. That person hears complaints and cases and passes judgment. People agree to be bound by that. Another thing the Indian government has been quick to say yes to are non-governmental organisations. These are all active in this particular part of India. And these services range from helping children learn. Lawyers collective, so you help people with their lawsuits, et cetera. There are some that talk about recycling garbage. This is how we help people who are handicapped. There's one about how to help abused women. And so this is great. All these things provide something positive to the people of Darbhai and Mumbai. However, who's supposed to do that? Who's supposed to provide your schools? Government. Who's supposed to pick up the trash? It depends on your, maybe it depends on your point of view. In Portsmouth where I live, either you do it yourself when you take it to the dump or you place someone to do it. Now, that's still a little tricky because the town still takes care of it after it goes to the dump. Who sends the ambulance when you're sick? Most people would say, well, the government, either city or state or local, has to do something about that. Here, those jobs are being done by NGOs. So my question is, does India give up a little bit of its sovereignty when it basically contracts out these services that usually people expect their government to give to them? I am not against NGOs. I think they do wonderful work. But I think this is an interesting cost or that people don't think about. And if I were India, I would do it too. This is a way to make their dollars go further, et cetera. But when you think on it, it is maybe renting out some of your state responsibilities to others. Well, I was gonna say, anybody recognize the city but I put it in the slide so you would all be great. This is Lagos, one of Africa's fastest growing cities. In fact, Lagos is the city that grew too fast. In the 1950s, there's maybe 500,000 people. Now there are millions. And what happens if you get more people coming to your city than you're prepared to handle? It's like pouring water into a bowl and you don't stop the flow. There's overflow. This isn't just Lagos, it happens in northern Mexico where the Macaloras came in. Your school systems get overwhelmed, your services get overwhelmed. By the way, if there are more children, there are seats at school. How do you figure out who goes to school? There are real issues with this. In this case, Lagos is so big, I don't think anybody knows how big it actually is. How many square miles in Lagos? You can go to a book and you can find it but this city grows every day. Unless you have satellite mapping that you can do the square mile calculation instantaneously, it's really hard to know. It's hard to know exactly how many people are in Lagos. There are parts of Lagos where there are no people because they're environmental no man's lands. So this is a complicated, this is very complicated environments. I guess one of the things we could have talked about earlier is cities are both nearly indestructible. 100,000 years from now, when the aliens from Zontar come to Earth and they try to figure out who is here, they'll find remnants of cities but they're also extraordinarily fragile. It's pretty easy to break a city. I mean, just imagine if Stop and Shop went on strike in New York but it was all the food industry. You got cans on the shelf and then you're out because New York doesn't make its own food, all right? I love this. Has anybody been asked to supply money to someone in Nigeria? Nigerian princess, one of my favorites were, dear friend, I am told you are a trusted person of importance. My father, Colonel Bobi, was deposed in a coup and has left $5 million in an account. Oh, I am asking you to go to Nairobi because I can't withdraw the money and I will share it with you. I'm still waiting. And they have internet cafes and they have criminal organizations who prey upon others. The Nigerians, by the way, Nigerian criminals, let me be clear, Nigerian criminals think those of us in the United States are patsies. It's a word for stupid because we're the fish that bite on hooks with no bait. We are the easiest people to trick online. Who's really hard? The French. So not only are they one step less corrupt than us, they're also much more hard to scam. However, there is a bustling business in that. So here's my grandma, it's not, but it could be, giving somebody her phone number and her information because she thinks they're a nice person. And this showcases my point that although Lagos may be wild and woolly, it's still connected to the larger world. By internet, by phone, communication. So it doesn't exist just by itself. Okay, we'll talk about security. And this is the War College, so this may be a little larger piece than some of the other ones are. In a well-regulated city, who provides security? Who do you call? The police, the cops, the local constabulary. And many cities have different types. There are traffic cops and there are crime cops but okay, you call the police. If the police can't handle the problem, who do you call? Well, it depends where you're from. In Spain, you call the Guardia Civil. Here, you call the state police. There may be paramilitary organizations that step in. If it's really bad in the United States, the National Guard gets turned out because they work for the governor. And if it's really, really, really bad, you call the military. But in a feral city, you have militias. You have very well-armed criminal gangs. You have private security forces if you can afford them. And in some places, the police, because of corruption, et cetera, are really nothing more than another armed gang acting in the area. Now, I'm not gonna single out any country. In fact, there was a time where my favorite city in the United States, New Orleans, was accused of having a police department so corrupt that it basically functioned as a criminal enterprise and not as a member of law enforcement. If there are any Louisiana cops here today, I apologize, I'm sure it's much better now than it used to be. In Joberg, okay, anybody go to Joberg for the 2010 cup? It was a big deal for South Africa. To host a world event like this means you're a country to be reckoned with. The Brazilians spent billions on the Olympics and then on the cup. Companies, I mean, countries will go into debt. Knowing they'll go into debt will still compete to host the Olympics because of the prestige and the pride. But Africa has a crime problem. And so the chief of police, Chris Nipolbo, decided that his big goal was that no tourist would be killed during the cup. And one of the things he did was he authorized his police to use deadly force on crimes that had previously not been considered deserving of being shot to death for. So he cracked down inside the country. Then they took the homeless and they put them on buses and they moved them 150 kilometers into the bush and they let them out. Because they didn't want this to be an issue during the cup. The South Africans considered the cup to have been a tremendous success. No tourists were killed, everybody had a good time. Some were robbed, but then you're always gonna get some people who are stupid. So for the South Africans, it was a huge success. But there are other things if you dig a little bit deeper. And part of the reason I thought about this, one of the things that really began to get me thinking was this is the Pretoria Stock Exchange. This is the national stock exchange of South Africa. The equivalent of the United States would be the New York Stock Exchange. Numbers go up and the world smiles. Numbers go down and the world trembles. It is a major economic power point on the globe. The South Africans took their stock exchange and they moved it out of Pretoria and they moved it to a suburb called Santon, 20 miles away. And they did this because they could no longer be comfortable in being able to provide security to both black and white stock brokers who worked at the stock exchange. And so if your stock brokers can't get to work, it's bad for the country. Their solution, by the way, was not to make it more secure and not was to move it. That would be as if we took the New York Stock Exchange out of Manhattan and we moved it to Rye, New York. And that got my attention. That the country would choose that option as being its best option. All right, so since we're talking about cities, world's most violent cities. Now, any time you have a world's most, think of America's, America Idol versus The Voice, My Singer's Better, My, there's a lot that goes into these lists. How do you set up the requirements, the size, et cetera? But if you look at all the different lists, this is pretty conformal. You get a little bit of movement, but it's not bad. The big surprise here was there are no, there are no cities in Asia that make the top 50. There are no cities in Australia that make the top 50. There are no cities in Europe that make the top 50. And there are no cities in Antarctica, no surprise, that don't make the top 50. The top 50 are in a bit of Africa, a lot of South America, and a fair number in North America, as long as you count Mexico. And by those in the United States go, well, we would never have a city in the top 50. No, we've got four. And if you wanna, the way that you rank out is, well, there's, okay, there I am, New Orleans. And then there's Baltimore, Detroit, and St. Louis is number one. And I don't know about you, but if I start thinking about dangerous US cities, St. Louis does not come to mind. The West Coast skates out. No LA, no, you know, some of the, no East LA, those like, huh, that's a little different. But the real eye opener is all of this. So, and now, and some of it makes sense. So anybody wanna guess which number, who is, which is the number one most dangerous city in the world today? Rio, interesting, not even close, hmm? Who in America? No, it's on the list, oh no, it's not, which is odd. By the way, there are more policemen in Mexico City than there are soldiers in Canada. And you can argue how safe Mexico City is. I love Mexico City, but then I'm also careful, and usually I have an escort when I'm there. Nope, the number one city is Los Cabos, Mexico. You were right, I could see that, look, you were right on the tip of the Baja Peninsula. That were generations of college students and wealthy people have gone to vacation. Why do you think, what makes Los Cabos so dangerous? Drugs, yeah, gangs are at each other. So you can still go to Cabo and have a wonderful time, but you will find, as you're basking on your beach, armed guards, this is the city streets, et cetera. This is actually a, this is fake news. This is a young man whose nickname is Giant, he's 17 years old, and he's overlooking a favela in, in Sao Paulo, but it was more of a feel that's going for him. All right, now, it used to be Caracas. So the Venezuelans are happy. Doesn't mean that Caracas is more safe, but they're no longer number one. And Caracas was number one, and when it came number one, it moved San Pedro Sula and Honduras out of the way. The violence in all these cities is directly attributable to the actions of drug cartels fighting among themselves and with state authorities as well. So part of the argument as well, San Pedro Sula was a wonderful place to live as long as you didn't live inside this kind of zone here where most of the murders occurred. Just a thought. There's some other problems in these feral cities. Weapons availability is easy compared to more regulated places. Now, I am sure some of you who have lived in the United States now for the better part of a year ago, if you wanna talk about easy weapons accessibility, but how about any city in the United States? Guilty, but this is easier. Highly complex human terrain, different people, different affiliations, gangs, the geographic boundaries are tough. Many cities share this, try saying that fast, but that's true. Then the local security forces, how much training, how good are they, how well are they paid? These are Afghan national police, which tend to not be regarded as favorably as Afghan military. And then the physical training itself is also very demanding. And I had a slide about urban warfare, but we haven't quite seen it come to that unless the city is involved in conflict like Sana'a and Yemen, Mogadishu, some of those places. But by the way, war is an automatic, please enter the ferrality zone. If you're gonna fight in the city, it's gonna be feral, right? There are some other issues. This kind of goes to services as well. This is Sao Paulo, but this could be anywhere in a major city in Brazil. What am I looking at? Power, electricity, I'm looking at crime. All of these connections are illegal. All of that, all those cables are siphoning power from the central grid going somewhere else and no one's paying for it, except the taxpayers of Brazil. Most of it goes to favelas and informal cities. How come the government doesn't do anything about it? It's hard. There's been some efforts, they're trying to sell cheaper electricity and compete with the cartels. But if I'm an electrical repair person and I go to work on this and my boss says, go take down all the illegal connections on pole 22. Yes, sir. So I show up at pole 22, what happens? Well, not right away, right? Some of them will come and go see my beautiful pistol. Please don't do that. You know what I thought about it? I'm not gonna do that today. And when I go back and my boss says you fixed pole 22, you fixed pole 22. So there is some of that. If you worked really hard to fix pole 22, you might get shot. Now, so if you live in these favelas, who gives you power? Who turns your lights on in your television? Whoever runs a local cartel? Compliments of the cartel. Another anecdote, a friend of mine who was a very senior guy on the Providence Council for Foreign Relations had a daughter who does a lot of medical work in Brasilia. And he would talk to her about how dangerous is it? And she goes, ah, papa, I am never in danger in the favela. I come and go safely. And he said, why is that? And she goes, because I provide medical care to members of the cartel. If they have a gunshot wound or a broken foot or their abuela is sick, we care for them. And it turns out the cartel would take credit for fixing her grandmother's foot and the rest of it. But she was there because the favela leaders thought she brought something positive to the area. I'm not saying her case is common or endemic, but she really felt unafraid because she was valued by the people who really controlled that part of the city. And we've all seen pictures of informal housing. One of the things that Hugo Chavez, mi amigo Hugo Chavez, anytime there was a mudslide and knocked down some of these buildings, he would blame the United States. His argument was we were causing global warming and that's why the rains were heavy and that's why his houses got washed away. But then Hugo blamed us for everything. Violence is a piece of this. If you're from Brazil, I'm not making any jokes about the Premier El Comandado, the Capitão, the PCC. These are a violent and dangerous gang. Most of their leaders are in jail and they run the gang from jail. In 2005, the Brazilians were gonna separate their leaders and put them in jails all over Brazil. The leaders with their illegal phones contacted their people in the field and said, rise up. They shut down, the gang shut down major highways going into Sao Paulo. They fought the police to stand stills on many streets. They killed more than 100 policemen. They burned more than 500 buses. And in the end, this was resolved by negotiation, not by force, by negotiation. Some of these groups are extraordinarily powerful and to take care of them with force is very dangerous. The Jamaicans a while back tried using military force in their garrisons and it did not work out very well. The casualties were high, the political consequences were steeper. It was a very difficult thing to do. That was Sao Paulo in 2005. I just read an article that suggests the PCC may be thinking about doing something like this in Rio next year. Don't know if that's true or not, but I wouldn't bet against it. Environment and health, right? Think how difficult it is to maintain a healthy city. Millions of people. Trash, recycling, waste, dirty water, streets, industrial pollution, all the things that come with it. It's a very demanding task. And not surprisingly in cities that are feral, it begins to fall apart. There are some cities, another great example of how sometimes people in the United States think differently because it's the old thing about first world problems. I use the term urban agriculture. In some cities for a variety of reasons, some religious, some economic, animals are frequently found in the streets. When I say urban agriculture to US people, oh, like a garden, like a corn garden on my roof or I can have chickens in a coop because they give brown eggs and they're better for you than other eggs. They're eggs. But maybe. But they have this very artesional view of farming and veterinarians taking care of your chickens and they name their pets. So it's not just a chicken, it's this Henrietta which gives you a very different relationship with your food than if you don't do that. Anyway, in these cities, plastic, plastic. This is the man who invented the curig is sorry that he did so because if you took all the curig cups that have been used and put them together, you can circle the earth 10 times. And we recycle them, but they're very difficult. If you use a curig, really convenient, what happens to a little cup when you're done? Now in my family, you scrape the top off because the foil can be recycled. You shake the grounds in the little bag into the compost and you take the plastic piece after you rinse it out and you recycle it. That's a lot of work, right? 30 is 15 cities, not picking on India. But it kind of makes sense with rapid growth comes industrialization and pollution. The mystery city, and I have no idea why this is, perhaps someone can tell me, is Al Suba Salim in Kuwait makes the top 15 polluting cities. I was surprised if you told me that 14 of the top 15 polluting cities in the world were in the same country, I would have said, I'll bet, here's $100, it's China. Nope, all right. Well, the United States, we're recycling fanatics. This can't be a problem for us. Welcome to San Diego. San Diego is on the border with Mexico and the closest Mexican town is, anybody know? Tijuana, right. A place of my misspent youth, it was wonderful. What you're seeing, by the way, now when there are heavy rains and the Tijuana River floods, this is the Tijuana River usually, when it floods, you have all kinds of pollutant, sewage, overflows, the sewage systems of the city are overwhelmed and it gets pumped into the river, the river flows to the sea and this, not to be unpleasant, is a fecal bloom. And it's as bad as it sounds, moving north with the current. Southern California gets a lot of its money from what? Beaches, sea view, maritime activities, come to Mission Bay and Waterski, come to San Diego and if the grunyan are still running, catch a grunyan, get some rays, beautiful beaches, it's money. So, not surprisingly, the leaders of San Diego were upset. Their first idea was to get skimmer boats and collect all this stuff and bring it back to Mexico. That's really not a good idea on all kinds of levels. So they basically took up a collection and they built more sewage plants in northern Mexico to handle the overflow because it was cheaper to do that than it was to live with the results of this. Right, and it's still an issue. Climate change, right. Now, whether you believe in it or not I'm not gonna debate why it's happening but the Defense Department of the United States of America says climate change is a national security issue. So at least that part of the government says it's real. This is the worst case scenario. Every piece of ice in the world melts. And this was what used to be North America. You can see that we've lost Eastern Seaboard. My home high on the ridge of Aquitaine Island now is an island with beachfront property. So it's pretty bad. South America has this very different shape. Asia loses a big chunk of itself. Africa is pretty good actually. Lagos goes underwater and Mogadishu but for the most part it still looks like Africa. All right, but that's the worst case. How bad is it if it's the middle case? This is only six meters, 18 feet. And these are basically what it does to population. It's pretty serious. It's pretty serious but it's much more reasonable than every piece of ice melting. But when climate changes, it's not just water levels rising. Although that's a big deal. A large percentage of cities are on or near the coast. If you look at the historical development it makes sense for transportation and economy, et cetera. So that's an issue. But other things change. Food production changes. And where people live changes. If you live in Bangladesh, an 18 foot rise in the sea level is massively serious. If you live in Kurabate, you're already making arrangements to buy territory from other states that is higher than your island because you can envision a time where your entire population is going to be either on stilts or gone. In this case, so what happens? Human migration patterns change. Millions of people can be put in motion. Food issues change. Green revolutions stop. So all these different factors add pressure to cities. Which means they add pressure to the states that own those cities and increases the possibility that those cities will become feral. Civil society, this was one of my big surprises. What brings us together? What links us outside of government? And what makes us identify? Some of them are really great. These are Filipinos who want to have peace talks with the various factions in their country. They're tired of warfare. They think negotiation and diplomacy is a way to go. That puts pressure on the government. Johannesburg, no nukes. These people believe that South Africa will be better served by other forms of energy than nuclear energy. The Pope. Our religion can bind us in a very positive way. It can be negative. But most people say Francis is a positive force for humanity. He looks beyond the differences and sees the commonalities. But then some other ones. These are also peace protesters. They just look more violent. Facebook. Who's on Facebook? Your parents are horrible. They should let you be on Facebook. They should let you have all the computer time you want and they should buy you video games. In my family, I'm like the bad uncle. But anyway, I bought you this gift. It looks very violent. It is. Anyway, Facebook, if Facebook were a country, I'm just joking, your parents know what's best for you. You should do everything they say. If Facebook were a country, it'd be like the fifth or fourth largest country in the world. Maybe it's bigger. If the world of warcraft, an online game, were a country, it'd be in the top 10. So when you think about it though, these little groups, there are people who play these games or like the Fishermen's blog. They know their friends online better than they know people down the street. I'm a historian to some degree. So I was on a colonial wars, bulletin board kind of chat. I knew people in New Zealand better than my neighbor. I knew if they had a kid or if they were going through a problem with their marriage or if they got a new job. It was a real community. And so there was a common identity. You could argue that's me being anti-social, but maybe. Now, on the other hand, there are darker civil societies. Boko Haram, Al-Shabaab. One of the things that's kind of surprising is that most people do not join these groups because of religion or it's a small reason of why they join. Only about 15% do that. It's the 75%, like why do they join? To belong, for security. Because kind of they have to. But it's still a civil society. And then here in Mexico, this is Las Colonias. It's one of many cartels. The Gulfos, Las Zetas, La Familia. That's another form. Gangs. Navasava, Tucha 13. The Crips, the Bloods. Gangs give a sense of civil society, social identity, et cetera. And these are powerful forces that both bring us together but sometimes put us at odds with each other. But in some cases, they're what's keeping, it's keeping the city from falling apart. All right, I'm gonna have, I'm left some time for questions but I want you to make, I want to leave you with a thought that I'm not one of those folks from the United States that says, well, that's a, that's a your problem, not a where problem. This could, you can never have a feral city in the United States. Wrong. New Orleans is my favorite city in the United States. I went, my family's from there. I'm called, I'm what's called a Cajun for heritage. If you ever see swamp people, that's my folks. New Orleans, I went to school there, all right? But after Hurricane Katrina for at least five days, the rule of law did not extend into my city. Police stations were submerged. By the way, the New Orleans police force had gone to rechargeable radios because batteries are expensive. All the charging stations were underwater. The police faced with, do you do your duty to your city or do you go home and take care of your family about two thirds of them chose to go home and take care of their families? Transportation broke down, services broke down. You may have been familiar with the story of the Superdome. The death rates were high. New Orleans being, by the way, there should be no surprise that the old city, the French Quarter survived because the French Quarter was built before there were dykes, before there were levies, before we drained the swamps. It was above water to begin with. But the rest of the town, these are coffins. Graves tend to be in mausoleums or shallow in New Orleans and so when the floods come, the coffins pop up. This was what happens when a lot of water gets moved around. This one, by the way, if you think about it as that water sits and it gets more and more polluted, the health hazards become extraordinary. We're just walking through this can be dangerous. This disaster exposed racial tensions in the city that anybody who lived there knew about, but the city had pretended no longer existed or had papered over, but they came full forward during this calamity. And the city while it has, in many ways recovered, has not yet completely recovered from Katrina. And this is in the United States where our ability to do that is pretty powerful. So it can happen here. If God forbid, California experiences the big one and half of the state slides in the sea as a result of a massive earthquake or just as there's a massive earthquake, I think you will find similar issues in cities that have had physical devastation. So that's the end of my presentation. Oh, not quite. So it's like, so what, Rick? Well, my so what is, when I first came up with this idea, it was, could this happen? Could this be something? And the answer was, yeah, it could be something. And nine years later, I asked, is it something? And my answer then was, it is something. And now today it's, is it something we're gonna see more of? And I think the answer is yes, although maybe not as fast as I initially thought it would. So with that, I welcome your questions and I'm counting on someone to keep me from running over time. So I just, someone just jump up and say, hey, we're done, we gotta go. Don't do it right now because I know you're doing it for other reasons. So any questions at all? Yes, ma'am. Let me hide behind the podium. Hi, thank you so much. I have like eight questions. So I'll keep it to one for now and see how everyone else does. I'd like to hear more about the, when you talked about the food shortages with climate change and how that can put a pressure on a city that's on the brink and what that tipping point would be for that to kind of become feral. Sure. There are a couple, first off, complex human problems. I'd love to be able to say, here's the magic answer, but they're, because they're comp, the problems are complex. The answers tend to be complex and convoluted. All right. If you take someplace like, well, Bangladesh, rice is a major staple. The climate is good for it. If you put those fields, those paddies under saltwater, they stop making rice. People are used to eating rice. There's a whole chain of distribution and consumption. The farmer grows the rice. He sells it just like the US and the West. I grow grain. I bring it to the local grain silo. They process it. I get money. They put it on trucks or whatever. It gets other places to feed animals and people. If those chains break down, the price goes up, and then the people who made that food have to find something else to do. The people who transported that food had something else to do. And so this begins to snowball. Well, I can't make a living here. I guess it's time to go to the city and try to be, to seek my fortune, to chase my dreams, to find a job, or maybe to survive. If desertification, if your land's getting saltier, either you've got to find something else to grow, which may be difficult, or you've got to move, or you've got to somehow retard the desertification. That takes high technology. Some farming methods are not really great for sustainability. By the way, this also applies to US. My family grew sugar cane. We were farmers. So sugar cane and rice and illegal whiskey and alligators. Anyway, it's all true. That can change your livelihood. So that puts things in. The other one that's really interesting, and I wish I had an agronomist here, the so-called Green Revolution. Wonder plants that did really, really well. Why does India not fear famine the way they used to? Well, the Green Revolution was a way of really getting great yields from your farming, but it requires water. And at first, India was, the aquifer in India was just below the surface. You put a pipe in and water would come out and it was great. Now the wells are being sunk 30, 40, 100 feet or more. So there's real concern that the magic ingredient, water, is not going to be there. And if that happens, India goes back to worrying about famine as their first thing. It also means that you move where water is. So, and once you put people in motion, you change all kinds of other things too. We see this in a very mild way in the caravans coming through Central America. And people get very excited about 1,500 people, 5,000 people. No, we're talking potentially millions of people in motion. That's a very different issue than a political decision on a border. So that's kind of, does that help? You want more, I can tell. I do, but it's okay, no, I think it's okay. All right, others, please. Uh-oh. I've been asking you questions for a semester now, and that's my turn. All right, bring it on. You know who I am, but for the others, I'm Andres Howard, Tilly Navy officer, and he's my professor. My question goes to terrorism. Oh, okay. My question is, in all the cities that we've seen that you showed, most of it is related to crime and drug cartels and that kind of things. Do you see a tendency for a safe heavens for a terrorism organization that could be in the future? That's a great question, and the quick answer is you bet I do. Couple of reasons. Admiral Staff Reedy's, when he was Southcom, what kept him up at night was this idea of the unholy marriage between a terrorist organization and a criminal organization. When the criminal organization that had illegal lines of access and transportation into a country saved Mexico and the United States would, for a profit, handle cargo for a terrorist organization. Some cases, the FARC in Colombia, while that was strong, was a narco-terrorist organization. Cities are great places. Feral cities are great places for terrorist operations. For one thing, their geography is really complicated. If I have a satellite, it's hard to look into buildings and under buildings into sewers and into underground facilities, parking garages, et cetera. Even if the city's not generating a lot of power, I can generate enough power in a panel truck to power a worldwide communications network. So, if you can run a worldwide terrorist enterprise out of a cave in Torobora, how much easier is it to run a criminal enterprise out of a feral city? Particularly, if you look like everybody else. This is a criminal example. There was a notorious ring of heroin dealers in Nigeria. And it turns out, in an odd way, the leaders were all women and they were from the same town and they were all from the same extended family. You tell me how I get an FBI agent to penetrate that level of crime. How am I gonna, so I gotta find someone that speaks fluent Nigerian and the local dialect. I gotta find someone who's a woman. I gotta find someone who is family. That's a pretty tall order. And they have to be able to blend in and get away with finding out about the criminal activities. So, I think there's a lot that appeals to a terrorist organization. In the past, the track record's been mixed. In the battle for Algerian independence, the FLN for a long time tried operating out of Algeria, the city, and Algiers rather. And the French found through the use of informants and torture, predominantly informants, that they were able to break the FLN in the city and they definitely had to go to the country. But the times are different now. And this is different now. So, it's a great question. I probably should have put it in the brief. Although my life's been a little terrorist heavy these days thinking about things. But yeah, I think that cities make, this type of city makes a very good base of operations for a terrorist organization. In fact, if you're really smart, maybe you wouldn't do anything in that city. You just use it for your command and control. And you would be able to send orders out or use it for training and logistics and money. And so you wouldn't do anything illegal at home. You'd do it overseas or far away. So yeah, I think it's a real issue. Other questions? Yes, sir? Down here, Tripp. Tripp, please. By the way, it's great to see you. Special greetings for Professor Norton from a fellow Tulanean. Yeah. Greenway. Every other college has a really cool mascot like a lion or an eagle. Ours is literally a green wave. It's water. Well, that's pretty appropriate politically these days. Could be, could be. Question is about shifting realities with legalities and that would be the concept of Posse Comitatis. Oh, ooh. Okay, Posse Comitatis is the US law that basically limits the involvement of US military in domestic legal actions. I am not a lawyer, although I play one on TV. No, I have a master's in law and diplomacy, but more diplomacy than law. So it's, like many legal issues, it's complicated because of the definitional pieces. I will say that I think for the most part, the military hides behind Posse Comitatis pretending we can't do things we can and the government does not enact Posse Commas as often as they could. And the issue now, this is where it becomes very political. For example, if the border is unsafe, do we want to use military personnel to actively patrol and if need be, conduct combat operations on the border? Theoretically, you could do that with Posse Comitatis. I personally don't think there's a need to do that. So I think it depends, right? And it depends on the local country's legal authority. My favorite example is Spain. What are the Guardia Civil? Are they soldiers or are they cops? There used to be, by the way, a different Guardia. It was the Guardia de Asalto, which were heavy troop cops for like riots and stuff, but they sided with the Republicans during the Civil War and were disbanded when Franco came to power. The Guardia Civil were on the side of the Nationalists and so they're still there today. Are they cops or are they soldiers? And the answer is they're both under Spanish law and if Spain decides that she's been invaded and has to defend, the Guardia becomes military. If on the other hand you're going too fast and the Guardia policeman stops you, you better be polite because they're cops. And so I think that's a very, I'm not trying to dance around it. What I'm doing is I'm confessing, I don't have enough knowledge to really give you a great answer, but I do think it's one of those areas that everybody thinks they have an answer and that answer is usually wrong. So could we see greater US involvement? Absolutely. The times where we've seen it before has been really interesting. There were a series of riots in LA following the Rodney King legal decision. The governor called out the National Guard and since the Guard works for the governor, it was load your rifles, shoot looters. Then we federalized the Guard and they were working for the United States, not the governor of California and the order was unload your rifles, do not shoot looters. It was not the desire of the United States to perform a war against its own citizens. The governor was not happy, but the governor should have known better if the governor wanted his guard to engage in active combat operations, he should never let it be federalized. So these are these issues of are they cops, who they work for, and what do they work for? And by the way, the guard and the regular army falls under different portions of the US code as does the Coast Guard, yet a different element. By the way, Coast Guard, if you ever wonder when you're at sea or on the bay boating and the Coast Guard guy comes up and says you're under arrest, you are. They are both policemen and part of the military organization. Other questions, great question though. It's been a pleasure. I'm coming on, exercising today. I've also spent a ton of time in New Orleans and it is one of my favorite cities as well. You mentioned no man's lands, environmental no man's lands. Could you expand on that just a little bit? I can. Also, I am an urban farmer, not the name your chicken type of urban farmer, but like what's going on in Detroit, where it's city blocks being reclaimed by the citizens to feed underserved populations. First off, I would say that is great and noble work. And if my youngest son were here, who's graduating in a few weeks from American University and has been deeply involved in their urban gardening project, he'd be up applauding. And so the difference here is those efforts you describe are carefully monitored. The health issues, there are no health issues because they are carefully monitored. The food that they produce is inspected to make sure it's fit and healthy. And you are delivering in a superb service to people who otherwise may live in a food desert. Not to mention making the city more livable, making oxygen better. It is a great, done properly, it's a great and noble work as opposed to my family who might be raising pigs in the basement and no veterinarian, nothing but maybe a lot of air freshener. So there are very different things that can happen. Now the other one was no man's lands. You hear this idea of ungoverned spaces. Usually that means that they're being contended for. Does the city control this space? Does the local gang control this space? Does the people's collective control this space? There are some parts of cities, usually because of ecological reasons, that are so polluted, so toxic, that they literally become no man's land. You can't really live there without suffering severe issues of poisoning, heavy metal poisoning, illnesses, et cetera. And so you get these kind of areas. There's some in Lagos, there's some in other parts of the world. The city, the former city of Chernobyl is one great no man's land because the radiations levels are still high and have people live there. That by the way is self-inflicted and you could argue perhaps that most of the problems we see in cities are self-inflicted either because we didn't take care of them or we can't take care of them. But it's also a great segue. There is a effect in hearing my presentation that settles on some people like, oh, that's really, really depressing. Yes and no. There are success stories out there. Cities that were on a downward spiral can be brought up. There is a chance for improvement, better programs, better education. There was a time in the US politics in New York where Ronald Reagan stood in the shattered remnants of a burned out building in the Bronx and delivered a campaign speech. The political and diplomatic maneuvers that went on before that with local gangs and the city police were astonishing. That neighborhood is great now. Now there are some trade-offs, gentrification. Gentrification is usually at the expense of somebody else. If the neighborhood becomes nice and rich college kids moves in, who gets displaced? And so this issue of urban planning and how do you take care of those who have less? How do you make sure that the city is welcoming to everybody? And then there's some real positives. I think one of the things I think that the United States does really, really well. Not to sound like, we're great. As opposed to the British. You can go to the Smithsonian for free. You can see the national treasures of the United States. You can see our history. Good history, bad history, the Holocaust Museum, the African American Museum, which is basically, if you thought slavery was a fun thing, no. We're gonna get the courage to say that. We do that for free. If you go to any museum in Great Britain, you pay for it. And you can argue there are pros and cons, but I think that's one example of a city that's making its institutions accessible to everybody, which I think is a good thing. But thanks for the question. And thanks for your part in proper urban agriculture. That's really great. Yes ma'am? Or miss, not to be. Yeah, no problem. So good evening. My question is, why do you think it is that southeastern Asia doesn't have any of these feral cities like the rest of the world? Okay, that's a great question. Why, what makes Southeast Asia with its burgeoning populations and its mega cities immune? Well it may be, to be honest, how they set up the information gathering for these lists. No city below 300,000, et cetera. I think there's another big piece of it, and this is, let me be clear, and I should have said this at the very beginning, everything I've said is my opinion, and in no way reflects the official position of my department, the War College, the United States Navy, the Department of Defense, or the US government. So just me. Now, having said that, there are major differences in Asian cultures and ours. One of the great cleavage points, not wars, were fought over Sam Huntington's clash of civilizations and this idea of human rights. The Singaporeans look at us and say, you are undisciplined, you're mad, you have let human rights, individual rights, run amok. In Singapore, you may walk in a park at two in the morning, safe from fear. Yes, we will arrest you if you spit on the sidewalk because you're defacing our city. We will report you if you have too much water in your flower pots because that attracts mosquito larvae and it endangers the health of our city. We have a collective ownership of Singapore that you don't seem to have, and our way is not necessarily better than your way, but in some ways the results we feel are better. So a more regulated society, a society that perhaps is more appreciative of strata and social structures, legal systems that can be very draconian, oh you legalized marijuana, why would you do that? Just kill the people who use it. Now we see this gone maybe wild in the Philippines where the rule of law I would say is getting stretched mighty thin, but this idea of no, you have a collective responsibility to your society may be different. In Japan, you could argue perhaps that centuries of living very close together have produced cultures and morals and manners that adapt to that. I mean, you've seen those, they're really cool in some ways. They're Japanese hotels, they're basically a tube, about a six foot, seven foot long tube. You pay your money, you jump in the tube, you go to sleep, you get up, you get a communal shower and you go back to work, and they're very, very cheap. But it's like, this is a hotel? And yes, it's a hotel. So, and if that's what you expect, then your expectations are met and it can go on. But I think that's my big battle axe course chop at why South Asia right now doesn't have the issues. On the other hand, I guarantee you there are many South Asian cities that you would not feel comfortable in depending where you were and what time of day you were. Just so that, the fact that it didn't make the top 50 doesn't mean that Hong Kong's not 51 or New Delhi is 52, so. But it's a good question. Ma'am, Miss, whatever pronoun you prefer is fine by me. Thank you. You touched briefly on taking cities that were starting to spiral out of control and changing that trajectory. Do you have any examples of cities that have gone full on feral and what do we do with them from that point? That's a great question. Full on, if you don't mind, I'm going to steal that phrase because I think part of the success of feral cities was, I had a really good title, full on feral. That's interesting. Mogadishu is the big one right now. And to fix Mogadishu, you're gonna have to kind of work from the Maslow's pyramid of needs. First, you gotta provide food and shelter, et cetera, which means you gotta provide security. That's a real heavy lift. I think most cities that have kind of turned the corner do so before they get fully in the red zone. And I would argue New York is one of those. I think there are cities in Chile, for example. That experience they turn around based on some rigid enforcement of laws, some measures we might not find comfortable. China is a pretty good job of turning their cities around, but they do it with methods we would not endorse. In the case of New York, there were some of that. The Giuliani years where the cops were basically told, okay, all those guys were gonna wipe your windows. They now get arrested. The homeless were moved out. Graffiti was scrubbed. If you see something, say something. Broken windows are just as important. By the way, if you ever watch this show called Blue Bloods, there's references to that in popular culture. But the idea was the city took hold of itself. They shut down what would be called the Tenderloin or areas of sex trafficking, prostitution, et cetera, because it was bad for the city. Now there's still obviously places you can get into huge amounts of trouble in New York if you're not careful, but this idea is you have to provide security and then you have to provide services and you have to do more civil society. And New York is great. I mean, we were just there walking through Chinatown, for example, and watching people do Tai Chi, and it was, it's a much more inclusive city than it used to be. But then I wasn't there at two in the morning either, so. But yeah, and that's a, I will have to look for that to see if there's a, it's a hyperbolic curve. So on this side, I have Mogadishu on this side. Here's this wonderful city of, you know, cities that experience great natural disasters and then recover might be a way of looking at that. San Francisco after the 1904 earthquake and fire. Maybe New Orleans to some degree, although most people I know from the Crescent city would say, don't you dare, we're not there yet. So that's one of those that are up for grabs. It's a great question though. Others? One more? One more question. You can be that person. It's okay. There it is. There's that. Katrina was surreal. It was a theory of the absurd. You had Sean Penn out there saving people at shotgun point. I kept thinking, well, I can just imagine Mr. Penn and my aunt T-bell, who was neither T nor Bell. Get in the boat. No, get in the boat. Lady, I'm saving you. No, but New Orleans is its own special, special place. But there was a lot of that kind of bravado, which I expect, I would expect from that city. Well, ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much. It has been a true honor to be here. You're a wonderful audience and thank you for listening to me.