TY  - JOUR
AU  - Glaeser,Edward L.
AU  - Shapiro,Jesse M.
TI  - Cities and Warfare: The Impact of Terrorism on Urban Form
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 8696
PY  - 2001
Y2  - December 2001
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w8696
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w8696.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Edward L. Glaeser
Department of Economics
315A Littauer Center
Harvard University
Cambridge, MA 02138
Tel: 617/495-0575
Fax: 617/495-7730
E-Mail: eglaeser@harvard.edu

Jesse M. Shapiro
University of Chicago
Booth School of Business
5807 S. Woodlawn Avenue
Chicago, IL 60637
Tel: 773/834-2688
Fax: 773-753-0563
E-Mail: jmshapir@uchicago.edu
AB  - What impact will terrorism have on America's cities? Historically, large-scale violence has impacted cities in three ways. First, concentrations of people have an advantage in defending themselves from attackers, making cities more appealing in times of violence. Second, cities often make attractive targets for violence, which creates an incentive for people to disperse. Finally, since warfare and terrorism often specifically target means of transportation, violence can increase the effective cost of transportation, which will usually increase the demand for density. Evidence on war and cities in the 20th century suggests that the effect of wars on urban form can be large (for example, Berlin in World War II), but more commonly neither terrorism nor wars have significantly altered urban form. As such, across America the effect of terrorism on cities is likely to be small. The only exception to this is downtown New York which, absent large-scale subsidies, will probably not be fully rebuilt. Furthermore, such subsidies make little sense to us.
ER  -