VISUALISING DISASTER:
ENVIRONMENTAL ANXIETIES AND IMAGINING URBAN FUTURES

The form of cities, their design and construction have long made it possible to think about human identity and society.  Likewise, the destruction of cities through various means, accidental circumstance or human weakness, has given historical and narrative form to diverse values governing ethical conduct, individual desires and collective responsibilities.  Recently, a spate of films in which cities are destroyed by natural disasters have counterpoised documentary images entailing the collapse of the Twin Towers and the destruction of Baghdad, tsunami devastated regions of Southeast Asia and the inundation of New Orleans.  Both fictional and documentary accounts of disaster are mutually reinforcing.  They not only invoke, though fail to encompass, the immensity of suffering accompanying the fall of one or the other building, town or city.  They are also highly evocative and symbolic, representing (equivocally, no doubt), the end result of a series of causes and effects for which no one person is likely responsible, on the one hand, and a call for fortitude in the face of great adversity, on the other. Disasters can transform cities into the scene for final judgements and the triumph of the human will.  Taking its cue from these accounts and opposing possibilities for thinking about the meaning of disaster and its consequencesthis paper will consider how its portrayal serves as a vehicle for questioning our seemingly precarious relationship with nature and the future of the city.  It will draw on particular representations of and circumstances attending recent destruction (particularly of the Twin Tower and New Orleans) as these have encouraged moralising about fallen cities.  The paper will cast this phenomenon as uniquely modern and emblematic of contemporary concerns.