The Impacts of Terrorism on Urban Form

During the past decade, terrorist attacks in New York, Washington, London, and other major cities have been popularly regarded as having profound impacts on the security and confidence of urban residents. The loss of life and damage to structures that transforms the urban landscape may similarly transform the structure of the urban economy. For example, many of the companies that resided in the World Trade Center were forced to relocate to midtown and the outer boroughs or New Jersey. Still others -- no one knows for sure how many -- have disappeared altogether. The World Trade Center housed 700 companies employing some 50,000 people. What happened to these firms and workers? More generally, what happens to economic agents in the aftermath of a terrorist attack? Fortunately, terrorist attacks of the magnitude of those that struck the United States on September 11, 2001, are rare and extraordinary events. In some cities, however, the terrorist attacks can be unrelenting, providing a constant threat of danger for years on end. These events, and the use of these tactics, could have significant impacts on the economic vitality of an urban area and the form of urban development. In this paper we address this issue by cataloging a large sample of terrorist attacks in major cities in the past two decades and linking these data to a new data set providing information on urban land use in a globally representative sample of cities. In doing so, we examine whether events like September 11 and much more frequent, smaller attacks influence the decisions to build and rebuild cities. Comment by Edward Glaeser pp 291-294 Language: en