Floods, storms, natural disasters and how they
shaped cities in the Americas
Lise Fernanda Sedrez
PPGHIS/Instituto de História
Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro
Cities are shaped by design and by opportunity, by incentives and by neglect. They are also
shaped by nature, or the ways societies lived, transformed and remember nature. How
nature influenced the fates of cities varies. The most obvious way would be location. Early
settlers in America valued access to water and easy connections with the metropolises, and
large, protective bays such as Chesapeake Bay, Guanabara Bay or the Bay of All Saints
seemed to be “natural” settings for the establishment of cities. Less obvious however are
the influences of nature in its more dynamic components, not as “setting” but as events,
sometimes rare, sometimes periodical. Earthquakes, storms and heavy rains may bring to
the city cycles of floods, destruction, reconstruction, relocation, and general reconfiguration
of the urban and social tissue. They are less obvious not for lack of visibility, but because
often this dynamism of nature is not taken into account by urban planners and public
officers, who see these events as “exceptional,” instead of part of the same “natural setting”
that encouraged the location of the city in the first place.
This study focuses on some of these events in cities in Brazil and the United States and
suggests some variables that could guide comparative analysis of the urban environmental
history in both countries. It derives from a research project on urban floods in Rio de Janeiro
and Buenos Aires in the 20th century, produced in collaboration with Dr. Andrea Casa Nova
Maia and Dr. Marina Miraglia.
Urban floods are not simply natural events, but the result of interaction of societies and
nature in the urban environment. They are social and natural disasters – and result from
social and natural processes. The occupation of flood-prone areas, the canalization of rivers,
large land reclamations projects, as seen in the Guanabara Bay or Atlantic city, increase the
vulnerability of urban areas and magnify the impact of storms and hurricanes. They then
cause disruptions in the ordinary rhythm of the city, but they also unveil tensions and social
mechanisms which are usually disguised by this same rhythm. We have approached such
disruptions by combining oral history, analysis of popular media and scientific or technical
reports. As a result, we suggest the following series of variables to understand how urban
natural disasters have shaped cities in the Americas.
First, we should consider that although floods and storms may be periodical and part of the
natural cycle, some are remarkable in their magnitude and/or impact. Therefore, hurricanes
like Katrina for New Orleans in 2005, or the Great Flood in 1966 Rio de Janeiro, influenced
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the history of their cities not only due to the number of victims or the degree of destruction,
but also due to the way the city will remember them, how they will shape the city’s identity
and expectations of their residents.
Second, the city is not affected evenly in all its areas. Some areas are more dramatically
disrupted than others, and they are fixed in the memory of the residents as symbols of the
disaster, as for instance, the Superdome in New Orleans or the Praça da Bandeira in Rio de
Janeiro. They are, in some ways, places of environmental memory. These iconic places are
defined in many different ways: because of their centrality to transportation, because of
their dramatic image in the moment of disaster, because of the number of victims, or
because of what they represented to the city in more ordinary circumstances.
Third, disasters bring to attention the role of the state - whether it is at local or national
level depends on the magnitude of the disaster. We here consider not only what
governments did (or neglected doing) in planning the cities and preparing for disasters, but
also what are the expectations of the population regarding the role of the state. It is also
important to take into account the action of non-state institutional actors, such as churches
and newspapers, in mobilizing local residents and challenging or complementing the action
of the state.
Fourth, concepts of class, race and gender contribute to understand how society reacts to
the disasters, makes decisions (such as whether to evacuate or not, or the establishment of
solidarity networks, and even the level of public alarm regarding future events).
Fifth, the aftermath of a natural disaster is a critical moment of restructuration of the city
and of society itself. It may also be a moment of some empowerment for vulnerable
communities and individuals, which define strategies of survival and mobility, seizing the
uncommon attention they obtain. What happens to these communities, where they are
placed, or how they relocate, may define the future development of the city, as it was the
case with Cidade de Deus in Rio de Janeiro, and it reveals much about how the urban
growth changes surrounding green areas.
These variables are by no means exhaustive, and they draw heavily on the carioca
experience. They are based on the premise that natural urban disasters are not exceptions,
but part of the urban historical narrative. It is in this sense that they offer a challenging,
although tentative, framework to understand the dynamic relation of city and nature, in
both countries.
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