Urban Risk And Governance

In the mid to late 20th century when the world has entered the era of information and globalization, a growing number of major disasters have taken place in human beings society. Showing different characteristics from traditional ones, they are hidden in every corner of modern society with stronger diffusion and more serious injury. German scholar Ulrich. Baker and other Western schools of social theory even exclaimed that mankind has entered a new social stage:namely "stage of risk society." They pointed out that it is just the so-called "modern science and rational" like chemical, electronics, genetic technology, science and technology, as well as "make the Earth uninhabitable for implementation of the policy" that was responsible for the risk of power; and it is precisely through the unlimited production of the risk of modernization that the occurrence of the disaster on Earth has been emerging more frequently.Based on the recognition of the above basic risk theory, this paper takes city as a starting point to study as a typical human society unit, considering the city's existing overall risks. The paper first proposes that city is a place where human forces, especially science and technology, have been making the most dramatic and violent changes on the nature, and thus city is an output of man-made product, which inherently composes the risk nature of the city. With the world's continuous development of urbanization, cities are increasingly bearing the human society's complex functions. Therefore, the city has the natural properties of the inherent risks; Based on this supposition, using Governance theory, Urban governance theory, Complex system theory and Urban sociology theory as analytical tools, the paper makes an overall analysis of the risks existing in cities, herein including social risks, technological risks and biological risks, taking Chinese cities as examples. In the conclusion, based on the risky characteristics existing in urban system, the paper attempts to put forward a Total risk management framework as a solution to the risk problems in cities.