Legacy in the Landscape: How Urbanization Shapes Disaster Risk By Stephanie E.Chang., Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2025. 196 pp., 45.00 (USD). ISBN: 978‐1‐009‐63354‐3

In Legacy in the Landscape: How Urbanization Shapes Disaster Risk, Professor Stephanie E. Chang argues that to understand urban disaster risk we must understand how cities change over time because ‘disaster risk today is a legacy of urban history’ (p. 158). While much has been written to describe disaster risk in cities, a gap remains in understanding the process of urbanization as a systematic driver of that risk. This book helps address that knowledge gap. In Chapter 1, Chang presents an urban risk dynamics framework that depicts risk as the intersection of hazard, exposure, and vulnerability (broadly defined), and considers three interrelated dimensions of urbanization—landscape, economy, and technology. To further set the stage, Chapter 2 offers a primer on how cities evolve—why they are located where they are, how they change over time, and what drives that change. In Chapters 3, 4, and 5, which make up the bulk of the book, Chang repeatedly applies the framework to analyze six case study cities and three hazard types. Chapter 3 examines riverine flooding in Vienna, Austria and Calgary, Canada; Chapter 4 considers coastal flooding in New Orleans, USA and New York City, USA; and Chapter 5 focuses on earthquakes in Kobe, Japan and Christchurch, New Zealand. For each city, she describes the rationale for the city's location and how it has evolved over time under the influence of its physical landscape, economic drivers, and new technologies. Chang pays particular attention to the roles of disaster events and efforts to manage disaster risk within those histories. Following the Chapter 1 framework, for each hazard type, she discusses the interactions between urbanization and hazard, exposure, and vulnerability. The final chapter pulls together generalized findings gleaned from the varied cases and presents their significance to future research and practice. In weaving together histories of growing cities, emerging technologies, and changing risks, many insights emerge. Chang finds, for example, that urbanization transforms the physical landscape and cities then become increasingly dependent on technological solutions to increasing risk, such as flood protection systems. A ‘city facing economic pressures to grow across a landscape will, with few if any exceptions, choose to rely increasingly on technology to manage the hazard-related barriers to such growth’ (p. 159). A ‘self-reinforcing dynamic of urban development and hazard protection’ thus emerges which ‘becomes increasingly difficult to reverse’ (p. 159). The well-known ‘levee effect’ suggests that levees built to reduce risk lead to a false sense of security that in turn leads to more building in hazardous areas, thus unintentionally increasing risk. Chang adds some nuance to our understanding of this phenomenon, noting that the increase in construction may not be unintended at all; rather, allowing more construction may be a stated reason for the flood protection system, as it was in Vienna. As other example insights, she concludes that reconstruction following destructive disaster events ‘typically continues predisaster development trends in terms of where the city rebuilds and expands.’ (p. 162), and that ‘government policy and urban planning have played increasingly important roles in addressing urban disaster risk.’ (p. 162). By taking a historical approach based on selected case studies, Chang is able to offer a rich portrait of the unique aspects of each city's evolution. Coupling that with the urban risk dynamics framework provides a common lens through which to interpret those city histories, thus bringing general themes into focus. Chang readily admits that all cities are unique and a selection of six cities does not necessarily represent all urban areas. The cities at the center of the book are all, for example, within industrialized economies in the Global North. Nevertheless, the rationale for the selection of cities is explained, and the approach succeeds in balancing an appreciation for the uniqueness of each disaster event and city with the search for insights that can be generalized across them. Anyone interested in disasters—researchers, students, practitioners, and members of the public—will find this book valuable. In writing it, Chang draws on her interdisciplinary background in urban planning and civil engineering, together with almost three decades of experience as a highly-respected disaster researcher. Despite being detailed and well-researched with sources carefully cited, the book is accessible and easy to read, including enough background on the various contributing disciplinary perspectives to ensure all readers appreciate the analysis and lessons learned. In less than 200 pages, Legacy in the Landscape offers a fresh perspective that will make both new and seasoned disaster researchers and practitioners—social scientists, physical scientists, and engineers—stop and think. It ‘centers the narrative around the city, rather than the disaster event’ (p. x). In so doing, disasters are treated not as ‘random, external, exogenous events’ (p. xi) but as expected occurrences within a city's evolution. These differences are subtle but profound, leading to improved understanding of some of the underlying risk-producing processes that must be addressed to create lasting change and suggesting new ways to think about what mitigation measures to invest in, where, and when. The author declares no conflicts of interest. No data were used in this book review.