Urban Targets

A majority of the world's population now lives in cities, which makes these people especially vulnerable to terrorism, writes John Robb in the current City Journal. Robb believes that cities "have become the main targets of offensive action," partly because they are so dependent upon various centralized systems that "even the simplest attacks on those systems can cause massive disruption." But some good news: "In almost all cases, cities can defend themselves from their new enemies through effective decentralization," he concludes.