Why I Too Love John Adams

Andrew's previously shared his admiration for John Adams the composer (here), but I'd like to focus on John Adams the UCL Professor of Geography (website). He's recently started a blog, "Risk in a Hypermobile World", and you may recognise him from appearing on Newsnight.

I first encountered John having read his book "Risk" (1995, Routledge), which was recommended to me by Evan Davis. It's a highly entertaining and sophisticated treatise on cultural attitudes toward risk perception, and switched me on to the Cultural Theory that's formed a large bulk of my dissertation and current research. Two blockbuster concepts within that book include his critique of cost-benefit analysis, and also his claim that seat belts can cost lives. I use this research in my lectures on Consumer Theory, to demonstrate how people respond to incentives - in this case, the incentive to engage in riskier driving in light of feeling safer, (I've already posted on this here). As he puts it in this letter(.pdf):

Accident statistics are not a valid measure of the safety or danger of the nation’s road  network. In the early 1920s, with a nationwide 20mph speed limit and hardly any  traffic, three times as many children were killed in road accidents – not because the  roads are now three times safer to play in but because parents, fearful of traffic and  strangers, no longer allow their children out anymore. Road users are not obedient automatons. People respond to signals of safety and  danger. People in big, heavy, SUVs with seat belts, airbags and crumple zones feel  safer. Others feel less safe. The balance shifts. The latter retreat.
[My emphasis - how about that for a Lucas Critique!]

He's also provided the most fruitful framework I'm aware of to analyse the risks associated with terrorism, and in this Social Affairs Unit piece makes an espeically astute observation:

In the first half of October 2002 two people per day were killed in Washington and its suburbs. They were killed suddenly and without warning by a stranger they had never met. There was no discernible pattern in their age, sex or ethnicity. Their families and friends grieved, but otherwise their fates attracted virtually no media attention. They were victims of road accidents. Over the same perio d someone was killed every other day by the Washington Sniper. Again there was no discernible pattern amongst the victims chosen by the anonymous killer. Their fates attracted massive media coverage all around the world and led, far beyond the vicinity of their occurrence, to extraordinary changes in behaviour - ranging from a massive policing operation to people jogging to their cars in zigzag patterns with their groceries in supermarket car parks;

I'm also a big fan of John's work on local planning (especially in the case of Bloomsbury) and how this ties into Street Clutter. So browse through his essays and reassess your own concepts of risk perception.

Comments

[dearieme]

Thanks for the tip about his website. Now, here's a risk that astonished me. Guess, without searching out the facts, how many fatalities there are per annum on the British railways, by suicide and trespass. Then check. Oof!