Cities Under Siege: The New Military Urbanism Event

Arguing that the ‘war on terror’ and its descendents have been heavily constituted through highly urban discourses, materialities and practices, this talk seeks to demonstrate that new ideologies of permanent and boundless war are radically intensifying the militarization of urban life in the contemporary period. It delineates the ways in which contemporary processes of militarisation -- which surround what I label the ‘new military urbanism’ -- raise fundamental questions for critical urban scholarship because of the ways in which they work to normalise the permanent targeting of everyday urban sites, circulations, and populations. Focusing primarily on US military security and military doctrine, culture and technology, this paper explores the new military urbanism’s inter-related foundations as a way of identifying ways to challenge its axioms through critical research, activism and art.