Recent events in Gaza City
and Ferguson, Missouri, highlight the importance of a school of thought within
urban studies. Articulated by scholars
like Mike Davis and Stephen Graham, but also expressed within national-security
think-tanks and military academies, this school focuses on how contending with
the insurgent potential of the urban form is one of the leading factors shaping
21st century urbanism. While
focused on parts of the world where poverty persists amidst a stew of weak
states and legacies of colonial injustices, the argument also applies to the
global minority, in places like Ferguson, Missouri, through a blow-back
mechanism. Taking from Foucault’s
“boomerang” of colonial domination, the idea is that militarized urbanism in
the global majority results in internal colonialism in the global
minority. The prognosis of this school
of thought is that 21st century urbanism will be defined by urban
warfare, perhaps one of the more challenging assignments for any military. Combat within close quarters, where the
tactical advantage of air superiority is significantly nullified, introduces an
equalizing element within the asymmetries of war. Urban warfare also adds to the “fog of war”
as distinctions between civilian and combatant are compromised, a factor that
adds to the advantage of insurgencies, while increasing the reality of high
civilian casualties despite the smart bombs.
Also operating within the
militarized urbanism thesis is a critical understanding of how military doctrine
produces power and knowledge by the way it defines the problems of urban
security. We can find an example in Eyal
Weizman’s discussion of the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah War in his fascinating essay,
“The Art of War: Deleuze, Guattari,
Debord, and the Israeli Defense Force.”
Weizman is an architect interested in post-colonial understandings of
conflict territories, a perspective that led him to discover that the Israeli
Defense Forces (IDF) study critical theory in its military academies. He illustrates how critical theory shapes the
IDF’s thinking about urban warfare. He
quotes from Brigadier-General Aviv Kokhavi, who described the 2002 assault on
Nablus city as “inverse geometry”, by which he means “the reorganization of the
urban syntax by means of a series of micro-tactical actions.”
In more common
language, “reorganization of the urban syntax,” constitutes countering the
saturation of urban spaces by insurgents by creating “overground tunnels”
through densely populated landscape.
These “tunnels” are actually blasted horizontally and vertically through
the walls and ceilings of buildings, often the living rooms, kitchens, and
bedrooms of civilian residencies.
Weizman explains that the IDF tactic was to “redefine inside as outside,
and domestic interiors as thoroughfares.”
He states, “the IDF’s strategy of ‘walking through walls’ involves a
conception of the city as not just the site but also the very medium of warfare
– a flexible, almost liquid medium that is forever contingent and in
flux.” Referencing Stephen Graham,
Weizman maintains, “military urban research institutes and training centres…
have been established to rethink military operations in cities,” which “could
be understood as somewhat similar to the international matrix of élite architectural
academies.”
The IDF was attracted
to post-modern philosophical influences because it destabilized their existing
war making paradigms, which allowed for new ways of thinking about tactics and
strategies. “As far as the military is
concerned,” Weizman states, “urban warfare is the ultimate Postmodern form of
conflict. Belief in a logically structured and single-track battle-plan is lost
in the face of the complexity and ambiguity of the urban reality.” One military instructor told Weizman, “we employ
critical theory primarily in order to critique the military institution
itself.”
The great irony, of
course, is that thinkers like Deleuze and Guattari were seeking radical
transformations in society. As Weizman
explains, they hoped to “challenge the built hierarchy of the capitalist city
and break down distinctions between private and public, inside and outside, use
and function.” Weizman captures the
irony by pointing out how theory that once challenged all forms of colonial
power is now used by the military to enhance colonial and post-colonial
relations of power.
As the IDF reads cities as
texts and uses “syntax” to deconstruct the rule-set governing the logic of the
“sentences” constituting the urban text/form in developing military strategy,
it becomes apparent that understanding the syntax of 21st century
urbanism is an important proposition.
The way we order the urban form and how that order constitutes meaning is
being constituted through the Habitat III process, especially through techniques
like the ordering of knowledge through data collection and reporting by
national governments. The Guidelines and Format for the Preparation
of National Reports, for example, instructs National Habitat Committees to
prepare reports that will serve as a foundation for developing the Habitat III
agenda. The Guidelines appear encompassing in scope, as it calls for written
responses to 42 framing topics, which are ordered into 6 key areas of Habitat
III knowledge. The 6 areas are: urban demography; land and urban planning;
environment and urbanization; urban governance and legislation; urban economy; and housing
and basic services. Defining these areas
of reporting constitute one of the ways Habitat III produces an urban
syntax. A fascinating puzzle
emerges, however. Habitat III guidelines
are silent on the topic of urban insurgency and warfare, even though the
leading military thinkers are using critical theory to deconstruct the syntax
of the urban form in order to construct a new syntax. At the UN Urban Forum in Medellin, or ICLEI’s
Resilient Cities conference the topic of militarized urbanism is absent. Indeed, if one is immersed in reading Habitat
III surveys, conference proceedings, and reports, the topic of militarized
urbanism is missing, as if this important form of urban power/knowledge does
not exist.
There are several possible
solutions to the puzzle. We might assume
that the silence is jurisdictional, that the UN’s mission places its urban
power/knowledge paradigm in a structure independent from the military and
national security state. Given the
history of the tight association between development, especially in the form of
foreign aid, and counterinsurgency we might come to see that the separate
spheres argument is an inadequate explanation.
While militarized urbanism constitutes a reworking of the urban syntax,
it is an immediate grammatical repair, as against a longer term fix that
targets the root causes of insurgency.
From this perspective, Habitat III planners carry out their agenda setting
business without engaging the power/knowledge paradigm of militarized urbanism
because of the normative relationship between development and
counterinsurgency. Habitat IIIs liberal international
epistemic constitutes an agenda designed to reconfigure the urban form so that
the conditions necessary for militarized urbanism are eliminated.
Sources:
Davis, Mike. Planet of
Slums. Paperback ed. London ; New York: Verso, 2007.
Graham, Stephen. Cities Under
Siege: The New Military Urbanism. New
York: Verso, 2011.
Weizman, Eyal. “The Art of
War: Deleuze, Guattari, Deboro, and the Israeli Defence Force.” Mute,
August 3, 2006. Available at: http://www.metamute.org/editorial/articles/art-war-deleuze-guattari-debord-and-israeli-defence-force
UN-Habitat
Urban Visions No. 3. Vision for Habitat
III.
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