Cities, War, and Terrorism: Towards an Urban Geopolitics Paperback - 2004

First line

Arguably, humankind has expended almost as much energy, effort, and thought on the attempted annihilation and killing of cities as it has on their planning, construction, and growth (Berman, 1996).

From the rear cover

Cities, War, and Terrorism is the first book to look critically at the ways in which warfare, terrorism, and counter-terrorism policies intersect in cities in the post-Cold War period. The book brings together new writing by the world's leading analysts of urban space and military and terrorist violence from the fields of geography, architecture, planning, sociology, critical theory, politics, international relations, and military studies. Arguing that urban spaces are now the critical, strategic sites of geopolitical struggle, the contributors combine cutting-edge theoretical reflections with path-breaking empirical case studies. They provide up-to-date analyses of a range of specific urban sites, including those involved in the Cold War, the Balkan wars, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the 9/11 attacks, the "War on Terror" attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq, and urban anti-globalization battles.

Taken as a whole, the book offers both specialist and non-specialist readers a sophisticated perspective on the violence that is engulfing our increasingly urbanized world.