Cities Under Siege: The New Military Urbanism - Hardcover

Stephen Graham

3.8

164 ratings by Goodreads

9781844673155: Cities Under Siege: The New Military Urbanism

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1844673154 ISBN 13: 9781844673155

Publisher: Verso Books, 2010

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Cities have become the new battleground of our increasingly urban world. From the slums of the global South to the wealthy financial centers of the West, "Cities Under Siege" traces how political violence now operates through the sites, spaces, infrastructures and symbols of the world's rapidly expanding metropolitan areas. Drawing on a wealth of original research, Stephen Graham shows how Western and Israeli militaries and security forces now perceive all urban terrain as a real or imagined conflict zone inhabited by lurking, shadow enemies, and urban inhabitants as targets that need to be continually tracked, scanned, controlled and targeted.He examines the transformation of Western militaries into high-tech urban counter-insurgency forces, the militarization and surveillance of March international borders, the labelling as 'terrorist' of democratic dissent and Politics/Geography protests, and the enacting of legislation suspending 'normal' civilian law. In doing so, he reveals how the New Military Urbanism now permeates the entire fabric of our urban lives, from subway and transport systems hardwired with high-tech 'command and control' systems and the infection of civilian policy with all-pervasive 'security' discourses; to the pervasive militarization of popular culture.

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Review:

"Roll over Jane Jacobs: here's urban geography as it looks like through they eye of a Predator at 25,000 feet. A fundamental and very scary report from the global red zone." -- Mike Davis, author of Planet of Slums

"A brilliant critique of the deadly embrace of military violence and contemporary urbanism. Steve Graham writes with immense power and lucidity, layering detail over detail and image over image to expose the shadows that are falling across cities around the world. This is not a dystopian future but the present, and Graham compels us to open our eyes to the dangers military urbanism poses to contemporary democracy." -- Derek Gregory, author of The Colonial Present.

"Cities Under Siege is a detailed and intense forensics of new urban frontiers, laboratories of the extreme where experiments with new urban conditions are currently being undertaken. In this fascinating new work Stephen Graham has created a novel concept of the city, looking at war as the limit condition of urbanity and calling for an alternative urban life yet to come." -- Eyal Weizman, director, Centre for Research Architecture, Goldsmiths, University of London, and author of Hollow Land. --Eyal Weizman, director, Centre for Research Architecture, Goldsmiths, University of London, and author of Hollow Land.

"Graham builds on the writings of Mike Davis and Naomi Klein who have attempted to expose the hidden corporate and military structures behind everyday life...superb...in its forensic rage, Cities under Siege is in some ways close to the spirit that provoked the Situationists to rebel against authoritarian Paris in 1968." ----Edwin Heathcote, Financial Times

"A rigorously researched, pioneering book packed with disturbing and at times astonishing information." ---- Anna Minton, Icon

About the Author:

STEPHEN GRAHAM is Professor of Human Geography at Durham University, and previously taught at MIT, among other universities. Among his books are Cities, War and Terrorism, the Cybercities Reader and (with Simon Marvin) Splintering Urbanism. He writes for, among others, New Left Review, the Guardian and New Statesman.

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