Cities Under Siege: The New Military Urbanism 1st Edition

by Stephen Graham (Author)

33 ratings

ISBN-13: 978-1844673155

ISBN-10: 1844673154

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Cities are 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 the spread of political violence through the sites, spaces, infrastructure and symbols of the world’s rapidly expanding metropolitan areas.

Drawing on a wealth of original research, Stephen Graham shows how Western militaries and security forces now perceive all urban terrain as a conflict zone inhabited by lurking shadow enemies. Urban inhabitants have become targets that need to be continually tracked, scanned and controlled. Graham examines the transformation of Western armies into high-tech urban counter-insurgency forces. He looks at the militarization and surveillance of international borders, the use of ‘security’ concerns to suppress democratic dissent, and the enacting of legislation to suspend civilian law. In doing so, he reveals how the New Military Urbanism permeates the entire fabric of urban life, from subway and transport networks hardwired with high-tech ‘command and control’ systems to the insidious militarization of a popular culture corrupted by the all-pervasive discourse of ‘terrorism.’

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Editorial Reviews

Review

“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 Steven 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, author of Hollow Land

“Roll over Jane Jacobs: here’s urban geography as it looks like through the 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, Professor of Geography, University of British Columbia and author of The Colonial Present

“Sharp, lucid and elegant prose ... Graham is consistently insightful and compelling. Cities Under Siege is an indispensable analysis of the dark fantasies that the military imagination is seeking to realise in the coming century.”—Red Pepper

“A rigorously researched, pioneering book packed with disturbing and at times astonishing information.”—Icon

About the Author

Stephen Graham is Professor of Cities and Society at Newcastle University. He is the author or editor of Telecommunications and the City and Splintering Urbanism (both with Simon Marvin), Cities, War and Terrorism and Disrupted Cities: When Infrastructures Fail. His most recent book is Cities Under Siege: The New Military Urbanism.

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Product details

Publisher : Verso; 1st edition (March 29, 2010)
Language : English
Hardcover : 288 pages
ISBN-10 : 1844673154
ISBN-13 : 978-1844673155
Item Weight : 1.8 pounds
Dimensions : 0.65 x 0.15 x 0.95 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #3,557,106 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #3,229 in Political Freedom (Books)
- #5,857 in Sociology of Urban Areas
- #12,423 in Sociology (Books)

Customer Reviews:
33 ratings

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Top reviews from the United States

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Gregor H

Hard to get through

Reviewed in the United States on July 23, 2019

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I have tried numerous times to finish this because I feel the subject matter is important but it is painful to read. Extensively footnoted, endlessly and needlessly verbose and without any flow or rhythm.

This isn’t writing that makes you want to read.

One person found this helpful

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AlanWarner

WELCOME TO THE MILITARY STATE

Reviewed in the United States on November 13, 2014

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Ever since the events of 9/11 the U.S. and most notably Israel have turned their countries into occupied territories patrolled by police departments trained in and equipped with military tactics and equipment chapter 7 of this book LESSONS IN URBICIDE clearly detail what this process consists of, we the 99% are being herded into locations where the 1% can easily control, monitor, and eliminate the undesirables, if you think I am making this stuff up then I urge you to buy and read this book.

One person found this helpful

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Dimitrios Markakis

Excellent, a must read

Reviewed in the United States on June 6, 2018

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in depth analysis of the urban militarisation and the future that it shapes. A lot to think about, while we quest what’s going in our societies

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Charles L. Decker Jr.

The dangers of militarized police tactics clearly explained.

Reviewed in the United States on June 21, 2019

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Painful to read but a fascinating look at asymmetrical war fighting recycled as law enforcement.

One person found this helpful

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John J. Lapham

A Crystal Ball Glimpse Of Our Present And Future Lives In The Midst Of Modern Warfare In Our Cities

Reviewed in the United States on November 14, 2014

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If you can bear the neo-Marxist cant this book is an outstanding introduction to the 21st Century battlefield transformation from trenches and hilltops to urban areas where wars are fought "among the people". It is a worthy read because of its near complete coverage of all of the aspects of urban warfare including the outdated practice of "rubbling" a city to the new tactics of merely disabling infrastructures such as water, electricity, etc. This revolution in warfare has been brought about by the disappearance of modern standing armies of millions of soldiers and the emergence of technically savvy soldiers who are fighting asymmetrical warfare against non-state actors who occupy buildings in the midst of functional cities. There is much demonization of the United States and Israel in this tome but the information given is worth the twaddle of the left leaning sociologists who contributed to it. What the reader can take away from this left leaning view of the future is that we are in for a long war and that much of it will be fought among us in the cities we inhabit. Welcome to WW IV. This book will help you interpret what you are seeing as it unfolds.

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A Kestner

Book

Reviewed in the United States on July 12, 2014

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Came in great condition, my brother is excited to read it soon.

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Michael Gransee

Four Stars

Reviewed in the United States on February 3, 2016

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Required for college

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Amazon Customer

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United States on February 15, 2016

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Received on time with no complaints

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Top reviews from other countries

B.G. Phillips

An agonising read!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 10, 2012

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I was looking forward to reading this exposition on the 'new military urbanism' on the recommendation of a friend, but what I found was disappointing to say the least. The first half of this book was an excruciating plough through a veritable swamp of post-post-modern verbiage, repetition, unforgivable errors and grammatical nonsense (Is proof-reading a dead art?). I would have thought, given the author's political leanings, that he would have aimed at as wide an audience as possible rather than burying any useful information under the inaccessible rubble of pointless academic theory, specious jargon and Americanisms worthy of G.W.Bush himself. For example,I have never heard the word 'carcerality' in my entire life, and frankly, I never hope to again. Apart from this pearl of gibberish, there is the question of the, seemingly unending, over-use of theoretical terms such as 'Othering', 'archipelago' and 'Bordering' (like the author was looking to score some points in the multiple use of conceptual terminology). I have rarely encountered a book so impossibly, and nigh-on impenetrably, written as this, almost as if he set out to sabotage his own work as he wrote, because his writing style seemed designed to put the reader off.

Concepts were lumped together in shopping list-type sentence structures over and over again, breaking any narrative flow that had been built up, jarring the reader with their frequency and their consequent annoyance factor. Such as-
P.62:
'The second trend is the unprecedented extent to which the new military urbanism fuses and blurs civilian and military applications of the technologies for control, surveillance, communications, simulation and targeting'
P.63:
'Among these threats are mobile pathogens, malign computer codes, financial crashes, 'illegal' migration, transnational terrorism, state infrastructural warfare, and the environmental extremes triggered by climate change'
P.65:
'Technologies such as the internet, virtual reality, jet travel, data mining, closed-circuit TV, rocketry, remotecontrol, microwaves, radar, global positioning, networked computers, wireless communications, satellite surveillance, containerization and logistics-...'

This happens over and over and over again- straining the readers patience, not unlike certain forms of 'water-torture'...

Then there is the small matter of mentioning, or referring to, subjects of seemingly great import to the main thrust of the book, which are simply not expanded upon. They are just 'dropped in' and then simply left behind. I got the feeling the author was more interested in sounding 'clever' rather than delivering any actual, factual information to his reader. The core facts of this book, (and there are, without doubt, some incredible nuggets of information), remain buried beneath theory and cultural blather- and the reader really has to persist to dig them out- and they really should be widely known!

I almost gave up reading this weighty tome, with its miniscule typeface, but I persisted, because I wanted to know of the disgusting, sinister, anti-democratic and planet destroying future the Pentagon and the corporations are planning for us...I made it to the end, and I do not share the author's conclusions that 'faith in Obama' (lol) or the power of a handful of 'artist-activists' can avert what is plainly a nightmarish, cybernetic 'iron cage' being built for humanity. Only open revolt, and a truly 'Full Spectrum Resistance' has a chance in defeating the future hell now being designed and tested by the lunatics who have taken over the asylum...

12 people found this helpful

Symington

Three Stars

Reviewed in Canada on December 9, 2015

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A gift. No complaints from the recipient.

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