Insurgency and the City

Abstract

Cities have been viewed as pivotal locations in insurgencies and rebellions throughout history, as the initial locations of protest and primary sites of political violence against ruling authorities or as secondary or ancillary places of conflict but ultimate objectives in such struggles. The spatial significance of cities, therefore, has led theorists to categorize insurgent approaches into three different strategies through which insurgencies can be waged: an urban, a rural, or a combined approach in which rural and urban strategies are employed in concert. The strategy of particular insurgent movements has largely varied by geo-historical context, and success or failure of a movement to gain power clearly depends on a large number of factors, many of which are inherently geographic. Urban landscapes provide distinct advantages and disadvantages to insurgents and counterinsurgents, yet the literature offers often contradictory conclusions and findings while failing to adequately distinguish or define the differences between rural and urban. As levels and rates of urbanization continue to increase, together with the subsequent urbanization of insurgency evident in recent decades, trends suggest urban centers of all scales – not just cities – will remain the spatial center of gravity during insurgencies. This paper provides a survey of the literature on insurgencies and the city and offers an appraisal of these theorizations in the context of insurgencies within the last decade. In particular, this paper seeks to build upon these works to propose a framework to better understand insurgencies as a spatial process in urban environments.