Studying the Postwar City Through Urban Conflicts over Peace(s)

Abstract

This chapter theorises the postwar city in order to enable its study. It first theorises the postwar as not the given and linear transition from war to a universal and objective peace, but rather as permeated by conflicts over peace(s) in which heterogeneous and subjective peace(s) strive to socio-politically order society in diametrically different ways. The city is then theorised as constituted by heterogeneity, density, openness and permeability, and centrality within its wider socio-political context while functioning through mixing, conflict, accommodation, creativity, and fragmentation. This unique combination makes it a research object—in the sense that it affects the nature of whatever research foci might be of interest—as well as gives it potential to both transcend and reinforce continuities of war in peace. The postwar city is subsequently theorised as a city where war is over yet the socio-political ordering of society remains contested through urban conflicts over peace(s).