Urban wars and post-conflict reconstruction: From urbicide to peacebuilding production of knowledge and space in urban environments

This project analyses peacebuilding knowledge practices that seek to make known and produce postconflict urban spaces as distinct objects of intervention.

With the Balkan wars of the 1990s, scholars once again acknowledged the constitutive links between cities and conflicts. Indeed, cities were identified not only as arenas but also as targets of ‘urbicide’ and organised violence.

Peacebuilding production of knowledge

The (re)emergence of urban wars has further meant that cities and urban spaces have become organising objects for peacekeeping and peacebuilding practitioners, be it military or other actors. Still, there is a lack of scholarship on how peace actors make urban environments known, in order to be able to act in and on them.

This project analyses peacebuilding knowledge practices that seek to make known and produce postconflict urban spaces as distinct objects of intervention. Rather than taking knowledge and ways of knowing for granted, then, the project interrogates the practices, processes and conditions of knowledge production, knowledge use and circulation, and knowledge authority in urban interventions.