# When Cities Fail



## CQB (Oct 6, 2013)

http://gizmodo.com/what-happens-when-cities-fall-apart-1440820493

Military strategist David Kilcullen was in New York City earlier this week to talk about the future of urban warfare at the World Policy Institute here in Manhattan. Gizmodo tagged along to learn more about "future conflicts and future cities," as Kilcullen describes it, and to see what really happens when urban environments fail—when cities fall apart or disintegrate into ungovernable canyons of semi-derelict buildings ruled by cartels, terrorist groups, and paramilitary gangs.

Kilcullen's overall thesis is a compelling one: remote desert battlegrounds and impenetrable mountain tribal areas are not, in fact, where we will encounter the violence of tomorrow. For Kilcullen—indeed, for many military theorists writing today—the war in Afghanistan was not the new normal, but a kind of geographic fluke, an anomaly in the otherwise clear trend for conflicts of an increasingly urban nature.

But if cities—particularly in the world's coastal, developing regions—are such a hotbed for future aggression, as Kilcullen and other military theorists suggest, then how can we develop a new understanding of the city that would help us to, in a sense, design away this growing problem? How can both civil infrastructure and urban governance be made more resilient to become defenses against collapse? Kilcullen, a former soldier with the Australian military and a survivor of many an ambush during his time in Afghanistan, said repeatedly that there is no military solution here. If we want to war-proof our cities, so to speak, we need more than guns and ammo.


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## pardus (Oct 7, 2013)

I have to look into this a lot more, and into Kilcullen before I can really form a proper response. That said, I'm not impressed out of the gate.


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## CQB (Oct 7, 2013)

I'm in two minds myself, it ties in with Firemedics post and vid about Philly in a loose way and there has to be a way to solve that awful waste. CPTED gets a mention albeit in an oblique way with the broken window theory and what he proposes is like CPTED on steroids, but I'm not sure if it would get traction. Architects didn't really have much time for it. 
I'm going to check it out as the city is my AO.


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## CQB (Oct 15, 2013)

pardus said:


> I have to look into this a lot more, and into Kilcullen before I can really form a proper response. That said, I'm not impressed out of the gate.



Brief bio, i tried to find something more precise but this will give you an idea. 

http://www.thenation.com/article/reviving-vietnam-war-tactics

"Kilcullen, an Australian PhD who served for twenty-one years in the Australian army, was the "chief adviser on counterinsurgency operations" to Petraeus in planning the 2007 US troop surge. He also served as chief strategist in the State Department's counterterrorism office in 2005 and 2006, and has been employed in Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, the Horn of Africa and Southeast Asia".


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## CQB (Oct 23, 2013)

I'm just diving in to the book now. The question is can you keep a city safe, preserving urban flow without locking it up completely in the name of safety and security? And if so, can this be retrofitted to an existing city to make it safer?


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## CQB (Oct 26, 2013)

Now it's interesting as the author has identified the conflict climate of the future in his estimation as littoral, with a tech savvy population, hugely chaotic & urban.


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## DA SWO (Oct 26, 2013)

CQB said:


> Now it's interesting as the author has identified the conflict climate of the future in his estimation as littoral, with a tech savvy population, hugely chaotic & urban.


Hmm, sounds like a China scenario to me.


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## Flagg (Oct 27, 2013)

I'm a fan of Kilcullen's books.

I reckon his stuff is fairly easy for even the uninitiated to digest.

What I'm taking from it is the following:

1) Should the west be looking at hybrid law enforcement/paramilitary parallels to US Army Special Forces(with specialist SME attachments)?

Law Enforcement A-teams with language and people skills for capacity and network building with attached OGA/NGO SMEs on ultralocal political, economic, social "systems of systems".

It seems like a law enforcement LED, and OGA/military SUPPORTED nut to crack.

2)Is urban pseudo ops part of the future for containing the worst non permissive urban areas?

3)I'd like to put a stake in the ground for prior art on "slumlord" used in the context of urban warlord, NOT in the traditional real estate context. :)

To me the future seems like Gangs of New York/Tammany Hall mixed with Hezbollah and Pablo Escobar.

I saw a doco a few years ago about drug dealers in Brazilian favelas. The boss was a kid who was local judge, jury, executioner, complaints department, bank, social services provider, etc. The drug money was just revenue for ultra local governance operations. 

I perceive it almost like Huxley's Brave New World where the seperation between centrally controlled society and the savages is defined by the extent of Google Street View.

Just my 0.02c


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## Flagg (Oct 27, 2013)

CQB said:


> I'm just diving in to the book now. The question is can you keep a city safe, preserving urban flow without locking it up completely in the name of safety and security? And if so, can this be retrofitted to an existing city to make it safer?



 Kilcullen and crew are using biological/physiological/metabolic analogies in the book.

Continuing down that track let's use the example of heart disease and the circulatory system. Bypass and transplant surgery requires tools like heart/lung machines. 

What are those tools when dealing with a corrosive semi/non permissive urban environment?

What are those tools when each urban circulatory system requires a bespoke non-templated solution?

While quite enlightening, what I take away from this is the thought of highly experimental surgery.


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