Description
The War on Terror brought about a conscious understanding of the ways in which technologies of warfare and counterinsurgency were being spatially reoriented. The militarisation of policing and urban surveillance were evidence of the ‘war coming home’, and the parallels between the management of conflict zones and urban governance provoked a reevaluation of state violence, coloniality, and empire. Our contemporary moment has retained these practices though in a new context: that of the crisis of the liberal international order. It is within the context of this crisis that we see the emergence of ‘technological solutions’, namely the Smart City, that ostensibly ensure security in this increasingly unsafe world. This paper investigates the place of the Smart City within this current framework of permanent crisis, its origins in colonial counterinsurgency, and how it creates a pipeline through which urban space can absorb the infrastructure of violence cultivated within the domain of militarism. Through the adoption of this infrastructure, a reconstitution of the border and a reformation of citizenship take place, and a new political space governed by the symbiosis of private corporate and state interest begins to emerge. The context of Israeli occupation and segregation has been selected as a portal for the exploration of these themes. The analysis will subsequently identify the particularities of this process as part of the formation of an apparatus of the laboratory, a strategy for the preservation and proliferation of empire in the moment of contemporary crisis.
