"FERAL CITIES AND THE SCIENTIFIC WAY OF WARFARE"
The Complex Terrain Laboratory
A Public Lecture and Open Discussion With
Geoff Manaugh and Antoine Bousquet
26 November 2008 19:00 - 21:00
J.Z. Young Lecture Theatre
UCL Anatomy Building, Gower Street, London
Contemporary political discourse on armed violence and insecurity has been largely shaped by references to spatial knowledge, simulation, and control: "human terrain", "urban clutter", "terrorist sanctuaries", "failed states", "core-periphery". The historical counterpoint to this is to be found in the key role the successive technologies of clock, engine, computer, and network have all played in spatializing the practice of warfare. In this context, what implications do "feral" Third World cities, "rogue" cities organized along non-Western ideas of urban space and infrastructure, and "wild" cities reclaimed by nature, have for the battlespaces of today and tomorrow?
Geoff Manaugh is senior editor of Dwell magazine and the author of BLDGBLOG, where he writes "architectural conjecture, urban speculation, and landscape futures."
Dr. Antoine Bousquet is Lecturer in International Relations at Birkbeck College in London, and author of The Scientific Way of Warfare: Order and Chaos on the Battlefields of Modernity (Hurst, 2009).
