Are armed conflicts becoming more urban?

Abstract

In recent years, cities in countries such as Syria, Ukraine, and Somalia have been sites of major incidents of armed conflict. Such violence has led observers to note that armed conflict is becoming more urbanized in nature and increasingly affecting cities. However, existing research has not been able to ascertain whether armed conflict is gradually more concentrated in cities, for two reasons. First, most studies employ a grid-based design which does not theoretically or operationally correspond to cities. Second, some studies take the city as the unit of analysis, but look only at a few major cities in certain regions of the world, or include a broader range of political violence. To assess whether armed conflict is indeed becoming more urban in character, we analyze global patterns of armed conflict 1989–2017. We match the UCDP Georeferenced Events Dataset to cities with at least 100,000 inhabitants, and analyze over time the share of fatalities incurred by armed conflict. We include violence between organized armed actors (inter- and intrastate), but also conflict-related violence against civilians which captures acts of terrorism. With this novel approach, we identify an overall reduction over time in the share of armed conflict violence taking place in cities.