Postwar cities: Conceptualizing and mapping the research agenda

Abstract

Postwar cities are often dangerous, poorly functioning, and hurdles for peace. Current research on postwar cities, however, is largely based on a limited number of “paradigmatic” cases, without a shared understanding of the broader population of cases to which these belong. Important insights therefore remain uncontextualized vis-à-vis broader trends and have an unclear scope of generalizability. The purpose of this article is to promote a global comparativist research agenda that enables systematic research across a spectrum of research foci. First, we conceptualize the postwar city as a city which has experienced war, no longer does, but where fully consolidated peace is not yet present. Second, we operationalize and map postwar cities since 1989, identifying 273 such cities in 45 war-affected states. Third, we provided a typology of contestation in postwar cities. We end by highlighting how our approach advances the research agenda by enabling systematic study of postwar cities, capturing postwar cities more equally across the globe, bringing to the fore numerous understudied cases, and providing a stronger foundation for comparative analysis.