The Case against Megacities

Abstract

ABSTRACT: Certain kinds of urban areas may become increasingly common for armed conflict in 21st century. However, current notions that megacity will emerge as a primary battlespace for advanced armies is an unproven hypothesis. US strategists need to avoid rushing to replace population-centric counterinsurgency with a paradigm of population-centric megacity operations. A preferable path is to develop a long-term and systematic interdisciplinary urban warfare lens based on careful research and analysis that is both historically informed and future-oriented. ********** It has generally proved easier to demonstrate that defense has played an important role in many aspects of city than to show that city has played a role in military science. G. J. Ashworth, War and City (1991) One of major weaknesses of recent American strategy is its relative neglect of an urban imperative. The study of urban warfare continues to remain little more than a sub-field of strategic studies with a literature largely unrelated to world of contemporary security policy. (1) For these reasons, it is a great pity publication of US Army's June 2014, Megacities and United States Army: Preparing for a Complex and Uncertain Future is such a disappointing attempt to invigorate relationship between strategy and city. (2) The report's central premise that megacities--defined as cities with populations over ten million--now represent the epicenters of human activity on planet and, as such, they will generate most of friction which compels future military intervention is a selective interpretation of highly complex process of 21st century global urbanization. Moreover, suggestion that scale of megacities defies military's ability to apply historical methods and therefore is fundamentally a new operating environment to which Army must shape itself and discover new approaches is exaggerated. Such a view overlooks continuing value of a body of post-Cold War military research, some of which was, ironically, commissioned by US Army itself. A final flaw in Megacities and United States Army is its typology, which by focusing mainly on a systems-analysis methodology illuminates document's neglect of relevant research material on cities emanating from long-established field of urban studies. (3) In light of above weaknesses, this article argues US Army would be ill-served to concentrate overly on megacities as a primary strategic environment for three further reasons. First, megacities are not necessarily principal urban areas in which American forces may be called upon to fight in future. Rather, middleweight and smaller cities remain just as likely to provide important operational environments in years ahead. Second, megacities are not suigeneris', they do not represent a novel military phenomenon. The military processes of operating in any city are drawn from fundamentals of urban warfare tried and tested by land forces since at least middle of twentieth century. Future technological developments notwithstanding, most fundamentals of urban warfare are likely to remain relevant for general-purpose forces even in a conglomeration on scale of a megacity. Third, US Army needs to embed study of megacities into a rigorous program of long-term urban war research that is both interdisciplinary in theory and interagency in practice. Such a program must systematically integrate military concerns with relevant aspects of municipal management, urban geography, and city planning. Cities as Strategic Sites: The Growing Importance of Middleweight City In terms of demographic disposition, greatest revolutionary shift of first quarter of twenty-first century is movement of people from countryside to city. In 2007, half world passed benchmark of fifty percent of its population being located in urban areas while urban demography now grows at some 65 million every year--a breakneck rate of speed equivalent to creation of seven new Chicagos annually. …