[Editor's note: The theme of the Winter 2010-2011 issue of World Policy Journal is “Megalopolis: The City of the 21st Century.” We asked experts, policymakers, and writers from around the world to answer this question: “In the future, what will our cities look like?”]
By Saskia Sassen
Cities have long been sites for conflicts—wars, racism, religious hatred, expulsion of the poor—yet, where national states have historically responded by militarizing conflict, cities have tended to triage conflict through commerce and civic activity. But cities are losing this capacity, becoming sites for asymmetric war and urban violence.
The search for national security today is a source for urban insecurity. We can see the negative impact of this war in the bombings in Madrid, London, Casablanca, Bali, Mumbai, Lahore—as cities apart from the theater of war. What may be good for the protection of the national state apparatus may come at an increasingly high price to major cities.
Saskia Sassen is the Robert S. Lynd Professor of Sociology at Columbia University.
Image via Flickr, user Lee Bennett