Urban design as technology of (counter-) democratic security politics

Abstract

How does architecture operate as a security technology? This contribution sets out how reflexive security research and urban studies approach built environments as political inclusion and exclusion instruments. It first presents how this role is understood to operate in the respective scholarly fields, and then illustrates its ambivalent operation with two mini-case studies centering on Bogota and Zürich. In doing so, the contribution seeks to familiarize readers with architecture-oriented reflexive political analysis, and to draw out main lines of further investigation.