Editing City (section)

=== Warfare ===
[[File:The Second World War 1939-45- Victory and Aftermath IND5196.jpg|thumb|The [[Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki|atomic bombing]] of [[Hiroshima]] on 6 August 1945 devastated the city and led to [[Japanese Instrument of Surrender|Imperial Japan's surrender]] and the end of [[World War II]].]]
Cities play a crucial strategic role in warfare due to their economic, demographic, symbolic, and political centrality. For the same reasons, they are targets in [[asymmetric warfare]]. Many cities throughout history were founded under military auspices, a great many have incorporated [[fortification]]s, and military principles continue to [[military urbanism|influence urban design]].{{sfn | Latham | McCormack | McNamara | McNeill | 2009 | pp=127–128}} Indeed, war may have served as the social rationale and economic basis for the very earliest cities.<ref name=Mumfurd1961war>Mumford (1961), pp. 39–46. "As the physical means increased, this one-sided power mythology, sterile, indeed hostile to life, pushed its way into every corner of the urban scene and found, in the ''new'' institution of organized war, its completest expression. [...] Thus both the physical form and the institutional life of the city, from the very beginning to the urban implosion, were shaped in no small measure by the irrational and magical purposes of war. From this source sprang the elaborate system of fortifications, with walls, ramparts, towers, canals, ditches, that continued to characterize the chief historic cities, apart from certain special cases—as during the Pax Romana—down to the eighteenth century. [...] War brought concentration of social leadership and political power in the hands of a weapons-bearing minority, abetted by a priesthood exercising sacred powers and possessing secret but valuable scientific and magical knowledge."</ref><ref name=Ashworth1991p12 />

Powers engaged in [[geopolitics|geopolitical]] conflict have established fortified settlements as part of military strategies, as in the case of [[garrison]] towns, America's [[Strategic Hamlet Program]] during the [[Vietnam War]], and [[Israeli settlement]]s in Palestine.<ref>Ashworth (1991). "In more recent years, planned networks of defended settlements as part of military strategies can be found in the pacification programmes of what has become the conventional wisdom of anti-insurgency operations. Connected networks of protected settlements are inserted as islands of government control into insurgent areas—either defensively to separate existing populations from insurgents or aggressively as a means of extending control over areas—as used by the British in South Africa (1899–1902) and Malaya (1950–3) and by the Americans in Cuba (1898) and Vietnam (1965–75). These were generally small settlements and intended as much for local security as offensive operations. / The planned settlement policy of the State of Israel, however, has been both more comprehensive and has longer-term objectives. [...] These settlements provide a source of armed manpower, a defence in depth of a vulnerable frontier area and islands of cultural and political control in the midst of a potentially hostile population, thus continuing a tradition of the use of such settlements as part of similar policies in that area which is over 2,000 years old."</ref> While [[Philippine–American War|occupying]] the [[Philippines]], the US Army ordered local people to concentrate in cities and towns, in order to isolate committed insurgents and battle freely against them in the countryside.<ref>See Brigadier General [[J. Franklin Bell]]'s telegraphic circular to all station commanders, 8 December 1901, in Robert D. Ramsey III, ''[http://usacac.army.mil/cac2/cgsc/carl/download/csipubs/ramseyop25.pdf A Masterpiece of Counterguerrilla Warfare: BG J. Franklin Bell in the Philippines, 1901–1902] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170216151944/http://usacac.army.mil/cac2/cgsc/carl/download/csipubs/ramseyop25.pdf |date=16 February 2017 }}'', Long War Series, Occasion Paper 25; Fort Leavenworth, Kansas: Combat Studies Institute Press, US Army Combined Arms Center; pp. 45–46. "Commanding officers will also see that orders are at once given and distributed to all the inhabitants within the jurisdiction of towns over which they exercise supervision, informing them of the danger of remaining outside of these limits and that unless they move by December 25th from outlying barrios and districts with all their movable food supplies, including rice, palay, chickens, live stock, etc., to within the limits of the zone established at their own or nearest town, their property (found outside of said zone at said date) will become liable to confiscation or destruction."</ref><ref>Maj. Eric Weyenberg, U.S. Army, ''[http://www.dtic.mil/docs/citations/AD1001905 Population Isolation in the Philippine War: A Case Study] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170608222231/http://www.dtic.mil/docs/citations/AD1001905 |date=8 June 2017 }}''; School of Advanced Military Studies, United States Army Command and General Staff College, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas; January 2015.</ref>

During [[World War II]], national governments on occasion declared certain cities [[open city|open]], effectively [[surrender (military)|surrendering]] them to an advancing enemy in order to avoid damage and bloodshed. Urban warfare proved decisive, however, in the [[Battle of Stalingrad]], where Soviet forces repulsed German occupiers, with extreme casualties and destruction. In an era of [[low-intensity conflict]] and rapid urbanization, cities have become sites of long-term conflict waged both by foreign occupiers and by local governments against [[insurgency]].<ref name=Davis2004 /><ref>Ashworth (1991), p. 3. Citing L.C. Peltier and G.E. Pearcy, ''Military Geography'' (1966).</ref> Such warfare, known as [[counterinsurgency]], involves techniques of surveillance and [[psychological warfare]] as well as [[close combat]],<ref>R.D. McLaurin & R. Miller. ''[http://www.dtic.mil/get-tr-doc/pdf?AD=ADA219359 Urban Counterinsurgency: Case Studies and Implications for U.S. Military Forces] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170629092550/http://www.dtic.mil/get-tr-doc/pdf?AD=ADA219359 |date=29 June 2017 }}''. Springfield, VA: Abbott Associates, October 1989. Produced for U.S. Army Human Engineering Laboratory at [[Aberdeen Proving Ground]].</ref> and functionally extends modern urban [[crime prevention]], which already uses concepts such as [[defensible space theory|defensible space]].<ref>Ashworth (1991), pp. 91–93. "However, some specific sorts of crime, together with those antisocial activities which may or may not be treated as crime (such as vandalism, graffiti daubing, littering and even noisy or boisterous behavior), do play various roles in the process of insurgency. This leads in consequence to defensive reactions on the part of those responsible for public security, and by individual citizens concerned for their personal safety. The authorities react with situational crime prevention as part of the armoury of urban defense, and individuals fashion their behavior according to an 'urban geography of fear'."</ref>

Although capture is the more common objective, warfare has in some cases spelled complete destruction for a city. Mesopotamian [[Cuneiform script#List of major cuneiform tablet discoveries|tablets]] and [[ruins]] attest to such destruction,<ref>Adams (1981), p. 132 "Physical destruction and ensuing decline of population were certain to be particularly severe in the case of cities that joined unsuccessful rebellions, or whose ruling dynasts were overcome by others in abbtle. The traditional lamentations provide eloquently stylized literary accounts of this, while in other cases the combinations of archaeological evidence with the testimony of a city's like Ur's victorious opponent as to its destruction grounds the world of metaphor in harsh reality (Brinkman 1969, pp. 311–312)."</ref> as does the Latin motto ''[[Carthago delenda est]]''.<ref>Fabien Limonier, "[http://www.persee.fr/doc/rea_0035-2004_1999_num_101_3_4773 Rome et la destruction de Carthage: un crime gratuit?] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180602133751/https://www.persee.fr/doc/rea_0035-2004_1999_num_101_3_4773 |date=2 June 2018 }}" ''Revue des Études Anciennes'' 101(3).</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last=Kiernan |first=Ben |date=August 2004 |title=The First Genocide: Carthage, 146 BC |url=https://gsp.yale.edu/sites/default/files/first_genocide.pdf |url-status=live |journal=Diogenes|volume=51 |issue=3 |pages=27–39 |doi=10.1177/0392192104043648 |s2cid=143199778 |issn=0392-1921 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170516201720/http://gsp.yale.edu/sites/default/files/first_genocide.pdf |archive-date=2017-05-16}}</ref> Since the [[atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki]] and throughout the [[Cold War]], [[Nuclear strategy|nuclear strategists]] continued to contemplate the use of "[[countervalue|counter-value]]" targeting: crippling an enemy by annihilating its valuable cities, rather than [[counterforce|aiming primarily at its military forces]].<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Westou |first=Burns H. |title=Nuclear Weapons versus International Law: A Contextual Reassessment |url=http://lawjournal.mcgill.ca/userfiles/other/7673710-westou.pdf |url-status=dead |journal=McGill Law Journal |volume=28 |pages=577 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171010010611/http://lawjournal.mcgill.ca/userfiles/other/7673710-westou.pdf |archive-date=2017-10-10 |quote=As noted above, nuclear weapons designed for countervalue or city-killing purposes tend to be of the strategic class, with known yields of deployed warheads averaging somewhere between two and three times and 1500 times the firepower of the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.}}</ref><ref>Dallas Boyd, "[http://www.au.af.mil/au/ssq/digital/pdf/Spring16/Boyd.pdf Revealed Preference and the Minimum Requirements of Nuclear Deterrence] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170131081833/http://www.au.af.mil/au/ssq/digital/pdf/Spring16/Boyd.pdf |date=2017-01-31 }}"; ''Strategic Studies Quarterly'', Spring 2016.</ref>