Political and Experiential Geographies of Militarised Urban Europe

军事化城市欧洲的政治和经验地理

• 批准号: 2740592
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: University of Birmingham
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Studentship
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2022 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=studentship-2740592
• 关键词: Political; Experiential; Geographies; Militarised; Urban

Since 2015, vehicle-as-weapon (VAW) attacks have upsurged in Europe, targeting everyday urban spaces within Nice, Berlin, Stockholm, Barcelona and London. In response, cities across Europe erected military-style concrete barriers to protect crowded public spaces. However, these temporary measures have typically become permanently embedded within everyday streetscapes, with dramatic implications for everyday urban life. This project will investigate how militarised responses have become the legitimate and default solution to securitising VAW attacks in Europe.Conceptually, this project is informed by geographical scholarship arguing that militarised security can radically (re)shape how cities are experienced by urban populations. Scholars are concerned these responses undermine the public spaces that encapsulate the very lifeblood of cities and amplify feelings of insecurity that such measures were installed to ameliorate. However, the experiential implications of contemporary militarised security in European cities have received limited scholarly attention, (re)producing a 'disembodied' understanding. Therefore, it is urgent to understand how such responses are affecting the everyday experiences of urban citizens. This project's emphasis on militarised security is complemented by an interwoven focus on (post-)COVID-19 urban transformations. Materially, cities are accelerating pedestrianisation to enable social distancing and businesses to utilise outdoor space. Alongside securitising virus transmission, cities are also challenged to securitise VAW attacks against these reimagined, potentially unsecured, pedestrianised spaces. However, pedestrianisation has concurrently underpinned previous efforts to secure public spaces through subtler and integrative alterations to the built environment (e.g., street furniture), restricting vehicular access without detracting from its vibrancy. Thus, as cities undergo unprecedented transformations adjusting to a (post-)COVID-19 world, this provides a novel opportunity to identify how cities are adapting, and can adapt, to securitising virus transmission and VAW threats without militarising the urban landscape. This project addresses the following questions: 1. How and to what extent can the mechanisms of legitimation of militarised responses to VAW be studied and deconstructed? 2. In what ways can the everyday experiences of urban citizens to contemporary militarised security be understood? 3. How do pandemic and security urbanism interact, and to what extent does, and can, such hybridity produce secure yet socially acceptable urban spaces? This project employs a comparative case-study approach between Manchester and Milan, attending to how their contrasting genealogies (i.e., attack history, pandemic response) inform contemporary responses, geopolitical constructions of legitimacy and everyday (un)acceptance amongst citizens. Moreover, Milan's COVID-19 recovery project Strade Aperte [Open Streets], constitutes an empirical case to investigate whether such pedestrianisation securitises VAW and COVID-19 without militarising urban centres. This project involves: (i) semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders to interrogate the framing(s) of VAW and pandemic agendas; (ii) discourse analysis to deconstruct the delineation of VAW threats, prescription of policy solutions and the 'conditions' to facilitate acceptance amongst citizens; and (iii) walking interviews with residents around each city's militarised security to understand how embodied experiences are conditioned by and emerge through such spatial encounters.This project pursues ESRC priorities by addressing concerns over pandemic responses and building enhanced, yet proportionate, urban resilience in unprecedented times, whilst advancing understanding of how innovative theoretical and methodological approaches can capture the experiential implications of militarised security.

自2015年以来，车辆即武器(VAW)袭击在欧洲激增，目标是尼斯、柏林、斯德哥尔摩、巴塞罗那和伦敦的日常城市空间。作为回应，欧洲各地的城市都竖起了军用风格的混凝土屏障，以保护拥挤的公共空间。然而，这些临时措施通常已经永久性地嵌入到日常街道景观中，对日常城市生活产生了戏剧性的影响。这个项目将调查军事化的反应如何成为欧洲VAW袭击证券化的合法和默认解决方案。从概念上讲，这个项目是由地理学者提供信息的，他们认为军事化的安全可以从根本上(重新)塑造城市人口对城市的体验。学者们担心，这些应对措施破坏了概括城市命脉的公共空间，并放大了人们的不安全感，而这些措施的设立是为了改善这种不安全感。然而，当代军事化安全在欧洲城市中的经验意义在学术上受到的关注有限，(重新)产生了一种“非实体”的理解。因此，迫切需要了解这些反应是如何影响城市居民的日常体验的。该项目强调军事化安全的同时，还相互交织地关注(后)新冠肺炎时代的城市转型。在物质上，城市正在加快步行化，以实现社会距离和企业利用户外空间。除了将病毒传播证券化外，城市还面临着将针对这些重新想象的、可能不安全的步行街空间的VAW攻击证券化的挑战。然而，行人专用区同时支持了以往通过对建筑环境(如街道设施)进行更微妙和综合的改变来保护公共空间的努力，在不影响其活力的情况下限制车辆通行。因此，随着城市经历前所未有的变革，以适应(后)新冠肺炎世界，这提供了一个新的机会，以确定城市如何在不使城市景观军事化的情况下，以及如何能够适应病毒传播和VAW威胁的证券化。这个项目解决了以下问题：1.如何以及在多大程度上可以研究和解构针对VAW的军事化反应的合法化机制？2.如何理解城市公民对当代军事化安全的日常体验？3.流行病和安全城市化是如何相互作用的，这种混合在多大程度上能够产生安全但社会可以接受的城市空间？本项目采用曼彻斯特和米兰之间的比较案例研究方法，关注它们不同的谱系(即袭击历史、流行病应对)如何影响当代反应、合法性的地缘政治构建以及公民的日常(联合国)接受度。此外，米兰的新冠肺炎恢复项目Strade Aperte[开放街道]构成了一个实证案例，以调查这种行人专用区是否在没有使城市中心军事化的情况下使VAW和新冠肺炎证券化。该项目涉及：(I)与关键利益攸关方进行半结构化访谈，以审问VAW和大流行病议程的框架(S)；(Ii)话语分析，以解构VAW威胁的描绘、政策解决方案的处方和促进公民接受的“条件”；以及(Iii)实地采访每个城市军事化安全周围的居民，以了解体现的体验如何受到此类空间遭遇的制约并通过这些空间遭遇而浮现。本项目通过解决对大流行应对的担忧，在史无前例的时代建立增强的、但相称的城市韧性，同时增进对创新理论和方法方法如何捕捉军事化安全的体验影响的理解，从而追求ESRC的优先事项。