Second Cold War Cities: Geopolitics and Urbanization in the 21st Century

The US emerged from the Cold War as the world’s undisputed superpower, and many analysts in the West celebrated the ‘end of history’ as the global economy became increasingly integrated. Recently history has lurched forward, driven by the US-China rivalry. This has been conceptualized as the ‘Second Cold War,’ and this conference will explore how it is reshaping cities and urbanization around the world.

From Magdeburg to Mombasa, Sihanoukville to Kenya’s Silicon Savannah, urban transformations are increasingly conditioned by national security priorities, industrial policy designed to augment the geostrategic objectives powerful states, the fragmentation of the global economy, and [the threat of] armed conflict.

Drawing inspiration from Cold War historians who interpret cities as fields of contestation, showcases of national progress, and “contact zones” where diverse actors could meet, this conference will examine how contemporary geopolitical rivalry is influencing cities—and, in turn, how cities are shaping geopolitics writ large. It will provide a forum for empirically rich and conceptually innovative research into today’s geopolitical urban condition. Historians have shown that there was no single archetypal ‘Cold War city’; rather, Cold War dynamics shaped cities in varied and uneven ways. Likewise, there is not a single archetypal “Second Cold War city,” and we aim to bring together scholars whose research accounts for the diverse ways that cities and urbanization relate to contemporary geopolitics.

Contributions will account for the ways that contemporary geopolitics differs from the Cold War. Whereas the US and USSR competed to build territorial blocs, the Second Cold War is primarily a competition between the US and China for control over transnational networks of finance, production, digital systems, and infrastructure. Cities are often key nodes in these networks, and as such, they are central to geopolitical competition. However, they are not merely stages upon which great powers act, but on occasion urban actors, events, and processes, can shape geopolitics writ large. For example, municipal governments may engage in sub-national diplomacy at odds with national security priorities, or the inter-city networks forged by non-state actors can undermine the efforts of powerful states to shape economic geography.

Papers will explore how geopolitical dynamics influence urban processes such as governance, infrastructure, land-use, political ecology, as well as everyday life, and in turn, how (inter-)urban processes are influencing contemporary geopolitics.

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Host or Publisher Global Development Institute (GDI)