ABSTRACT
In his analysis of the occupation policies of the Axis powers in World War II, Raphael Lemkin notes that all existing interpretations of political violence fail to adequately capture the systematic and exterminatory nature of the violence that characterised the Holocaust. Lemkin argues that concepts such as ‘mass murder’ only partially address the program enacted to destroy existing populations and impose the Nazi political program. Insofar as this is the case, he argues, it is necessary to conceive of a new concept in order to grasp the specifi c nature of the violence that marked Axis occupation and led, ultimately, to the fi nal solution. Likewise, I want to argue that if we use existing understandings of the destruction of buildings, we fail to address the specifi c nature of this destruction. A number of writers have noted that a new concept is required in order to grasp the nature of widespread and deliberate destruction of the built environment: urbicide. It is, thus, to this concept that I want to turn. As Lemkin did with ‘genocide’, I want to elaborate the conceptual entailments of ‘urbicide’ and note the distinct form of political violence that it describes.
