ABSTRACT
Twenty-first century cities are objects, subjects, laboratories, and agents of emerging formal and informal modes of global, local, and transnational governance. Cities have started using the languages of inter-state relations and international law and mimicking states’ practiced forms of institutionalised and legalised interaction. From a global comparative perspective, twenty-first century cities are also vulnerable and prone to various forms of intra-city violent conflicts. This chapter provides an explorative overview over the fast-changing variety of urban conflict constellations. It asks for continuous interdisciplinary, theoretical, and comparative investigations of forms and patterns of violent intra-city conflicts. Such investigations are necessary for unpacking und understanding what is at stake in urban warfare and when building peace in cities. In the course of these explorations the chapter also debates the spatial adaptations and re-conceptionalisations that originally state-centred concepts like warfare and peace undergo from a twenty-first century city-perspective.
