ABSTRACT
The history of armed conflict is tightly linked to humanity's gradual but inexorable movement towards urban centres. The rising tempo of armed conflict in urban centres has had profound implication for the understanding of modern conflict and responses to it. The recent impetus for military thinking on cities is linked to the unprecedented speed in urban population growth in the developing world. One of the world's most experienced urban military forces has developed further the understanding of how social aspects such as architecture and population density affect strategy in the metropolitan space. The resort to recurrent incursions of the same urban areas over and over again has been a long-term pattern in some cities. A growing number of voices have been calling for a further shift in paradigms. The utility of force in such environment is changing and becoming more fragmented rather than clear-cut. It is now linked to a more complex system, which implies longer deployments and the like.
