Ramla

The Phoenicians Go To Egypt

Source: Karl reMarks

Cairo 12/28/12

War, civilianized.

Battlefield terms such as strongpoint, advance, penetration, encirclement, envelopment, surveillance, control and supply lines migrated from the military to the civilian sphere… In the hands of Sharon, his followers and colleagues, architecture and planning were presented as a continuation of war by other means. The civilianization of military terms was to lead in turn to the militarization of all other spheres of life. War was only over because it was now everywhere.

Eyal Weizman, Hollow Land: Israel’s Architecture of Occupation, 2008.

Ramallah November 2012

Around the central Hisbeh market.

Creative Destruction

Violence is required to achieve the new urban world on the wreckage of the old. Haussmann tore through the old Parisian impoverished quarters, using powers of expropriation for supposedly public benefit, and did so in the name of civic improvement, environmental restoration, and urban renovation. He deliberately engineered the removal of much of the working class and other unruly elements, along with insalubrious industries, from Paris’ city center, where they constituted a threat to public order, public health and, of course, political power. He created an urban form where it was believed (incorrectly, as it turned out, in 1871) sufficient levels of surveillance and military control were possible so as to ensure that revolutionary movements could easily be controlled by military power.

David Harvey, Rebel Cities, 2012.

ABC of Architects