The Politics of Power and Public Space

Abstract

Karachi has been deemed one of the world’s most dangerous cities. Using it as an urban laboratory, I investigate the role of physical space in the materialization of power, urban insecurity, and violence. I identity the key spatial factors that invite violence-driven power schemes: institutions of informality, structures of social division, and pockets of high-density settlement. The case of Karachi shows that relative weakness of state organizations in terms of their ability or willingness to plan the city, or to ensure a uniformly enforced system of property rights, led to divergent societal and political responses most frequently manifesting in acts of urban violence.