Urban Inequalities #5: Space, Surveillance, Security

Giorgio Agamben once argued that the post-9/11 world is one in which intensified security measures are no longer a matter of emergency but have become a normal condition. Cities are increasingly governed according to an essentially militarized logic. Surveillance technologies, policing practices based on data collection and analysis, as well as militarized urban infrastructures, are reshaping everyday life—often under the pretext of public security, smart governance, and even adaptation to climate change.

However, these processes are not neutral. They concentrate power in the hands of state apparatuses and associated private companies, primarily targeting the working class and certain racialized social groups. They undermine democracy by criminalizing protest and normalizing the surveillance of everyday life. The city becomes a focal point where global crises—genocidal wars, the collapse of the international legal order, the climate crisis, and economic insecurity—are transformed into new regimes of surveillance, control, and capital accumulation.

The fifth edition of the Urban Inequalities forum focuses on the securitization of cities as a key driver of globally increasing inequalities. With police algorithmic forecasting, biometric border control, and the use of military technologies in the management of urban spaces and processes, the city increasingly functions as a laboratory for control technologies originally developed for purposes such as occupation and counter-terrorism.

This process is global; however, technologies spread and are used in different contexts, thereby directly linking zones of open military conflict with peaceful cities through the use of the same infrastructures for data extraction, surveillance, and repression. Nevertheless, public debates, often influenced by industries of manufactured consent, tend to treat this development as a technological rather than a political issue, thereby ignoring the impact of class and power inequalities as well as questions of social justice.

Titled “Space, Surveillance, Security,” this year’s edition of the forum aims to create a critical space for examining how securitization transforms urban life in the service of corporate interests. Bringing together researchers, activists, journalists, urbanists, and architects, the forum centers the perspectives of those most affected by surveillance and control techniques: workers, migrants, minorities, and political activists. In short: people whose interests and political practices often stand in direct opposition to capital accumulation.

Join us for four exciting days—18–21 June 2026—during which we will highlight parallels between local phenomena and global trends in militarization, digital capitalism, and urban governance, in order to challenge the normalization of security as a repressive practice and open up the possibility of rethinking it through practices of care, equality, social welfare, and democratic participation.

The Urban Inequalities Forum of the Association KOI has a long-standing tradition of conducting socially engaged research, open exhibitions, and partnerships with local authorities. As a collective of sociologists, philosophers, and cultural workers, KOI translates complex political and intellectual discussions into accessible language and formats, helping to broaden debates beyond narrow academic and expert circles. In a political context in which rhetoric for increased military-police security marginalizes social security, the forum functions as a platform for activist critique of the militaristic influences reshaping urban spaces. It is also a call to pull the handbrake in the name of a truly exceptional state of affairs.

Free entry. Working language: English.