From Urbicide to Dignified Housing for All

Contemporary warfare increasingly targets cities not merely to destroy military infrastructure but to dismantle urban pluralism, social fabric, and the physical conditions of civilian life -a phenomenon scholars have termed "urbicide." This lecture examines housing at the intersection of two distinct but connected violences: the destruction of domestic space through armed conflict, and the exclusionary politics frequently embedded in post-conflict reconstruction programmes. Drawing on cases from across the Middle East and Global South, it argues that housing reconstruction too often serves political consolidation rather than human dignity -displacing the same communities whose homes were destroyed. The lecture challenges practitioners and policymakers to centre dignity, not mere adequacy, in post-conflict housing frameworks, and to ask who truly gets to return.