From failed states to fragile cities: redefining spaces of humanitarian practice

It has become commonplace to claim that cities are becoming conflict zones, or ‘war zones’. This article traces some of the discursive and conceptual shifts that made it possible to define the city as a new frontier for international humanitarian action in states of the Global South. In order to represent cities as humanitarian spaces, concepts of ‘failure’ and ‘fragility’ have been problematised and subjected to reinterpretations that legitimised new strategies applied to the urban realm. I argue that this re-scaling of humanitarian practices enables a de-coupling and inclusion of so called new ‘urban conflicts’ in strategies of global liberal governance. Moving from failed states to fragile cites is a key development to understand changes in the practices that redefine humanitarian spaces today. The definition of urban violence as a new type of conflict informs a new cycle of expansion of the humanitarian order focused on the city. The article analyses the problematisation of concepts of failure and fragility as a decisive move to redefine the boundaries of humanitarian spaces.