Urban civil defence

Imagining, constructing and performing nuclear war in Aarhus

Bibliographic Data

ID12277342
AuthorsRosanna Farbøl (0000-0002-5186-4701, University of Southern Denmark, corresponding author)
Year2020
Volume48
Issue4
Pages701-723
Publication date2020-08-05
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueUrban History (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0963-9268 • E-ISSN: 1469-8706
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0963926820000590
OpenAlexW3047600273
LanguageEN
Citations received5
References cited25

During the Cold War, cities were seen as likely targets of modern total warfare and systems of civil defence were created to protect cities and their inhabitants. Yet existing civil defence histories have focused little on the specifically urban aspect, and urban historians likewise have paid civil defence little attention. Using Aarhus, Denmark, as a case-study, this article examines civil defence through planning, practices and materiality in a specific urban landscape. By analysing how civil defence was organized, performed and built in Denmark, the article sheds light on the mutual imbrication of urban planning, geography and materiality and local civil defence. I argue that through biopolitics, local civil defence authorities imagineered an idealized survivalist community of city dwellers who would pull together to protect and save their city and that this contributed to taming an incomprehensible, global, nuclear catastrophe into a manageable, localized, urban calamity

Aesthetics · Art · Biopower · Civil defense · Civil engineering · Civil society · Cold war · Materiality (auditing · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Spanish Civil War · Communism, Protests, Social Movements · Engineering · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · Law · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies

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