Drones, population control: How our cities became a battleground | openDemocracy
▻https://www.opendemocracy.net/feodora-hamza/drones-cities-war-population-control
The panoptic gaze is not limited to prisons. It is present in all sorts of public places from factories to shops, particularly settings in which people are put into groups, counted, checked and normalised.[2] While the panopticon concerns surveillance of the individual, the panspectron was designed to observe whole populations, where everyone and everything is under surveillance at all time. [3]
Such disciplinary techniques are used by governments to strengthen their sovereignty. In a world of increasing urbanisation, these projects show the interest of national states to employ military ideas of high-tech omniscience into urban civil societies. By the end of the 20th century, 10% of the world’s population lived in cities. Most of them lived in the metropolis of the global north. Today the urban population amounts to almost 50% of the world’s population, living mostly in mega cities of the global south.[4]
This rapid urbanisation matters profoundly; how cities in developed and developing countries are going to organise themselves is critical for humanity.[5] While western cities are focusing on improving their security, cities in developing countries are facing increased violence and crime rates and intensified militarisation.[6] Therefore, maintaining control and surveillance over populations and people’s movement allows state authorities to better prepare for violence and war. In the globalisation of western societies, mobility has increased significance to power and development.[7] While modern powers need to limit and define people’s movement, they also require the movement of the people in order to be able to monitor and analyse them.[8]