Urbicide, Memoricide, and the Erosion of Urban Identity: Gaza in Comparative Perspective

Urban destruction in contemporary conflict is increasingly understood not as incidental damage but as a deliberate strategy targeting the social, cultural, and political foundations of urban life. Drawing on the theoretical frameworks of urbicide and memoricide, this paper examines how systematic violence against the built environment undermines urban identity, collective memory, and the conditions of everyday life. While these concepts have been widely applied to cities such as Sarajevo and Aleppo, Gaza remains underexplored as a primary case within this body of literature. Using a critical literature review, the study synthesizes interdisciplinary scholarship from urban studies, geography, architecture, memory studies, and political theory. It analyzes key theoretical contributions on urbicide, memoricide, place attachment, collective memory, and the right to the city, alongside comparative case studies, to conceptualize urban destruction as spatial, symbolic, and political violence. The findings indicate that urbicide operates through both direct physical destruction and long-term spatial strategies that dismantle heterogeneity, belonging, and coexistence, while memoricide targets cultural memory, heritage, and everyday spatial references. Together, these processes erode place meaning, rootedness, familiarity, and collective identity. Comparative cases suggest that post-conflict reconstruction can partially restore urban life; however, Gaza’s condition is characterized by cyclical destruction and suspended recovery, intensifying the erosion of urban identity. The study concludes that urbicide provides a critical lens for understanding urban destruction beyond material loss and highlights a significant gap in sustained, identity-focused analyses of Gaza, underscoring the need to foreground memory, place attachment, and the right to the city in future urban research and planning discourse.