This future scenario is the result of people bunkering down into defensible spaces while globalization fails or is abandoned. It is a scenario of permanent ‘war on terror’. Nation-states close their borders, cities are divided by blast-walls, ethnic neighbourhoods are patrolled by militia-men and policed by helicopters. Here is world of gated communities, identity checkpoints, super-max prisons and occupied territories. Its determining image might be the Gaza Strip subject to an Israeli strategy of ‘control at a distance’, with its drone surveillance, buffer zones, border fence and fortified crossings. For more on ‘cities under siege’, see: http://bldgblog.blogspot.co.uk/2010/04/cities-under-siege.html