The intricate layout of city streets and architectural structures serve as material expressions of power, shaping behavior, movement, and social order. Theorists emphasize that power is relational and spatial, working by shaping behavior and limiting freedom through the specific organization of space. Urban design functions as a political technology, manipulating the environment to achieve control and enforce particular subjectivities,.

The City as a Tool for Social Engineering

The strategic manipulation of urban space has historically been used to contain populations, enforce segregation, and suppress resistance.

Haussmann’s Paris: Architectural Panopticism

The redesign of Paris (1853–1870) under Napoleon III illustrates the purposeful use of urban infrastructure for political control. While ostensibly aimed at modernization, improving public health, and beautification, the core objective was control. The long, straight, and wide boulevards designed by Haussmann were intended to provide clear lines of sight for surveillance and rapid military movement, while preventing the building of barricades during times of resistance.

This design imposed a level of architectural panopticism onto the city, allowing authorities to perpetually observe the masses. Furthermore, entire working-class districts, especially those active during the French Revolution, were erased to make space for elites, demonstrating social engineering through spatial redesign and ruthless political containment.

Colonial Algiers: The Coercive Power of Erasure

The French colonization of Algeria provides another severe example of spatial control, driven by coercive power—the threat of force to gain compliance. French engineers systematically cut through the winding street network of the indigenous Casbah to enhance geometric coherence, enabling rapid military maneuvers. This architectural reconfiguration involved the destruction of religious buildings and homes, stripping workers of autonomy and enforcing radical spatial segregation. The infrastructure itself became a manifestation and weapon of colonial governance, prioritizing military efficiency over indigenous urban fabric.

Architecture as Propagandist and Idealist

Beyond explicit mechanisms of social control, architecture operates by communicating meaning and reflecting collective values,. Buildings are interpreted anthropomorphically, meaning we recognize characteristics like arrogance, wisdom, or democracy in their forms and materials,.

The Pursuit of the Ideal

The architecture that resonates most deeply—the beautiful or noble structures—serves as a form of propaganda or idealization,,. For idealists, architecture should not merely reflect reality but instead keep before our eyes how life might optimally be. A beautiful building is seen as a “repository of our ideals,” purged of the flaws that corrode ordinary lives, offering an “escort descended from the world of the ideal”,. This idealism is evident in:

  • Civic Buildings: Brasília, designed to be a model of modern bureaucratic efficiency and erase Brazil’s colonial chaos,.
  • Aesthetic Virtues: Architectural virtues like elegance, order, and complexity attract us because they embody the qualities we often lack in our personal lives,,. Beauty is likely when order is imposed on rough, vital materials, allowing “chaos [to] shimmer through the veil of order”.

The Geopolitical Language of Design

The visual language of architecture can communicate political and ethical ideas at a national scale. Designs may be explicitly utilized to project an image of the state, as seen in the German Pavilion at the 1958 World Exposition in Brussels, which used horizontality, lightness, and transparency to convey calm, gentleness, and democracy, directly contrasting the ominous, massive Neoclassical style favored by former totalitarian regimes,.

The Political Anatomy of Space

The arrangement of buildings, surfaces, and lights constitutes a “physics of a relational and multiple power,” leading Foucault to define panopticism as the general principle of a new “political anatomy”,. Recognizing this geometry is essential because the spaces we inhabit influence not only our individual behavior but highlight the broader power structures of society, underscoring the critical role of design in shaping the social fabric of cities.