Bulldozer violence: A political technology of planetary urbanisation

This article theorises bulldozer violence as a distinctive modality of planetary urbanisation through which contemporary urban development increasingly proceeds via mechanised displacement, territorial erasure, and political spectacle. We develop a fourfold theoretical framework that defines bulldozer violence as a political technology of spatial governance, reconceptualises planetary urbanisation as a dialectic of development through erasure, and explains its operation through violent agencement and spectacle. Bulldozer violence simultaneously disassembles existing socio-material worlds while assembling new territorial, legal, and affective orders, offering a conceptual vocabulary for understanding contemporary authoritarian urbanism across diverse geopolitical contexts.