the Architecture of Occupation

Green Zone Architecture:
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/05/baghdad-urban-renewal.php
-article about the new plans for an exclusive $5billion "International Village:" a luxury gated-community complete with golf courses, malls, luxury hotels, amusement parks. Also, a $1billion American Embassy the size of the Vatican on a prime waterfront location.
-This obviously flies in the face of any real renewal for bombed-out-baghdad, and reflects the view that the business interests of developers and contractors are the prime motivation for the Iraq War and the occupation to begin with. It resembles many of the exclusive luxury developments in India or China that operate essentially as gated communities for the rich in a two-tiered class system. It reflects the neoconservative view of the sanctity of private-property as opposed to social equity as the goal of democracy. If America is to be successful in Iraq and the Middle East in the long run, other models of space planning and architecture are needed, especially when considering the function of this prominent location as a symbolic emblem of the many other infrastructural and architectural projects needed throughout the country that will be oriented not at the few and the rich.

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/news/baghdad-green-zone-book-steals-literary-prize-453702.html

Iraq war timeline:
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/03/18/world/middleeast/20080319_IRAQWAR_TIMELINE.html


Defensive Architecture:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/04/weekinreview/04ouroussoff.html