Cities and Mass Violence Roundtable

For the past several months, the Stanley Center and Impact:Peace have been exploring the connections between urban violence and mass violence. The goal of this project is to understand and identify opportunities for city leaders and community actors to build peace-oriented resilience while also addressing risk factors that, if left unattended, could lead to identity-based mass violence. Municipal organizations tend to be highly practical in their orientation. This presents tremendous opportunity for engagement.

Guided by Impact:Peace, researcher Ariana Markowitz at University College London’s The Bartlett Faculty of the Built Environment has examined the following questions:

• Where is there overlap between successful approaches to urban peacebuilding and violence prevention and atrocity prevention?
• What do we gain by identifying and responding to risk factors for mass violence at the city level?
• What evidence demonstrates that a city that invests in building resilience to violence will benefit from the social and financial cost-savings associated with prevention?
• What can city leaders do to increase resilience and prevent and reduce multiple types of violence?

This roundtable discussion on cities and the prevention of mass violence is an opportunity for the Stanley Center and Impact:Peace to present key findings from the draft report and receive feedback. This is also an opportunity to review and discuss potential strategies and best practices for inclusive program interventions.