Up to now, this proliferation of urban insurgency has been attributed to two central factors: demography and asymmetry. The longest and most intense civil conflicts have taken place in cities, not in the field. In the past two decades, urban insurgencies have become a major concern for both scholars and practitioners. Consequently, urban enclaves have appeared inside cities from which insurgents have mounted their attacks and contested with state forces. By contrast, as their forces have contracted in the twenty-first century, states have been unable to dominate urban areas, as they typically did in the twentieth century. However, because states commanded very large military forces at that time, insurgents found it very difficult to operate in urban areas. In the twentieth century, urban insurgencies were common. Yet, scholars have overlooked a third vital factor: the size of state forces. Demography and asymmetry have been all but universally accepted in the literature as the sole causes of urban insurgency. It is widely assumed that because half the human population now live in cities in often appalling conditions, it is inevitable that conflict has migrated to cities, not least because urban areas offer would-be insurgents the best opportunity to evade state security forces and their advanced technologies. In the last two decades, urban insurgencies have become a major concern for scholars and practitioners.
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