Urban Geopolitics and Explaining the Concept of Rivalry ‎

The spread of urbanism, cities spatial and physical development and their role in economic, political, cultural arenas have caused different players to try to control urban spaces and also to increase their sphere of influence which creates special landscapes and specific forms in cities. The spread and variety of issues and the apparent role of politics and power in cities both at national and international level have attracted the attention of political geographers and geopolitician and resulted in the formation of the new branch of geopolitics entitled “urban geopolitics”. Urban geopolitics studies mutual relations between geography, power and politics in urban spaces and places that the consequence of the relations is competition between urban elements and its spatial reflection. The purpose of this article, using the descriptive-analytic method and library resources, is to explain the concept of "rivalry" in urban geopolitics and its spatial reflections in the cities considering theories of political economy and urban political ecology. The research argues that "rivalry" is a key concept in urban geopolitics that spatial reflections of which in urban elements can be discussed within the framework of peaceful and violent actions in different scales from local to global levels such as rivalries of cities at international level for hosting the Mega-Events, creating landscapes and symbols, and urban conflicts.