Saidian notions of imagined geography have been a central if understudied aspect of the critique of Orientalism. While there has been some work in human geography, mainly focusing on the theme of empire, the question of urbanism has been an ignored topic in the critique of orientalist representations of so-called “Oriental other.” This essay is traces the circulation of orientalist assumptions and representations as a central feature of contemporary urban theory. The conjuncture in which this paper enters the scene is that of a contemporary, post-neoliberal and post- Global War on Terror context in which urbanism, in particular the global south city and the behavior patterns of its inhabitants, is becoming a central object of two kinds of expertise, military and architectural. In a new twist on what Henri Lefebvre has critiqued as apolitical “urbanism,” contemporary expert urbanism imagines the city as a space of danger, in which populations and their life characteristics become a major concern of strategy. Both militarized and ethnocratic urbanism in contemporary Iraq and the Arab Gulf exhibit a concern with danger, population, and dangerous populations. In a concluding section, I reflect on the broader implications of these developments for urbanism in the Arab region, especially in the post-2011 uprisings context.