Imagining Cities of Inclusion—Formulating Spaces of Justice

Abstract

This introduction underlines some of the topics the present thematic issue focuses on, such as segregation and security, control and creativity, resistance and networking, presenting continuities and changes in urban governance and urban justice in different parts of the world. We argue that urban theory should be rethought to consider cities as fora that recentre the ‘political’ in relation to gentrification, rights to the city, justice, and alternative urbanisms. We highlight structural aspects of urban policy and planning, including the intersection of mega-development projects with disruptive acts of social dispossession and efforts to depoliticise institutional control. Simultaneously, we emphasise tactics that reinterpret hierarchical modes of governance and create initiatives for enhanced justice through claim-making, negotiation, improvisation, acts of everyday resistance and organised opposition.

Living and Planning on the Edge: Unravelling Conflict and Claim-Making in Peri-Urban Lahore, Pakistan

“…Pakistan in this respect is not an exceptional case. The growing literature on peri-urbanization in the Global South describes similar processes of exclusion (Nygren & Quesada, 2020), 'regimes of dispossession' (Levien, 2015), and the challenges to urban planning posed by the proliferation of gated communities (Bagaeen & Uduku, 2010;Landman, 2004). In the Pakistani context, some new work emphasizes the role of secluded residential enclaves in providing relatively safe spaces (Bint-e-Waheed & Nadeem, 2019), but other studies criticize the resulting fragmentation of the city (Gul, Nawaz, Basheer, Tariq, & Shah, 2018).…”