Juxtacity: an Approach to Urban Difference, Divide, Authority, and Citizenship

Abstract

Difference is foundational to urban governance and urban life. This article-and the special issue-focuses analytically on the juxtaposition of multiple urban differences, and what happens especially in relation to urban authority and citizenship when such differences articulate with each other. This analytical work is based on a conceptual lens we call juxtacity, which is used to examine the origins, dynamics, and effects of urban divides, where urban divides are seen as active, situated domains in themselves that provide key opportunities for understanding and theorizing complex urban dynamics. The juxtacity approach emphasizes three key elements of difference and division-relationality, articulation, and productive co-constitution-and their differentiated effects. The focus is especially on but not limited to more overt, visible structures of urban domination, but consciously counters the ways in which more common sense hierarchies of power leave out a wide range of subtler forms of inequality, domination, exclusion, and violence. These latter are crucial for understanding differences and divisions in cities around the world. The juxtacity approach counters EuroAmerican-as-universal urban theory. Including cases from Africa and Asia, the special issue employs a form of openly comparative southern urbanism that contributes to the wider project of theorizing from the south/ southeast.

Geopolitical boundaries and urban borderlands in an Ethiopian frontier city

“…This analytic approach offers three insights that link the interplay of division and connection across intra-urban boundaries as explored by Iossifova (2015) and others (e.g. Hammar & Millstein, 2020) to the construction of (dis)connection at geopolitical borders. First, it speaks to how multiple types of geopolitical borders can restructure "the relational co-existence of a city's 'legitimate' and 'illegitimate' inhabitants" (Ramírez, 2020, p. 149).…”

“…Security logics and the enforcement of borders to uphold economic inequality between countries parallel trends in cities, where inequality and segregation are on the rise and the livelihoods of lower-class workers and urban poor are often precarious (Lees et al, 2016;Lewis et al, 2014). While recognizing these realities, critical approaches emphasize how boundarydrawing and regulatory processes at geopolitical borders and within cities can create new opportunities and connections for some people even as they exclude others (Feyissa & Hoehne, 2010;Hammar & Millstein, 2020;Karaman & Islam, 2012;Ramírez, 2020). "Urban borderlands" theorists mobilize insights from border studies to critique urban studies' emphasis on segregation, instead drawing attention to "borders and boundaries which not only divide, but also join [urban enclaves] together" (Iossifova, 2015, p. 91).…”