Reimagining the urban through agency as healing justice: Stories from Kolkata and Chicago

Abstract

To address violence against women in cities, urban scholars and planners have primarily focused on challenging problematic urban built environments, social norms and unequal power relations but have missed emphasising the healing of the harmed individuals and communities. In this paper, we are interested in the role that agency can play in the healing justice process of individuals and communities with experience of violence and spatial trauma. Building on healing justice scholarship, we argue for a multilayered approach to address the range of violences women and marginalised communities experience over time in urban spaces by repairing societal and urban faults while simultaneously tending to the healing and well-being of the impacted individuals and communities. Based on stories from the everyday lives of different groups of women in Kolkata and Chicago, we highlight instances of women reclaiming urban spaces in their everyday lives through varied acts of their agency while also building a sense of community agency, ultimately leading towards healing justice. The temporal component of healing is long-term, but fostering actionable agency is essential in moving towards communities being healed. Therefore, to facilitate healing processes, paying attention to the everyday acts of embodied agency may provide practical tools for urban scholars and planners to understand community needs and desires and make cities inclusive and safe.