Sweeping the city: infrastructure, informality, and the politics of maintenance

Gordon, Constance; Byron, Kyle

doi:10.1080/09502386.2021.1895253

Cited by 9 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 29 publications

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“…The second factor is that people who stay in encampments may view them as offering more security and protection from police harassment and aggression (Gordon and Byron, 2021) and from assaults or the theft of belongings (Cohen et. al., 2019).…”

Section: Factors Influencing Where To Livementioning

confidence: 99%

“…These techniques whereby the state removes, seizes, or destroys lifesustaining necessities to decrease the visibility of encampments and designate the space for other uses. Sweeps are both a strategy of governance and an occurrence where infrastructural networks became spaces of contestation (Gordon and Byron, 2021). These procedures regulate the belonging and behaviour of people experiencing homelessness under the guise of maintaining "safe" and "healthy" environments (Gordon and Byron, 2021).…”

Section: Sweeping Of Encampmentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Pandemic Encampments: A Case Study of Toronto’s Homeless Encampments (Through a Human Rights-based Approach) During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Edhi

2024

Preprint

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Cities across North America have seen an increase in groups of people experiencing unsheltered homelessness together. The City of Toronto specifically is experiencing one of the deepest housing crises to date. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, many people lived in encampments. However, they were largely invisible as they were pushed out of sight by law-enforcement and criminalized by municipal legislation. The City’s response to encampments during the pandemic has demonstrate systemic violence, criminalization, and displacement of unhoused residents. This paper aims to analyze the role of homeless encampments through a human rights-based approach to housing by analyzing encampments during the COVID-19 pandemic. Through this paper, I aim to establish that encampments are sites of resistance to state violence and insufficient interventions. The resistance of unhoused residents and sites of encampments offers a radical change in perspective to housing and a call to action– one that is based in human rights.

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Section: Factors Influencing Where To Livementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Sweeping Of Encampmentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Pandemic Encampments: A Case Study of Toronto’s Homeless Encampments (Through a Human Rights-based Approach) During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Edhi

2024

Preprint

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“…Thinking with instances of infrastructural inadequacy, informality, and splintering, Wahby (2021) shows how repair work is also undertaken by residents and communities, reconfiguring relations between them and the state in contexts of privatisation and water governance transition. Equally, in studying police sweeps of homeless encampments, Gordon and Byron (2021) highlight how seemingly innocuous acts of urban maintenance are productive forms of power and exclusion in the governance of homelessness in North American cities. These works highlight the reproduction not only of material orderings and infrastructural ontologies, but also of their politics, inexorably linked to those of the state and its contentions.…”

Section: Locating Infrastructural Labourmentioning

confidence: 99%

Doing the work: Locating labour in infrastructural geography

Stokes

Coss‐Corzo

2023

Progress in Human Geography

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As the social sciences undergo an infrastructural turn, geographers have taken steps to broaden, disrupt, and reconceptualise understandings of infrastructure and its relationship to social, political, economic, and ecological processes. We contribute to this discussion by highlighting the emergence of a comparatively understudied yet crucial aspect within infrastructural geographies – infrastructural labour. We identify key theoretical anchors that guide contemporary analyses of infrastructural labour, which we query by focusing on five key areas of scholarly discussion. Building on these, we offer a working definition of infrastructural labour to help guide further engagement and point to questions meriting additional investigation.

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“…Cities also carry out routine maintenance of infrastructure as a strategy to justify police sweeps of areas with unhoused folks. Gordon and Byron (2021) discuss governance efforts in Toronto and San Francisco to produce spaces of belonging and exclusion through maintenance. They juxtapose the distribution and maintenance of formal housing and informal encampments to reveal the politics of informal infrastructure development and maintenance in cities.…”

Section: Municipal Strategies Of Spatial Banishmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

“The Echoes of Echo Park”: Anti-Homeless Ordinances in Neo-Revanchist Cities

Giamarino

Loukaitou‐Sideris

2023

Urban Affairs Review

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This article focuses on national and local anti-homeless ordinances and investigates emerging spatial banishment strategies and their impacts on unhoused folks’ basic freedoms. First, we review debates on co-existing geographies of punishment and care through theoretical and legal lenses. Focusing on sixteen cities in the United States, we examine categories of anti-homeless ordinances and their evolution in the past two decades. Next, we focus on Los Angeles and use archival research and interviews with activists to examine the expansion of newly emerging anti-homeless spaces. Our research details ad hoc strategies of spatial banishment targeting homelessness. We find that the city represents a fragmented landscape of “no-go-zones” for the unhoused. We posit that the COVID-19 pandemic enabled various spatial banishment strategies and that Los Angeles is neo-revanchist. We advocate for city policies that abolish spatial banishment strategies and respond to the needs of the unhoused.

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Sweeping the city: infrastructure, informality, and the politics of maintenance

Cited by 9 publications

References 29 publications

Pandemic Encampments: A Case Study of Toronto’s Homeless Encampments (Through a Human Rights-based Approach) During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Pandemic Encampments: A Case Study of Toronto’s Homeless Encampments (Through a Human Rights-based Approach) During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Doing the work: Locating labour in infrastructural geography

“The Echoes of Echo Park”: Anti-Homeless Ordinances in Neo-Revanchist Cities

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