The Geography of Survival and the Right to the City: Speculations on Surveillance, Legal Innovation, and the Criminalization of Intervention

Living Absence: The Strange Geographies of Missing People

“…The right to the city is for Lefebvre, therefore, bound up with the right to urban life, the right to be part of, and present in, the city, and the right "to places of encounters and exchange, to life rhythms and time uses, enabling the full and complete usage of … moments and places" (1996, page 179). Many geographers have drawn inspiration from this vision, and in Mitchell's (2009) work he and his coworkers have addressed experiences of the homeless and the urban poor, documenting how they attempt to survive in the city-by seeking out places of shelter, foraging for food, and finding spaces to wash and sleep-space now routinely under threat from the drive to 'secure' the city by powerful economic and political elites. There are a wide range of mechanisms by which this enhanced social control of cities and the 'fortress impulse' in urban design are being realised, but common to many is a radical intensification of the surveillance of urban spaces.…”

Civic journalism meets civic social science: foregrounding social determinants in health coverage

“…The later more sympathetic and less distant accounts arise when the degree of hardship and suffering endured by homeless people is acknowledged . Less sympathetic accounts arise when emphasis is placed on difference and the unease some domiciled citizens feel about sharing public spaces with homeless people (Mitchell & Heynen, 2009). Such processes reveal how news can simultaneously contribute to a social climate that advances punitive measures to displace vagrants, and one that ensures tolerance and social inclusion.…”

“…Strangers can come into contact with other groups, yet they are excluded from membership, and consequently they embody a dialectics of proximity and distance. Socially distanced strangers are often deemed to be 'dirty', 'disruptive' and 'out of place' (Mitchell & Heynen, 2009). In her seminal work on Purity and Danger, Douglas (1966) asserts that the removal of tainted bodies is not just about the fear of filth, contagion and disease: "There is no such thing as absolute dirt: it exists in the eye of the beholder… Dirt offends against order.…”

“…Mitchell and Heynen (2009) note that the geographies of survival among homeless people rely on ad hoc coalitions and practices that extend to sympathetic domiciled people. Such loose coalitions and the survival of homeless people often necessitate domiciled citizens transgressing their distance from homeless people.…”

Producción jurídica e imaginación global: cartografías urbanas a través de la ley en Barcelona

“…Por otro lado, buena parte de los cambios referidos a las producciones del espacio están relacionados con las transformaciones político-económicas que se llevan a cabo en las ciudades, así como la influencia que tienen la aplicación e interpretación legal sobre la exclusión de determinados grupos sociales (Blomley, 2003(Blomley, , 2010Dangschat, 2009;Forest, 2001Forest, , 2004Herbert, 2010;Mitchell, 1997Mitchell, , 2003Mitchell y Heynen, 2009;Staeheli, 2010), por lo cual dicha visión es compatible con muchos de los estudios procedentes de la economía política urbana (Blomley, 2004;Delaney et al, 2010), sobre todo en el estudio de los procesos de globalización (Barkan, 122 2011) o, especialmente, con las reflexiones acerca de las nuevas cartografías urbanas desarrolladas en las "ciudades-frontera" y con el análisis de los procesos globales urbanos como productores de regiones de frontera 4 . Considerando la región de frontera como "un frente pionero orientado hacia el exterior, como punta de lanza de la civilización" (Taylor y Flint, 2002: 179), la geografía crítica del derecho arroja luz acerca de las formas de producción política que estructuran esos modos de segregar la ciudad a partir de proyecciones exteriores y fronterizas de la ciudad, construidas fundamentalmente a través de diferentes fenómenos de gentrificación y renovación urbana 5 .…”