The Limits of the City: Atmospheres of Lockdown

Abstract

Criminological engagement with urban environments has burgeoned, including investigations into the criminological sense of place and into the atmospheres of crime and justice. This article analyses cities under lockdown in the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. Used in numerous cities, lockdowns conjoin public health initiatives and crime control to restrict the location and activities of citizens. Drawing on textual and ethnographic exploration of lockdown in Melbourne, Australia, the article examines how we make meaning in lockdown through processes of sensory and spatial interpretation. Such an approach exposes both atmospheres of control, through the criminalization of everyday activities, and numerous instances of subversion through resistance to and adaptation of the spatial and sensorial characteristics of lockdown. The article argues for the importance of the sensory as a means of conceptualizing, repopulating and redesigning future cities after lockdown ends.

Socio-spatialities and affective atmospheres of COVID-19: A visual essay

“…These caveats notwithstanding, this essay is a small contribution to the growing body of insights into others’ experiences in both Australia and other countries. This literature has begun to show how everyday experiences during the continuing COVID crisis were suffused with multisensory and affective feelings as human bodies came together with other humans, things, place and space and rhythms of time, and embodiment and habit were subjected to constant disruption (Lupton and Lewis, 2022; Sigley, 2020; Elswit, 2021; Thorpe et al, 2021; Mosteanu, 2021; Clark and Lupton, 2021; Thompson et al, 2020; Young, 2021; Moretti and Maturo, 2021).…”

“…They can be shared and collective experiences of feeling, but the same people in the same spaces may also be experiencing different affective atmospheres (Anderson, 2009). Space and place can feel safe, secure, pleasurable and pleasant or uncomfortable, risky, threatening or dangerous through a complex combination of elements (Edensor, 2012; Young, 2021). Research on therapeutic landscapes seeks to identify those natural or built environments, including the people and nonhuman animals who inhabit them, that contribute to feelings of safety, good health and wellbeing (Conradson, 2005).…”

Bubbles and lockdown in Aotearoa New Zealand: the language of self-isolation in #Covid19NZ tweets

“…Governing this term were senses of confinement, restriction and disturbance, exacerbated by the negative stigmas associated with prisoners, psychiatric patients and fears of intrusive state control. For many, lockdown holds connotations of punishment: when applied to the home, the term may suggest house arrest (Young 2021, 4). Alternatively, these same restrictions could be understood as safeguards, securing us as we are moved through unstable, dangerous times.…”

Reimagining the Future of the Sydney CBD: Reflecting on Covid-19-Driven Changes in Commercial and Residential Property Trends

“…In contrast to the sharp increase in 2020, the mild increase in vacancy rates related to the 2021 lockdown shows that the Sydney CBD's residential market is stabilising. The latter demonstrates a "reoccupation" of the city and CBD related to a process of people adapting and accepting pandemic conditions (Young, 2021). The initial shock and uncertainty caused by the novel disease at the beginning of 2020 is no longer enough disincentive for the residential market.…”