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'Urban residents are surrounded by discrepant infrastructural capacities ... Being surrounded from all sides, and with such thick textures of surveillance and calculation, promises both the possibility of being really 'pinned down' and disappearing altogether.' (AbdouMaliq Simone)1 We are surrounded, negatively, by infrastructural capacities or, positively, extended by them? Or perhaps both, surrounded and extended? If so, in what proportions? And is it/was it ultimately a choice, or series of choices, ones that can still be made, or not? And what are these externalities, contexts? Are they media/technologies or perhaps the one-time project of 'the city' now taking on the (increasingly alien?) form of urbanisation? Or, beyond that, is there the now marginalised realm of the country/nature? And, 'space'? Are those realms, best characterised perhaps as 'nature', outside or inside us? If inside/outside, are we, somewhat paradoxically, surrounded by ourselves? Or by aspects of ourselves, whose inner/outer separation and possible distortion we need to recognise and address if we are to avoid 'the promises [of] both the possibility of being really 'pinned down' and disappearing altogether'? Or ... * * * * Such questions and some answers are suggested by our special feature in this issue on infrastructures, from which AbdouMaliq Simone's words are taken, by papers from three other substantial projects, one on urbanisation by Neil Brenner and Christian Schmid, with a reply from Richard Walker, a second on Africa by David Simon, and a third on technologised and politicised realms by Stephen Graham, now looking into 'urban air'. Introducing one of a series of particular temporal dimensions as explored in this journal, Melissa Wilson draws in part on a reading2 of a particular period, looking into the early pages of City, an early stage of its project, as elites and 'multitudes', edged towards 2000, towards and away from 'millennium.' Further investigations are undertaken in papers on the nature of smart cities as contexts, on a possible basis for social transformation in Poland, and on London's class structure and struggles. Only the third, Mark Davidson and Elvin Wyly's paper following, as does Chris Hamnett, our occasional series on London's class structure, is touched on here. We conclude with a return to Simone's thoughts on infrastructure's more than marginal role in social organisation and to a summing up and a polemical conclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Professionals and wannabe professionals are everywhere in urban studies today, everywhere in the exclusive running and ruining of cities, everywhere in the control of urban economies, everywhere in austerity drives, everywhere in think tanks and institutions who study cities, everywhere mass media have a say about cities, everywhere the grant money flows, the payroll beckons and the spotlight shines. The biggest problem this professionalism poses for any urban dissenter—for people I shall call amateurs—is representation. Everything that was directly lived has moved away into a representation, into a representation done for and by professionals. And professionals brook no dissent. Professionals are realists; everybody else lives in cloud-cuckoo-land. This paper stakes out its terrain in cloud-cuckoo-land and explores the nemesis of professionalised urbanism: amateur urbanism, an urban knowledge and practice not on anybody's payroll, a passionate labour of love. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Loïc Wacquant has made a widely read and debated contribution to critical research on contemporary urban marginality. A central part of the theoretical framework is that residents of deprived areas internalize territorial stigmatization, which then has a range of negative effects. Based on empirical research this paper assesses Wacquant's conception of territorial stigmatization and suggests some points where urban sociology might go beyond or adjust Wacquant. The empirical research focuses on Aalborg East, a deprived area in the northern part of Denmark. Through media analysis it is documented that Aalborg East is subject to territorial stigmatization, and it is suggested that cultural racism plays an important role. Qualitative interview data suggest, however, that the residents do not internalize or resign to the stigma. They become sad or angry when confronted with the stigma, but they have an either positive or ambivalent view of the area and most of them are content to live there. This finding is validated by survey data. Wacquant's conception cannot be entirely rejected, though, as the construction of internal dividing lines in some interviews can be interpreted as a way of managing territorial stigmatization. Nevertheless, the data provide little support for a theory of clear-cut internalization of territorial stigmatization in the case of Aalborg East. This conclusion leads to three discussions: a confirmation of Wacquant's claim that the role of the state matters; a discussion of the specific political culture of Scandinavian societies; and a problematization of Wacquant's reliance on Bourdieu's conception of symbolic violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although Policing the Crisis brought thorough academic analysis to the overlap between police, government and media racism, black communities, and those standing in solidarity with them had been organising to address these issues long before. This resistance continues today, and Newham Monitoring Project (NMP) has been working with communities to support such initiatives for over thirty years. The work of NMP covers a range of issues, many of which are not dissimilar from those being challenged when Policing the Crisis was first published. What has changed however, is much of the racially charged language employed by the police and media. One example of this is the narrative around the gang, creating a new moral panic, to reproduce the same old racist domination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]