When gambling fails: Caring-with urban communities at the local scale.

'Care' is a keyword for cities and citizens in the 21st century. This paper draws on Emma Power's (2019) notion of 'caring-with' as an ethical and analytical guide for caring action and relational community capacity-building around gambling at the local scale. The focus of analysis is the approval of electronic gaming machines or EGMs colloquially known as 'the Pokies', with particular reference to the Australian context and the experience of Castlemaine - a small town in the south-eastern state of Victoria whose citizens successfully appealed an application for further gambling development. The paper highlights how caring-with re-frames community responses to gambling as an assemblage of localized care practices and relations. This includes, but is not limited to, working to develop a culture of care, challenging systemic injustices, and proactive rather than reactive practices of collective care. • Increasing calls for a care praxis 'caring-with' emphasize the responsibility of a sharing democracy in an unequal world • Caring-with reframes community responses to gambling as social and political, rather than individual and private • This involves the formation of coalitions of strategy, resistance and advocacy for transformative change. • The case study highlights participation and inclusion; transparency and consistency and fairness as key care concepts. • The case also shines a light on gambling in cities and the relational role of communities that seek to resist new development [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]