Does the Punitive Need the Supportive? A Sympathetic Critique of Current Grammars of Urban Injustice.

This paper is a sympathetic critique of mainstream grammars of urban injustice, arguing that they are frequently too one-sided and selective to adequately grasp the full complexity of urban realities. Most prominently, I contend that urban injustice and punitiveness co-exist with, if not sometimes depend upon, more supportive responses within urban space. I therefore counterbalance the spectacular logics of punitive urbanism and the everyday logics of control with a tripartite approach to logics assembled within the urban voluntary sector (abeyance, care and survival) as a way to reconnect to a broader set of practices. Two case studies are used to illustrate these contentions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]