Urban Lifelines

Urban Lifelines explores the vulnerabilities that cities face in the wake of the climate crisis, health emergencies, uncontrolled artificial intelligence, escalating warfare, growing authoritarianism, and capitalist profligacy. These threats are particularly acute for unprotected urban populations who encounter a precarious future, as powerful elites attempt to leverage urban assets for their advantage amidst uncertainty.

For the majority of city dwellers, the future seems bleak—a foreclosure on hope, characterised by dispossession and impoverishment. Yet, amidst these challenges, what pathways remain for cities to prevent such a dire outcome for those living in modest neighbourhoods?

The book delves into the popular practices and knowledges within urban communities, uncovering elements with potential for reparative and curative impacts. In these communities, the engagement with time and adversity involves horizontal relations, place affinities, and restive knowledge—essentially making something out of nothing. These intricate ecologies of urban inhabitation, with their wiles and improvisations, offer a fertile ground for future-making.

Urban Lifelines provides a conceptual framework to capture this threatened yet resilient urbanism, showcasing its manifestation on the streets of Kinshasa, Lagos, Mexico City, and Naples. It outlines an infrastructural and aesthetic politics that highlight its potential, enabling an alternative future to emerge despite urban foreclosure.