Activism and urban politics to come: escaping the acceptability trap

Abstract

The economic and political changes characterising contemporary urbanisation have generated unjust conceptions and configurations of urban space that, in turn, have sparked off unusual forms of activism. All over the world, heterogeneous groups of citizens have imagined and experimented with new collective actions to counter urban transformations producing social segregation, expulsions, erasure of public spaces and environmental destruction. However, the impact of these experiments on the production of more just forms of urbanisation is a contested issue. Following a line of thinking that grasps the sense of such experiences, rather than their greater or lesser capacity to change the course of events, this paper compares and debates two cases of urban activism occurred in the Apulia Region (Italy). The case studies are analysed with a focus on the narratives concerning the sense and feeling of injustice circulating within them and with the goal to highlight their contribution to urban politics to come. In spite of their differences, the analysis discloses a common concern: the need to free urban space from ‘acceptable injustice’ considered as a pillar of the architecture of contemporary urbanisation.