Care, commoning and collectivity: from grand domestic revolution to urban transformation

Abstract

Given profound urban challenges amplified by COVID-19, we need to center anti-racist feminists’ lenses oncare, commoning, and collectivity in our cultivations and analyses of urban change. We join a chorus of feminists that critique the devaluation, erasure, and isolation of care in the cities that we build and the stories we tell about them. But this is well-traversed territory, the ‘me too’ tale of every feminist who dreamsa different city or kind of urban theory. So, we outline a research agenda rooted in intersectional feminist imaginations and transformations that live around us. Neither nomadic nor confined to the home, care, commoning and collectivity can be aspirational, spatial, and practical. Inspired by Dolores Hayden and intersectional feminists, we ask: What kinds of socio-spatial imaginations can produce just, sustainable cities and who makes them? What material practices enable social change and improve everyday life, and at what scales might struggles for just cities be waged?.