Speculative Urban Worldmaking: Meeting Financial Violence with a Politics of Collective Care

Abstract

This article brings Black feminist thought to bear on the urban geography of racialised financial violence. Our analysis focuses on the Moms 4 Housing movement, which began when five Black mothers occupied a vacant, corporate investor-owned house in West Oakland to protest how real estate speculation is fuelling displacement and homelessness for Black Oakland residents, disrupting care at the scale of the home and community. In taking space through recuperating the house on Magnolia Street, the Moms insist on housing as a site of care central to the survival of Black families and reclaim Oakland as a Black geographic space. In claiming ownership based on relations of care while refusing the institution of private property, we argue the Moms engage in speculative urban worldmaking—a form of collective care and a praxis of providing an alternative present that imagines and advocates for urban futures beyond financialisation's abstract racial violence.