ABSTRACT

In the last twenty years projects of urban upgrading and gentrification have significantly reshaped cities. Among other things, they have sharpened class divides by imposing stricter spatial segregation. Around the globe poor people face slum demolition, forced relocation and crowding out of inner-city living quarters. Is there a future after displacement? Policy makers speak about improved living conditions in planned resettlement colonies, while poor people complain about inhospitable new living places, lack of opportunity and long commutes. Avoiding a simplistic divide between urban future as either utopian or dystopian, this chapter depicts quotidian struggles of making a home in spaces of marginality. Poor people too embrace aspirations about beautiful living in clean and spacious environments, while struggling with multiple financial, social and infrastructural disadvantages. The tension between (some people’s) aspiration and (other people’s) desperation locks neighbours into passionate negotiations about landscaping neighbourhoods. They involve centrally the evaluation of specific sensual experiences as expressive of quality of life or a lack thereof. Noise, garbage and excrement/dung on the one hand and greenery, preservation of open space and airiness on the other are taken as indicative of neglect and care respectively. Locally relevant normative assessments about proper living imbricate with ongoing debates about environmental sustainability, educational imperatives and financial inclusion. By analyzing the landscaping effects of survival economies the chapter takes seriously the contribution of poor people towards shaping urban futures and assesses the relevance of their actions for urban dynamics.