ABSTRACT
In order to situate the contemporary manifestation of narcotic modernity in the terms of the city as site of safe/supervised consumption, this chapter describes the major shifts in the form and character of contemporary urbanism following the slow disintegration of the city of spectacle. As one of the more recent and controversial harm reduction interventions, supervised consumption sites (SCS) are variously referred to in different regional and national contexts as safe injection facilities (SIF), drug consumption rooms (DCRs), and medically supervised injection centres (MSIC). As site of safe/supervised consumption, the present era of narcotic modernity has been directly informed, and, as it were, ushered in, by dramatic changes in the nature of capitalist urban redevelopment. With the rapid shift to a post-Fordist urban economy throughout the developed Western world brought about by the advance of deindustrialization and globalization, cities ever more aggressively compete and market themselves as spaces for consumption and investment.
