ABSTRACT
This section explores the complexity and energy at the heart of the making of urban identities, social life and mobility, traversing social processes that redefine citizenship and urban space from São Paulo to Hong Kong, Singapore to Manila, from Lomé and Dakar to Nairobi and Harare and beyond. In opening up this terrain, a social lens on cities of the global south helps us rethink many of the ideas central to discussion in this Handbook: from the meanings of colonial legacies, the constitution of urban polarization, the consequences and causes of entrenched inequalities in space and important processes such as work, and the possibilities of citizenship. Offering narratives that confront traditional ways of thinking about the southern city, authors in this section demonstrate the ways in which culture and social life can be placed analytically at the heart of processes of urban change and dynamism.
