Urban Lifelines
The Future Between Foreclosure and Foreshadowing
1st Edition
Will be published approx. on 10. September 2026
Book
Paperback/Softback
252 pages
978-1-5095-7568-8 (ISBN)
Description
Cities are now on the front line of dangers associated with the climate crisis, health emergencies, uncontrolled artificial intelligence, escalating warfare, growing authoritarianism and capitalist profligacy. This is especially so for their unprotected populations who, in large numbers, now face a dire future of precarity as powerful elites seek to turn urban assets to their advantage in confronting an uncertain future. For the vast majority of people living in cities, the future is one of foreclosure - a future of dispossession and impoverishment that is lacking a horizon of hope.
What pathways remain open for cities to avert a future of foreclosure for people leading modest lives in modest neighbourhoods? To answer this question, this book looks to the popular practices and knowledges that exist within urban communities and neighbourhoods, finding within them elements that are potentially reparative and curative. Here the engagement with time is different, involving repertoires of horizontal relations, affinities of place and restive knowledge capable of making something out of nothing, of bending adversity towards other goals. Here, rich yet neglected ecologies of urban inhabitation - with all their wiles and improvisations - emerge as the ground of future-making. The book offers a body of concepts to encapsulate this threatened yet resistant urbanism, exemplifies its workings in the streets of Kinshasa, Lagos, Mexico City and Naples, and outlines an infrastructural and aesthetic politics to bring out its potential, thereby enabling another future to shine through urban foreclosure.
What pathways remain open for cities to avert a future of foreclosure for people leading modest lives in modest neighbourhoods? To answer this question, this book looks to the popular practices and knowledges that exist within urban communities and neighbourhoods, finding within them elements that are potentially reparative and curative. Here the engagement with time is different, involving repertoires of horizontal relations, affinities of place and restive knowledge capable of making something out of nothing, of bending adversity towards other goals. Here, rich yet neglected ecologies of urban inhabitation - with all their wiles and improvisations - emerge as the ground of future-making. The book offers a body of concepts to encapsulate this threatened yet resistant urbanism, exemplifies its workings in the streets of Kinshasa, Lagos, Mexico City and Naples, and outlines an infrastructural and aesthetic politics to bring out its potential, thereby enabling another future to shine through urban foreclosure.
Reviews / Votes
"Urban Lifelines is a masterclass in sophisticated urban theory informed by diverse geographies, refreshing the field whilst staking out unexpected sites of potentiality in our bleak times."Edgar Pieterse, University of Cape Town
"Urban redevelopment for the global economy produces disposable lives. Yet a 'livingness' endures. Urban Lifelines detects its fugitive movements, in fissures of incipience where potential futures jostle the impossibility of the present. In this collaborative project, six authors explore a set of collectively developed key concepts as they play out in different geographical arenas and from different angles of approach. Together they paint a portrait of the 'black world' of the contemporary urban: where remaindered lives, moving in the shadow of colonialism, foreshadow another urban world, in the opacity of what might yet emerge."
Brian Massumi, University of Montreal
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Oxford
United Kingdom
Target group
Professional and scholarly
ISBN-13
978-1-5095-7568-8 (9781509575688)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Ash Amin | AbdouMaliq Simone | Daniel E. Agbiboa
Urban Lifelines
The Future Between Foreclosure and Foreshadowing
Book
approx. 09/2026
1st Edition
Polity Press
€68.50
Not yet published
Persons
Ash Amin is Emeritus 1931 Professor of Geography at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of Christ's College.
AbdouMaliq Simone is Senior Professorial Fellow Emeritus at the Urban Institute, University of Sheffield.
Daniel E. Agbiboa is John and Ruth Hazel Associate Professor of the Social Sciences, and Associate Professor of African and African American Studies, at Harvard University.
Julie-Anne Boudreau is Senior Researcher at the Instituto de Geografia of the Universidad nacional autonoma de Mexico (UNAM).
Filip De Boeck is Professor at the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Leuven.
Enrica Morlicchio is Professor of Economic Sociology at the Federico II University of Naples.
AbdouMaliq Simone is Senior Professorial Fellow Emeritus at the Urban Institute, University of Sheffield.
Daniel E. Agbiboa is John and Ruth Hazel Associate Professor of the Social Sciences, and Associate Professor of African and African American Studies, at Harvard University.
Julie-Anne Boudreau is Senior Researcher at the Instituto de Geografia of the Universidad nacional autonoma de Mexico (UNAM).
Filip De Boeck is Professor at the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Leuven.
Enrica Morlicchio is Professor of Economic Sociology at the Federico II University of Naples.
Content
Introduction
Chapter 1. Foreshadowing the Future
Chapter 2. To Resume Reprendre. Urban Futures in the Era of the Congolese Anthropocene
Chapter 3. Hope without Future? Eko Atlantic, Climate Urbanism and the Self-Devouring Growth of Lagos
Chapter 4. To be Suspended: The 'Black Heart' of Naples
Chapter 5. Extendible present: Making the future through smart buildings, sacred mushrooms, and ghosts in Mexico City
Chapter 6. Time, Politics and the Incipient Urban
Chapter 7. The Foreshadowings of Blackness: Methods of Urbanizing Futures
Chapter 1. Foreshadowing the Future
Chapter 2. To Resume Reprendre. Urban Futures in the Era of the Congolese Anthropocene
Chapter 3. Hope without Future? Eko Atlantic, Climate Urbanism and the Self-Devouring Growth of Lagos
Chapter 4. To be Suspended: The 'Black Heart' of Naples
Chapter 5. Extendible present: Making the future through smart buildings, sacred mushrooms, and ghosts in Mexico City
Chapter 6. Time, Politics and the Incipient Urban
Chapter 7. The Foreshadowings of Blackness: Methods of Urbanizing Futures