Towards a Praxis of Manifesting Spatial Imaginaries

Abstract

In this essay, we suggest an alternative lens to uneven development as an embodied process to frame extant work within critical gentrification studies. In doing so, we resist a theoretical and methodological distinction divorced from the politics of remaking the material and immaterial conditions of the body before, within, and beyond space. In the pursuit of theoretical distinctions and temporal and spatial renderings from the varieties of everyday racial capitalism, we urge scholars to embed an imaginary towards our collective urban future within their theoretical conceptualizations. To do this means to not only suggest what is but what could be. While brief, we hope that this encourages others to engage in scholarly endeavors not only to understand the causes and effects of gentrification and displacement, but to advocate for a politics of spatial imaginaries.