Return to the Street

This book is an attempt to think through what might be termed a ‘return’ to the street. This is not a bright, new dawn. It is not the first steps out into the light following an environmental or technological apocalypse. This return concerns a renewed and heightened awareness of the vast social inequalities, violence and exclusion which continue to be perpetuated across the world. To challenge such inequality requires confrontation with the individuals, agents, institutions and authorities who actively promote and enact such violence and exclusion. It requires the occupation of sites and spaces which make visible such acts of exclusion. The street constitutes one such site of confrontation and visibility. The essays included in this volume approach the street via a range of different critical lenses, methodologies and objects of enquiry. Multiple sites and spaces are covered including the streets of London, Paris, New York, Sydney, Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Bogota, Port Louis, Nuremberg and Hillsborough. While various chapters are focused on site-specific analysi, elsewhere a more comparative approach is takien to teasing out what is at stake in this space we refer to as ‘street.’ Read together these interventions demonstrate the primacy of the street as an object of ongoing analysis, critique and debate for a range of disciplines including architecture, urban geography, gender and race studies, sociology, political science, history, cultural and media studies. Sophie Fuggle is lecturer in French at Nottingham Trent University Tom Henri is lecturer in Social Work at Goldsmiths, University of London