Cities and Coexistence: A Complexity-Informed Approach

Abstract

Urban space is at the same time deeply affective, social, and political. This chapter explores how and with what consequences urban neighbourhoods become arenas where societal change manifests and where various processes, situations, and interactions intensify, sometimes in harmonious, at other times in conflicting ways. Social life in the city is abundant and constantly changing, and the practice of everyday life is characterized by intensity, density, and ambivalence. Rather than assuming that diversity and inequality are stable constellations or predefined qualities that characterize urban life, this chapter discusses them as contextual, momentary, yet pertinent and structural features that affect coexistence in contemporary cities. Introducing the empirical loci with which the volume engages, the chapter conceptualizes the city as a shared site and time where coexistence unfolds, detaching the question of living together from identity thinking and group-based accounts. Thus, the chapter develops a complexity-informed approach that informs the whole volume and with which the later chapters delve deep into how people sense, navigate, and make sense of the abundance of life affectively, relationally, spatially, and temporally.