The modalities and politics of crisis urbanism: A new reparative conjuncture?

This article argues that the current advance of global crises necessitates new thinking on how the urban intersects with crisis. We develop four overlapping modalities for theorizing how multiple and deepening crises are entwined with urbanism and are generative of a conjuncture we approach as crisis urbanism : chrono-politics of crisis urbanism, spatial-politics of crisis urbanism, statal-politics of crisis urbanism, and the epistemological politics of crisis urbanism . The theoretical framing of these modalities sheds light on the interlinking and enduring character of crisis urbanism and offers a better understanding of poly- and perma-crises associated with the urban way of life and the political geographies these are generating, including, dialectically, the turn to reparative urbanism to address harms within the city. Crisis is understood as not (yet) enveloping urbanism but rather as an ever-present process within urbanization. Crisis urbanism is, then, the name we give to this process, but it is also a method: a means of analysing an always politically constructed and dialectically composed process, one that is relational and ongoing. In conclusion, the article reflects on the prospects of transformative reparative politics within and beyond the current urban conjuncture.