Revanchism and therapeutic urbanism: Some critical reflections

This essay reconceptualizes urban revanchism as a constituting element of the modus operandi and habitus of urban redevelopment. This reconceptualization not only helps transcend the binary distinction between ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ revanchism, which has come to dominate research on revanchist urbanism, but also extends Smith’s attempts to penetrate the underlying motives and hidden logics of gentrification. Drawing on the example of urban redevelopment on Chicago's South Side around the Obama Presidential Center, we argue that revanchism today operates in the habitus and taken-for-granted processes of rolling out such infrastructure projects and other urban redevelopment policies, tools and practices. Revanchism, today, contains a deep-seated therapeutic motif of urban consumerism where residents of marginalised communities are to embrace the identity of avid consumers and display a willingness to collaborate with entrepreneurs, developers, and authorities in their redevelopment efforts. Our essay shows that the central operative practices for revanchist urbanism often remain hidden in the taken-for-granted insinuations, workings, and sensibilities of urban redevelopment centered on the idea of creating new consumption spaces in the city.