Introduction: critical geographies of everyday crisis

Overlapping crises, from economic shocks and pandemic disruptions to geopolitical emergencies and climate catastrophes, have become a defining condition of contemporary urban life rather than exceptional events. The Special Feature, ‘Critical Geographies of Everyday Crisis’, advances the concept of everyday crisis as an analytical and political lens for understanding how crisis operates as an enduring condition shaping urban life. Through a conceptual paper and four empirically grounded papers, set in Seoul, Beirut, Saint Petersburg, São Paulo, and Birmingham, this Special Feature brings diverse urban contexts into relational dialogue to scrutinize how everyday crisis is lived, produced, and navigated. Two commentaries situate the Special Feature’s contributions within broader debates about crisis, urgency, and everyday life. Taken together, the contributions explore how the permanence and normalization of crisis reshape urban subjectivities, forms of collective life, and forms of engagement with the urban, highlighting how the affective dimensions of crisis become entangled in urban space. The collection also draws attention to forms of agency, often quiet and mundane practices, through which urban residents navigate and make sense of this prolonged uncertainty.