Workspace Conflicts, Urban Lives and Livelihoods: Emerging Politics, Planning and Practice across the Global North and South. Part I

Regular session

This session advances international debate on workspace pressures and conflicts within urban research. Spaces of work have been relatively neglected within urban research compared to housing, public space or environmental issues. Here, we focus in particular on the low-cost workspaces that support the majority of urban lives and livelihoods. Such workspaces accommodate diverse uses and occupiers, including retail and markets, industry and manufacturing, creative work, personal services, and community groups, community businesses and charities. These activities make up much of the foundational or everyday economy in cities, underpinning the ‘high value’ sectors of the economy focused on by urban policy. As cities develop, low-cost workspace and the lives and livelihoods it sustains can come under increasing pressure from ‘higher-value’ competing land uses. Migrant and minoritized traders and businesses are often disproportionately affected by workspace displacement, producing urban struggles led by or involving traders, businesses and workers. The growing pressure on low-cost workspace has provoked wider debates such as the future of industry in global cities and whether/how street traders should be included in urban development plans. Workspace pressures have produced new attempts to reconcile housing and employment uses in cities and opened up new real estate markets for affordable workspace in some cases. We invite wide-ranging contributions to this session on the politics, planning and practice emerging from workspace pressures and conflicts, from diverse perspectives including exclusionary urban development processes, ‘the right to livelihood’ and foundational/everyday/diverse economies.