Urban Geography: A Critical Introduction (Critical Introductions to Geography) by Andrew E. G. Jonas & Eugene McCann & Mary Thomas

Author:Andrew E. G. Jonas & Eugene McCann & Mary Thomas [Jonas, Andrew E. G.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781118608500
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2015-03-05T00:00:00+00:00

Homelessness

Critical urban geographers insist that homelessness cannot be evaluated primarily or solely as a result of individual failings. Thousands of people do not end up living on a city’s streets as a result of individual actions; millions of people are homeless in the world’s cities, which points to a very large scale, structural issue of poverty and lack of affordable housing, mental health provision, and adequate work (Tipple and Speak, 2009). Perhaps placing individualized blame as the reason for homelessness might work if there were many, many fewer unhoused people, but the horrifying scale of homelessness across the world’s cities evidences a much broader and more insidious problem: widespread social exclusion (Klodawsky and Blomley, 2009). Whole areas can be marked as exclusion zones, such as the case of “ghettos” seen above. Those experiencing social exclusion worldwide include racial, ethnic and national minorities, indigenous groups, the poor, the disabled or chronically ill, sexual minorities, and, of course, the homeless. In some critical geographers’ views, the city has become a mean place, punitive against the poor, leading to increased policing and privatization of public space and outright criminalization of homeless existence (Smith, 1996; Duneier, 1999; Mitchell, 2003; DeVerteuil, 2006). The homeless are some of the most powerless of urban people, so why do they evoke such strong resentment, fear, disgust, and anger?

Social exclusion. The process of stigmatizing and marginalizing certain groups and identities in society. This tends to have economic as well as social and cultural dimensions.

Social exclusion involves the definition of groups as nonnormal, and it has a spatial process: people being cast out of and prohibited entry into “normal” urban spaces defined by mainstream categories of race, health, national status, class privilege, sexuality, and so on (Sibley, 1995).

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