The City and the City, and the Space between: Formal Orders, Lived Realities, and Urban Futures In Turbulent Times

In a world shaped by persistent turbulence and ongoing crises, cities are key sites where global transformations are experienced, contested, and reimagined. This session draws inspiration from the novel The City & the City by China Miéville, which portrays two cities occupying the same physical space yet governed by different systems of visibility, recognition, and power. Within the realm of urban studies, the metaphor invites us to consider every city as comprising two intertwined dimensions: the formal city -of legal institutions, planning regimes, property rights, and governance structures- and the actual city -of everyday practices, informal arrangements, lived experiences, and alternative spatial imaginaries.

The relationship between these dimensions is neither fixed nor harmonious. Their interaction can reproduce and deepen existing inequalities; Exclusionary policies, uneven access to resources, and differentiated forms of citizenship are cases in point. At the same time, tensions between the formal and the actual city create opportunities for resistance. Examples include legal mobilization, collective innovation, and prefiguration. It is in the space between the formal city and the lived city that urban futures are negotiated and shaped.

This session invites theoretical, empirical, and methodological contributions examining how the formal and actual city intersect across diverse urban and regional contexts. We welcome papers that explore how formal institutions and spatial arrangements interact with lived experiences and everyday practices, and how these entanglements both reflect and reshape urban futures in turbulent times.