Inequality and interconnectivity: Urban spaces of justice in Mexico

Cities in different parts of the world are going through intensive transformations based on institutional efforts to govern urban spaces and populations in the face of global environmental change and neoliberalization of governance. This essay examines inequalities and interconnectivities in urban governance and justice, drawing on a case-study of three, socially-differentiated sectors of the city of Villahermosa, Mexico, between 2011 and 2016. My analysis contributes to a multi-dimensional approach toward justice, and the cognate fields of right to the city, and segregation and inequality, that encompasses: (1) (re)distribution of residents’ exposure to risks and access to services; (2) recognition of the causes and consequences of risks and vulnerabilities; (3) fields of representation available for different residents; and (4) residents’ capabilities to recover from disasters and achieve everyday well-being within the existing urban governance and service provision structures. Instead of conceptualizing segregated cities as composed of isolated worlds, I argue that it is only possible to understand how the prevailing forms of governance produce multifaceted inequalities through a relational analysis of how residents from different parts of the city interact with the authorities and with each other. The study shows how residents’ tactics to accommodate, reconfigure and contest institutional endeavors to place them in hierarchical positions link to their differentiated ways of constructing urban space.