COMPASSION AND THE CITY: An Introduction
This collection has had a long journey. From the first discussion with Liza Weinstein, several years ago about a kernel of an idea that seemed outside predominant discourse, to finding the authors willing to contribute and shape our ideas, to the many exchanges in between, and to our place here in IJURR has been a journey of mutual understanding, patience and responsible thinking. I thank all the contributing authors for their long and unwavering commitment to these ideas. My deep gratitude to Liza Weinstein, Angela Yeap at IJURR for seeing this through the many years. A word of appreciation to the anonymous reviewers for valuing the intention.
Abstract
Compassion and the city is an unusual coupling in the urban analytic. The five essays in this Interventions collection propose compassion in the city as a form of life embedded in the conditions of the urban. Posed against the grain of extant scholarship that addresses these concerns in terms of discursive care or aid, this collection brings in five urban contexts—Dhaka, Delhi, Cairo, Jakarta and Horsens—to highlight understated nuances of how compassion might be recognized and understood within the urban condition. This introduction proposes what embedding compassion as a resolute part of the urban social infrastructure could entail and what that might imply in framing human affirmation in the face of urban suffering.
