Sense of place and place-based activism in the neoliberal city

The past decade has witnessed an outpouring of scholarship on the neoliberal city. Most of the widely read work on this topic has been theoretical, critical and tends to explore the larger political and economic mechanisms that structure urban space, foster social injustice and incite activism. However, missing from this body of literature is a recent critical study that examines the role of place theory and place-based resistance to neoliberal globalization in an urban context. This study draws from empirical research in North America to reveal the creative, complex and often contradictory ways some urban communities actualize a local sense of place in reaction to pervasive neoliberal forces. This paper suggests that employing a sense of place perspective may shed light on the ways local activists are prioritizing the local scale in an attempt to negotiate the complex and even contradictory policies evident in the current neoliberal period.