Urban Penalty and the Right to the City of the Urban Poor During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

This chapter presents the theoretical underpinnings of this book. The discussion presented in the chapter focuses on the urban health penalty, right to the city, complexity theory, and distributive justice theory. These four theories situate the COVID-19 pandemic and its impacts on the urban poor in the theoretical foundations, which raise issues of how the poor are affected by disease/health pandemics due to their living conditions. First, the urban health penalty theory explores the vulnerabilities the poor face due to their positioning in the city’s grey spaces characterized by deprivation, abjection, and poverty, exposing them to health risks. These vulnerabilities are examined and interrogated through the lens of the COVID-19 pandemic. Second, the chapter situates the right to the city theory in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Here, the focus is on government interventions and how the “citizens” rights to the city are upheld or compromised, especially the urban poor who are often marginalized and excluded from accessing urban services and facilities. Third, the distributive justice theory is explored, bringing to attention how the citizens are disadvantaged or benefit from accessing services in the city. Regarding COVID-19, this theory shows how the poor benefited or were disadvantaged in accessing services to curb the spread of the pandemic or in recovering from the pandemic. Moreover, the distributive justice theory applied in this chapter also traces the pre-COVID-19 context and how the poor benefited or failed to benefit from services. Lastly, the complex theory explains the nature of COVID-19, which has been elusive and difficult to comprehend and make sense of, and how it has affected different aspects of urban life beyond the health aspect of the city.