The Paradox of Black Life: Discourses of Urban (Un)livability

The question of livability in the city has inspired plenty of debate amongst urban planning practitioners and scholars who have tried to define what constitutes a livable city and question, for whom is the livable city planned? (Okulics-Kozaryn, 2013, p. 438; Southworth, 2003). This research paper is concerned with thinking through the ways in which livability discourse fails to capture the lived experiences of low-income Black peoples and raises the question, how can a different ethics of livable city discourse – one that attends to the paradox of Black (un)livability –be imagined? This research paper applies a conceptual framework that brings into conversation discussions of urban livability with debates in various strands of Black radical traditions that discuss the paradox of Black life as both livable and unlivable. In doing so, this paper turns to Frantz Fanon’s theory of the zone of nonbeing in relation to Christina Sharpe’s theory of the wake, as part of an ethical and political project that reorients urban planning practices to more humanly livable future that considers the ways in which Blackness, “within and after the legacies of slavery’s denial of Black humanity”, inhabits/occupies and dwells in and across the dividing lines of livability and un-livability (Sharpe, 2016, p. 14 & 20).