To speak in, from, and of the home is to speak of the world. This paper takes aim at the role of residential property in making cities legible for imperialist and capitalist urban processes. It argues that dominant property narratives focused on the financialisation of housing, have only ever been partial representations of the ways in which people occupy, dwell in, apply themselves to, and manifest themselves through place. This paper stands in the space occupied by all that the modern home tries to hide (as per Kaika 2004). That is, we start from within the hidden infrastructures of housing, and ask what it means for cities to bring these hidden histories, practices, spaces, and selves to the fore. Drawing on research with diverse forms of housing and economic praxis, our aim is to peel away the smooth surface of modern housing and reveal some of the deep heterogeneity hidden from sight by models and narratives of housing that talk only of its purported role as an alienable, financialised ‘asset’. Stepping into the space of that heterogeneity enables other ways of thinking and doing housing, cities, and selves, based in the myriad ways people are already thinking and doing these.

We are living in ‘bipolar times’, with rising diagnoses and visibility of bipolar mood disorder. Yet the experiences of people living with bipolar are less understood than many mental health disorders. Alongside psychological literature that calls for research into subjective experiences of bipolar, geographers argue that we must examine lived geographies of bipolar. Self and identity are foundational to bipolar lifeworlds: due to characteristic ‘mood swings’, people living with bipolar experience fragmented selves over place and time, and struggle to cohere a sense of self. This has consequences for stigmatisation, quality of life and therapeutic approaches. This propositional paper connects the work on fractured ‘bipolar selves’ with ideas on the relationship between place and identity to conceptualise the interaction between mood, place and identity in bipolar lifeworlds. Geographical thinking enhances knowledge of living with bipolar through providing (1) nuanced understandings of the mutuality of place and identity in the constitution of the bipolar self, and (2) incisive spatial approaches to intersectionality and multi-stranded identities. Through these theoretical insights, I urge for empirical work, arguing that a better understanding of place-based experiences of bipolar might help redress stigmatisation and aid the development of tailored treatments that account for individual bipolar lifeworlds.

The urban poor in the Global South often rely on access to public space for earning a livelihood, however, they are often evicted without relocation by city governments in the name of developing a ‘global city’ image. This indicates how the urban poor’s right to the city are often denied by city governments in most parts of the Global South. The term the ‘right to the city’ was first coined by Lefebvre in his book Le Droit à la Ville in 1968. In this book, Lefebvre presents a radical vision of a city in which citizens manage urban space for themselves rather than the control of the state and capitalism and they assert use value of urban space over exchange value. Using Sattola slum in Dhaka as a case study and drawing on data from 130 qualitative interviews with informal workers, local leaders and government officials, this paper explores whether the urban poor’s right to appropriate urban space and their right to participation in governance and planning are granted or blocked by the local government of Dhaka. Keywords: the right to the city, urban poor, public space, street vending, planning, governance, Dhaka