COVID-19 and the consequent national lockdown has been an unprecedented moment of collapse of spatial scales. City after city, millions of people inhabiting hidden dwellings, and hitherto invisible – suddenly poured onto the streets and began walking, cycling, hitching rides in trucks; all this while being hungry and thirsty. They did feats that tested the endurance limits of the body.
As people deployed knowledge and ignorance tactically, relied on networks of trust to get by, figured out how to make neighborhoods survive, COVID-19 did what the theorist and the practitioner have not been able to do on one’s own until now – decenter both the theorist and the practitioner.
We will discuss all this as witnesses to uncertainty of an unprecedented degree. And why this democratisation of practice and theory is the single most important outcome of the last three months
