School of Cities / Research / Journal Article
A protest of the Mlack Lives Matter movement in an urban centre

Black Lives Matter and the spatial imaginaries of urban political resistance

By Prentiss Dantzler
Canadian Review of Sociology
October 2022

Scholars have often characterized the city as the epicenter of social inequality. The city has largely been argued to be the product of capitalistic endeavors resulting in deep pockets of conflicting class interests and racial tensions. However, any attempt to understand the city as a function of a broader urban process must consider the ways in which class and racial struggles constitutively restructure power dynamics that are lived out among people and places.

In this article, Professor Prentiss Dantzler briefly engages Black Lives Matter (BLM) and their policy efforts to think about the ways in which Black people create imaginaries about their own urban futures.