Countermapping planetary urbanization(s): socio-spatial ontologies of hegemonic whiteness, sustainability narratives, and grassroots solidarity praxis in Malmö

Abstract

Planetary urbanization theory has become a central framework for analyzing urban transformation within global capitalist systems. Yet de/anti/postcolonial and feminist critics have called for a more nuanced engagement with the social ontology of the urban. They insist on treating urbanization as open-ended and contingent, and on centering everyday resistance, the lived experience of racism and injustice, and alternative spatial imaginaries rooted in solidarity and radical relationality. Drawing on these critical debates, this article examines the social and spatial ontology of crisis narratives and ‘sustainable urban development’ imaginaries. It focuses on Malmö, Sweden’s third-largest city and a prominent migrant city, as a site where neoliberalization, post-industrial transformation, and the rise of far-right politics intersect. Three questions guide the analysis: first, how hegemonic planetary urbanization entangles with coloniality, whiteness, and dominant sustainability discourses in the Swedish context; second, what alternative forms of planetary urbanization might be imagined from grassroots solidarity urbanism grounded in anti-colonial, anti-racist, and caring practices; and third, what kinds of transformative sustainability and planning narratives might emerge from such imaginaries. The article engages critically with both hegemonic and counter-hegemonic forms of planetary urbanization. It maps how hegemonic whiteness, with its racial and colonial politics of space, environment, and housing, underlies dominant visions of sustainable urban development. It then turns to emerging grassroots, anti-racist, and anti-colonialist socio-spatial practices as expressions of an anti-hegemonic planetary urbanization. Building on this analysis, the article articulates a transformative imaginary for sustainable urban development and planning rooted in an urbanism of radically relational solidarity, one that reframes prevailing debates on socio-spatial and environmental ontology and opens space for more just and inclusive urban futures.