Urban Bottoms in Six Global Cities

The contributions in this volume shed light on the urban bottom, particularly the very bottom people, in six global cities: Tokyo, New York, Paris, Nairobi, Mexico City, and Manila.

Urban bottom is a hierarchical concept that captures urban populations systematically bottomized under neoliberal capitalism. Using urban bottom as its key analytical concept, the book examines the labor, everyday lives, social networks, mobility, and lifeworlds of these populations, including female workers, young people, immigrants, sex workers, slum residents, street vendors, homeless individuals, and welfare recipients. It explores how they struggle to survive amid informal and unstable living conditions, and offers a typological analysis that reveals similarities and differences across cities.

ISBN: 9798903932030

Publication date: August 20, 2027

Acknowledgement
Illustrations and Tables
Notes on Contributors

Prologue
Hideo Aoki

Part 1 Tokyo

Introduction: Tokyo’s Urban Bottom
Keiko Yamaguchi and Yuki Tsubasa

1 Tokyo Metropolitan Government’s Urban Bottom Measure
Tamaki Matsuo

2 Selection and Management of Urban Bottom by Welfare Systems
Yukihiko Kitagawa

3 The Urban Bottom and Labor Informality in Tokyo
Keiko Yamaguchi

4 Remapping the Geography of Homelessness in Tokyo: Reconfiguration of Gray Space
Tsubasa Yuki

5 Concluding Remark: Dystopian Tokyo: Fragmentation and Depoliticization of the Urban Bottom
Tsubasa Yuki

Part 2 New York

Introduction: Wider Contexts and Changes over the Last Forty Years
Terry Williams and Yutaka Nakamura

6 Public Philosophy of the Street: a Note on Informality and Street Vendor in New York City
Yutaka Nakamura

7 Homelessness-Spatial Informality in Urban Bottom
Terry Williams

Part 3 Paris

8 Urban Marginality and Public Space in Paris from a Gender Perspective: Gentrification, Public Policies and Migrant Women’s Body
Chikako Mori and Hélène Le Bail

Part 4 Nairobi

Introduction: Nairobi’s Urban Bottom
Motoji Matsuda and Wangui Kimari

9 Enduring Solidarities: Mutual Aid and the Urban Bottom in Nairobi
Wangui Kimari

10 How was the COVID-19 Disaster Experienced in Urban Bottom Nairobi? A Case Study of Kangemi
Motoji Matsuda

11 Conclusion: a New Sense of Solidarity among the Urban Bottom
Wangui Kimari and Motoji Matsuda

Part 5 Mexico City

12 Spectral Vulnerability of the Urban Bottom People in Mexico City
Heriberto Ruiz Tafoya

13 A Case Study of the Dynamics as Involution in the Informal Economy in a Colony of the Most Marginal Society in Mexico City
Hideki Nakata

Part 6 Manila

Introduction: the Urban Bottom in Manila
Mai Yoshida

14 Creating a Space of Exception through Urban Politics and Housing Policy
Anna Marie-Karaos

15 Exit from “the Space of Exception”: Continuous Supplying of Women’s Labor for Global Capital from the Urban Bottom
Chiho Ogaya

16 Imprisoned in “the Space of Exception”: the Case of Street Vendors in Manila
Mai Yoshida

17 The Imprisoned Homeless
Gerald Nicolas

18 Conclusion: Manila as a Space of Exception in a Global City
Mai Yoshida

Epilogue
Motoji Matsuda

Index