Year: 2025
Type: book-chapter
Abstract: Is it possible to envisage within the socially dramatic issue of homelessness any contributions for SDG11? The chapter addresses this counterintuitive question in the framework of a broader transdisciplinary, research-and-practice project of the Global Center of Spatial Methods for Urban Sustainability (SMUS). By encompassing two sets of qualitative research techniques sensitive to the social and relational dimension of space, the SMUS Toolkit helped us inquire into the everyday life of people who dwelled in the streets of São Paulo during the Covid-19 pandemic. We argue that the contributions are of an interactional-spatial nature. They concern patterns of face-to-face interaction by and around homeless people in public spaces. Regarding homelessness particularly in Covid-19 São Paulo, the contributions encompass, on the one hand, (i) environmentally sustainable and (ii) environmentally inclusive interactions by homeless people with material objects, animals and plants in streets and squares. On the other hand, they refer to (iii) a socially inclusive knowledge about homeless people by practitioners devoted to homelessness. While the first two types of interaction are already ongoing, present-day involuntary contributions of homeless people to SDG11 target 11.6 and 11.7, the third type features as a future possibility for practitioners to target 11.1.
Institutions: Universidade de São Paulo, Federal Government of Brazil
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W4413029263