The drive to the Johnston farm, one of my father’s clients, always felt long, but the visits were mostly fun and always an adventure. The place had the basics: a farmhouse, a barn, a silo, cows, pigs, and at least one dog. When my father consulted with Mr. Johnston and my mother, if she came along, chatted with Mrs. Johnston, my older brother, sister, and I would play in the barn, sometimes with the Johnston boy.
The barn was the best part. To my ten-year-old eyes, it was enormous. On each side of the main floor were haystacks and baled hay. We spent what seemed like hours playing tag in the maze-like tunnels built into the haystacks or swinging from a rope tied to the rafters and letting go into piles of hay. Below the floor were stalls with pigs and cows; they were ridiculously loud and aggressive.
But on one visit, my brother and sister weren’t there. While my parents talked inside the house, the Johnston boy, barely a teenager, asked me if I wanted to join him outside to survey the property. Just before we stepped out, he picked up a rifle, and I thought nothing of it.
After a short walk, we came to a clearing and spotted a small dog sitting upright in the distance. The boy said it had been there for a few days and hadn’t moved. He added that the dog was not theirs and was trespassing. He also said that the animal must probably be lame. His words tumbled out quickly, as if rehearsed.
Then, without pause, he leveled the rifle to his shoulder. The Johnston boy looked down the barrel and aimed. A crack split the air. The dog toppled. Silence. He turned, as if nothing had happened. We left the body where it lay.
It was the first time I had seen a defenseless animal killed so casually. Alone and unsettled, I said nothing, out of shock, maybe fear. Perhaps he wanted to impress me. Maybe it was something darker. I never told my parents, but the brazen suddenness of that act has been an enduring memory for me.
Author’s Note: “Johnston” is a pseudonym
Photo Credit:
Photographer: Stan Shebs
Title: Farm in the Kitchener area of Ontario
https://jeffreyianross.com/wp-content/uploads/Ontario_farm.jpg9331400Jeffrey Ian Rosshttps://jeffreyianross.com/wp-content/uploads/jeffrey-ian-ross-logo-04.pngJeffrey Ian Ross2025-09-28 11:50:492025-09-28 11:50:49The Clearing
In most urban settings, a sense of belonging is an important foundation for political participation. Political participation (also referred to as political engagement/mobilization) includes actions that are designed to express, claim, maintain, or expand individual and community justice, legitimacy, or power. And by belonging, I’m not simply talking about attachment, social connection, or loyalty, but about a deep feeling in which place and space are integral to personal identity and meaning.
These distinctions matter. While connection to a place can be instrumental, and loyalty may be strategic, belonging implies an affective and positive bond. Such attachment often affects/motivates a person’s desire and capacity to perceive and articulate grievances when a block, neighborhood, district, or city is threatened.
Admittedly, the causal relationship between belonging and political mobilization is not straightforward. In some cases, political engagement emerges from experiences of exclusion or displacement, where the absence of belonging generates claims to recognition and rights. Furthermore, belonging also operates unevenly across spatial areas. For example, what it means to belong to a block differs from what it means to be attached to a city, and how people respond in the political sphere may vary based on the attachment they feel for each different geographic entity.
These dynamics are also shaped in part by the quality and duration of social interactions. Sustained and positive encounters with neighbors, local workers, businesses, or community organizations tend to reinforce belonging, while recurrently negative or conflictual interactions (including criminal victimization) may erode it. Thus, belonging is not fixed but continually produced and contested in everyday urban life.
Expressions of belonging take multiple forms. Material practices such as home-making, memorialization, or the use of streets and public spaces can demonstrate attachment to place. Informal street-level symbolic markers often connected with street culture (e.g., graffiti, street art, etc.) may signal identification in visible ways. Institutional practices, such as branded signage, neighborhood newsletters, or city-sponsored campaigns, attempt to inscribe belonging into the urban landscape. Belonging can even manifest in less direct actions, for example, in the maintenance of civility, norms of cleanliness (e.g., cleaning the sidewalk in front of your residence or business), or everyday restraint (i.e., treating others with respect).
Although visible signs of identity can indicate attachment, they can also be performative or commodified branding detached from durable commitment.
In DC, where I live, belonging is demonstrated in lots of different ways, including displaying the DC flag on porches, murals, bumper stickers, clothing, and tattoos. Similarly, the 202 area code is placed on local clothing brands like District of Clothing, One Love Massive, and Made in the District that sell shirts, hats, and hoodies with neighborhood names (e.g., “Brookland,” “Petworth”). We also see slogans like “Don’t Mute DC” placed on this type of clothing. The “Taxation Without Representation” license plate encapsulates a widely shared grievance and serves as a civic identifier. DC has numerous neighborhood murals, paying homage to well-known homegrown musicians like jazz great Duke Ellington in Shaw to or the grandfather of Go-go, Chuck Brown. Bands often “rep” their neighborhood during performances. The “Don’t Mute DC” movement (2019) defended neighborhood cultural expression when Central Communications, a Metro PCS store in Shaw, was told to stop playing Go-go on speakers. Block parties, cookouts, and Go-go shows often double as neighborhood identity affirmations. Events like Adams Morgan Day or the H Street Festival showcase neighborhood pride while attracting visitors. Meanwhile, graffiti and street art may contain neighborhood names, abbreviations, or slang.
Yet markers of identity do not automatically translate into political action. Wearing a shirt with the name of the neighborhood on it or displaying a city flag does not guarantee that an individual will sign a petition, attend a protest, or join a boycott. The key issue is whether attachments to place channel grievances into collective political mobilization, and what kinds of actions are residents willing to engage in. Where belonging is absent, grievances may remain diffuse, limiting the scope for individuals and communities’ claims for justice, legitimacy, or claims to power.
All being said, belonging is a start.
Photo Credit
Title New York, New York. Children escape the heat of the East Side by using fire hydrant as a shower bath (1943).
Photographer: Smith, Roger
https://jeffreyianross.com/wp-content/uploads/Screenshot-2025-09-22-at-9.54.03-AM.png8621148Jeffrey Ian Rosshttps://jeffreyianross.com/wp-content/uploads/jeffrey-ian-ross-logo-04.pngJeffrey Ian Ross2025-09-22 14:33:102025-09-26 17:31:01What’s the Role of Belonging in Urban Environments?
Parking, often treated as a mundane logistical concern, is an important site of contestation in urban life. At its core, it reflects the struggle over public space in cities, where demand routinely exceeds supply.
Although debates about cars usually focus on externalities like emissions or their dominance over other modes of urban mobility, vehicles need to be stored, and drivers who use their vehicles in a city expect space to be available. Yet such spaces are typically scarce and therefore valuable. Municipalities attempt to impose order (and generate revenue) through ordinances, signage, enforcement, and fines, which reflect broader priorities about whose mobility matters.
Parking regulation, then, is more than bureaucratic management; it is an exercise of state power that structures everyday mobility and privileges certain users (e.g., residents, commuters, or commercial actors) over others in certain spaces, during particular times.
But urban order does not flow only from law. Informal norms shape behavior: whether a departing driver “owes” a space to someone waiting, how long it is acceptable to double-park, or whether putting a chair in a snow-cleared space is legitimate. Such practices reveal how everyday interactions generate micro-negotiations (and aggressions) of entitlement and authority. They demonstrate that order is continually produced and contested at the street level, not simply imposed from above.
Conflicts over towing, double-parking, or “space-saving” further highlight how residents and drivers attempt to assert claims over scarce resources, sometimes in defiance of official rules. These disputes expose tensions between formal regulation and lived practice, linking the politics of parking to broader questions of urban justice, governance, and the “right to the city.” The questions over who gets access to public space, what types of space, under what conditions, and under what terms are dominant in this exercise.
Ultimately, parking is not a mundane logistical issue but a microcosm of broader urban struggles over the distribution of rights, the allocation of resources, and the contestation of urban space itself.
Photo credit:
Title: Improptu Parking Sign Washington, D.C.
Photographer: Jeffrey Ian Ross, Ph.D.
https://jeffreyianross.com/wp-content/uploads/IMG_5130-scaled.jpg19202560Jeffrey Ian Rosshttps://jeffreyianross.com/wp-content/uploads/jeffrey-ian-ross-logo-04.pngJeffrey Ian Ross2025-09-14 12:22:062025-09-14 12:43:38Parking as a Microcosm of Broader Urban Struggles
The Clearing
/by Jeffrey Ian RossThe drive to the Johnston farm, one of my father’s clients, always felt long, but the visits were mostly fun and always an adventure. The place had the basics: a farmhouse, a barn, a silo, cows, pigs, and at least one dog. When my father consulted with Mr. Johnston and my mother, if she came along, chatted with Mrs. Johnston, my older brother, sister, and I would play in the barn, sometimes with the Johnston boy.
The barn was the best part. To my ten-year-old eyes, it was enormous. On each side of the main floor were haystacks and baled hay. We spent what seemed like hours playing tag in the maze-like tunnels built into the haystacks or swinging from a rope tied to the rafters and letting go into piles of hay. Below the floor were stalls with pigs and cows; they were ridiculously loud and aggressive.
But on one visit, my brother and sister weren’t there. While my parents talked inside the house, the Johnston boy, barely a teenager, asked me if I wanted to join him outside to survey the property. Just before we stepped out, he picked up a rifle, and I thought nothing of it.
After a short walk, we came to a clearing and spotted a small dog sitting upright in the distance. The boy said it had been there for a few days and hadn’t moved. He added that the dog was not theirs and was trespassing. He also said that the animal must probably be lame. His words tumbled out quickly, as if rehearsed.
Then, without pause, he leveled the rifle to his shoulder. The Johnston boy looked down the barrel and aimed. A crack split the air. The dog toppled. Silence. He turned, as if nothing had happened. We left the body where it lay.
It was the first time I had seen a defenseless animal killed so casually. Alone and unsettled, I said nothing, out of shock, maybe fear. Perhaps he wanted to impress me. Maybe it was something darker. I never told my parents, but the brazen suddenness of that act has been an enduring memory for me.
Author’s Note: “Johnston” is a pseudonym
Photo Credit:
Photographer: Stan Shebs
Title: Farm in the Kitchener area of Ontario
What’s the Role of Belonging in Urban Environments?
/by Jeffrey Ian RossIn most urban settings, a sense of belonging is an important foundation for political participation. Political participation (also referred to as political engagement/mobilization) includes actions that are designed to express, claim, maintain, or expand individual and community justice, legitimacy, or power. And by belonging, I’m not simply talking about attachment, social connection, or loyalty, but about a deep feeling in which place and space are integral to personal identity and meaning.
These distinctions matter. While connection to a place can be instrumental, and loyalty may be strategic, belonging implies an affective and positive bond. Such attachment often affects/motivates a person’s desire and capacity to perceive and articulate grievances when a block, neighborhood, district, or city is threatened.
Admittedly, the causal relationship between belonging and political mobilization is not straightforward. In some cases, political engagement emerges from experiences of exclusion or displacement, where the absence of belonging generates claims to recognition and rights. Furthermore, belonging also operates unevenly across spatial areas. For example, what it means to belong to a block differs from what it means to be attached to a city, and how people respond in the political sphere may vary based on the attachment they feel for each different geographic entity.
These dynamics are also shaped in part by the quality and duration of social interactions. Sustained and positive encounters with neighbors, local workers, businesses, or community organizations tend to reinforce belonging, while recurrently negative or conflictual interactions (including criminal victimization) may erode it. Thus, belonging is not fixed but continually produced and contested in everyday urban life.
Expressions of belonging take multiple forms. Material practices such as home-making, memorialization, or the use of streets and public spaces can demonstrate attachment to place. Informal street-level symbolic markers often connected with street culture (e.g., graffiti, street art, etc.) may signal identification in visible ways. Institutional practices, such as branded signage, neighborhood newsletters, or city-sponsored campaigns, attempt to inscribe belonging into the urban landscape. Belonging can even manifest in less direct actions, for example, in the maintenance of civility, norms of cleanliness (e.g., cleaning the sidewalk in front of your residence or business), or everyday restraint (i.e., treating others with respect).
Although visible signs of identity can indicate attachment, they can also be performative or commodified branding detached from durable commitment.
In DC, where I live, belonging is demonstrated in lots of different ways, including displaying the DC flag on porches, murals, bumper stickers, clothing, and tattoos. Similarly, the 202 area code is placed on local clothing brands like District of Clothing, One Love Massive, and Made in the District that sell shirts, hats, and hoodies with neighborhood names (e.g., “Brookland,” “Petworth”). We also see slogans like “Don’t Mute DC” placed on this type of clothing. The “Taxation Without Representation” license plate encapsulates a widely shared grievance and serves as a civic identifier. DC has numerous neighborhood murals, paying homage to well-known homegrown musicians like jazz great Duke Ellington in Shaw to or the grandfather of Go-go, Chuck Brown. Bands often “rep” their neighborhood during performances. The “Don’t Mute DC” movement (2019) defended neighborhood cultural expression when Central Communications, a Metro PCS store in Shaw, was told to stop playing Go-go on speakers. Block parties, cookouts, and Go-go shows often double as neighborhood identity affirmations. Events like Adams Morgan Day or the H Street Festival showcase neighborhood pride while attracting visitors. Meanwhile, graffiti and street art may contain neighborhood names, abbreviations, or slang.
Yet markers of identity do not automatically translate into political action. Wearing a shirt with the name of the neighborhood on it or displaying a city flag does not guarantee that an individual will sign a petition, attend a protest, or join a boycott. The key issue is whether attachments to place channel grievances into collective political mobilization, and what kinds of actions are residents willing to engage in. Where belonging is absent, grievances may remain diffuse, limiting the scope for individuals and communities’ claims for justice, legitimacy, or claims to power.
All being said, belonging is a start.
Photo Credit
Title New York, New York. Children escape the heat of the East Side by using fire hydrant as a shower bath (1943).
Photographer: Smith, Roger
Parking as a Microcosm of Broader Urban Struggles
/by Jeffrey Ian RossParking, often treated as a mundane logistical concern, is an important site of contestation in urban life. At its core, it reflects the struggle over public space in cities, where demand routinely exceeds supply.
Although debates about cars usually focus on externalities like emissions or their dominance over other modes of urban mobility, vehicles need to be stored, and drivers who use their vehicles in a city expect space to be available. Yet such spaces are typically scarce and therefore valuable. Municipalities attempt to impose order (and generate revenue) through ordinances, signage, enforcement, and fines, which reflect broader priorities about whose mobility matters.
Parking regulation, then, is more than bureaucratic management; it is an exercise of state power that structures everyday mobility and privileges certain users (e.g., residents, commuters, or commercial actors) over others in certain spaces, during particular times.
But urban order does not flow only from law. Informal norms shape behavior: whether a departing driver “owes” a space to someone waiting, how long it is acceptable to double-park, or whether putting a chair in a snow-cleared space is legitimate. Such practices reveal how everyday interactions generate micro-negotiations (and aggressions) of entitlement and authority. They demonstrate that order is continually produced and contested at the street level, not simply imposed from above.
Conflicts over towing, double-parking, or “space-saving” further highlight how residents and drivers attempt to assert claims over scarce resources, sometimes in defiance of official rules. These disputes expose tensions between formal regulation and lived practice, linking the politics of parking to broader questions of urban justice, governance, and the “right to the city.” The questions over who gets access to public space, what types of space, under what conditions, and under what terms are dominant in this exercise.
Ultimately, parking is not a mundane logistical issue but a microcosm of broader urban struggles over the distribution of rights, the allocation of resources, and the contestation of urban space itself.
Photo credit:
Title: Improptu Parking Sign Washington, D.C.
Photographer: Jeffrey Ian Ross, Ph.D.