What’s the Role of Belonging in Urban Environments?
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
