Interventions both to re-enforce dominant conceptions of political space and to think beyond them are underpinned by spatially informed diagnoses of time. Proximate relations are sites through which we make sense of the times in which we are living, while, concurrently, particular understandings of political space and the limits of political community are projected onto proximate relations. The notion of crisis is central to such political diagnoses and particularly important for analysis in this chapter and the remainder of the book. The notion of crisis does specific work both in the diagnosis of a particular moment and the formulation of forms of intervention to address its challenges. Broadly speaking the term crisis has two main usages. On the one hand, it refers to a specific unfolding event that requires immediate intervention. In this sense, it relates to similar concepts such as emergency, disaster and catastrophe. On the other hand, it is used to refer to a broader malaise tied to a historical conjuncture and geography. The specific events of the first usage of crisis can be associated with the second. For example, a particular disaster can be taken as a product or symptom of the broader malaise.

Symptoms of a broader crisis are seen to manifest in neighbourhood space and, in the process, neighbouring becomes a target for intervention. In such instances, urban analogies are employed to link urban phenomena such as squatting, petty crime and migration to insecurity and broader concerns such as a lack of control over borders and a diminishing sense of who ‘we’ are. Similarly, spiralling house prices, evictions, joblessness, inequality and the racialized policing of migrant communities may be associated to a lack of control over ‘our’ own affairs.