Toward an Understanding of the Spatiality of Urban Poverty: The Urban Poor as Spatial Actors KEVIN FOX GOTHAM The last two decades have witnessed an explosion of empirical research on the spatial aspects of social life. Several spatial metaphors, including `free spaces' (Polletta, 1999), `safe spaces' (Collins, 1991: 95±6, 142, 144±5; Byng, 1998), `gendered spaces' (Spain, 1993; 2001; Haney, 1996; DeSena, 2000), and `racialized spaces' (Haymes, 1995; Gotham, 1998; 2002) have appeared regularly in the work of sociologists and reflect past research traditions and attempts to create new ones (Lobao, 1993; Gieryn, 2000; Tickamyer, 2000). Other scholars are increasingly emphasizing the interplay of space and social action in research on the social organization of gang activity (Venkatesh, 1997), corporate interlocking directorates (Kono et al., 1998), the militarization of urban space (Davis, 1992), and social movements and political mobilization (Wright, 1997; Zhao, 1998; Davis, 1999). In addition, the recent `spatial turn' in urban sociology and historical sociology has directed attention to the ways in which spatial arrangements operate as constitutive dimensions of social phenomena (Harvey, 1989; 1993; Zukin, 1991; 1995; Gottdiener, 1994; Isaac, 1997; Tickamyer, 2000). A common theme running through these different and diverse studies is the attempt to delineate why space is important and how the consideration of socio-spatial relations and conflicts can illuminate our understanding of social change. Although scholars disagree about how space influences social relations, they agree in viewing space as a means of production (i.e. land and real estate), an object of consumption, and a geographical site of social action. The plethora of research suggests that space and spatial issues have been an important topic of concern for some time in empirical sociology. Yet it is ironic that we have witnessed this explosion of scholarly research on the role of space in group life at the same time scholars have lamented the under-theorization of space in sociology (for an overview, see Friedland and Boden, 1994: 4). In this article, I offer a critique of `neighborhood effects' models of urban poverty and identify the limitations of `adaptation' and `resistance' accounts of the actions of the urban poor. Moving beyond the space-as-container ontology, I conceptualize space as a social construction that shapes social action and guides behavior. Central to this constructionist framework is the idea that spatial boundaries, identities and meanings are negotiated, defined and produced through social interaction, social conflict and struggles between different groups. I maintain that a full understanding of the actions of the urban poor requires recognition of the spatial nature of human agency. Space has long been considered a secondary topic in sociology, the appropriate focus of geographers and other non-sociologists. In particular, sociological theory has been indifferent to space and spatial considerations, viewing space as a neutral backdrop against which action unfolds, or reducing it to a metaphor. 1 Yet these conceptualiza- Volume 27.3 September 2003 723-37 International Journal of Urban and Regional Research ß Joint Editors and Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2003. Published by Blackwell Publishing. 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main St, Malden, MA 02148, USA 1 British sociologist Peter Saunders (1989: 231), for example, suggests that `social theory has been quite right to treat space as a backdrop against which social action takes place. [. . .] Space does not `enter into' what we do in any meaningful sense, because mere space can have no causal properties