All talk and no movement? Homeless coping and resistance to urban planning

Privileging the discursive expression of micro-resistance while exploiting spatial metaphors such as cynical distancing and escape, recent work in Critical Management Studies (CMS) has tended to find resistance everywhere without actually examining its spatial whereabouts. Utilizing a spatial approach, this article therefore investigates how homeless people in Stockholm not only resisted but also coped otherwise with two urban planning projects that intended to drive them away from two public places. Whereas some of the homeless subverted the planners’ intentions by returning, others confirmed their intentions by leaving. The article further discusses the nomadic nature of these movements and how they were related to homeless discourses of apathy, cynicism and contentment. Finally, it discusses what implications this may have for homeless people and urban planning organizations, and for the understanding of resistance in CMS