Urban Belonging as Place-based Affect

In this paper, we approach urban belonging as place-based affect to understand how it emerges and evolves in qualitatively different ways through everyday interactions with the city. Moving beyond a narrowly defined and fixed notion of urban belonging as feeling at home in place, we examine diverging feelings about Amsterdam during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. Confronted with the abrupt reconfiguration of everyday life, some residents felt a strong sense of contentment in relation to place, while others developed more ambivalent feelings. These ranged from anxious detachment, to disenchantment and even alienation and rejection, raising existential questions about their place in the city that reach beyond the pandemic. We demonstrate how these affective inequalities are grounded in everyday practices and evolve through social and material encounters in domestic and public space. Our findings draw attention to the processual and relational nature of urban belonging, highlighting the affective capacities of the city in everyday life.