This contribution is a sensitive exploration of the new territories of urban poverty and the significant role that financial capitalism plays in the creation of sociospatial inequalities. This unprecedented scenario requires a deep investigation of those forms of urban activism that seek to reappropriate the urban environment by protecting it from speculative approaches likely to breed social injustice. Indeed, some such practices very often effectively end up fostering the very same paradigms (founded on lionising private ownership) that they condemn. Hence the need to give urban theory a new foundation, including by offering a viewpoint from the developing world, a viewpoint capable of adopting different analytical angles, of encouraging new perspectives and evolving new approaches.
Keywords: Global south; poverty; territories