The authors discuss the concept of vulnerability and apply it to the horizon of politics with the goal of talking about politics vulnerability and relate it to was they call “cold violence”, that is, the one where agents have institutional protection that reduces or cancels their liability, due to the postponement of the effects of the predatory action and to how impersonal their relationship with the victims is, but also due to pressures on governments and control agencies. They discuss the issue of citizenship in highly unequal scenarios and examine the factors that make populations more or less politically vulnerable to socio-environmental damage. Among these factors they consider the manipulation of urban and regional planning with its limiting collaborative character and the interferences of private interests on public affairs during this policy-making. They also examine the recurrent confusion between ‘government interest’ and ‘public interests’.
Cold violence; Vulnerability; Planning; Citizenship; Inequality