Working with fragments

It is almost a century since Walter Benjamin conceived of his Arcades Project, which set out to explore the fragments and detritus of consumer capitalism, the discarded infrastructures and leftover shards of commodities no longer coveted but still present in the material fabric of the city, whose ruins and remains continued to bear witness to the hollow promises of a golden future made to the masses. The fragment, it seems, has a peculiar kind of attraction. It can draw our attention by not being fixed to any particular meaning, overarching narrative or lost totality. The fragment attracts precisely because it is leftover: it is unattached, a curiosity to be amused over. This issue of Agoriad explores the idea of the fragment and what fragments can tell us about the forming and reforming nature of space. As the world becomes increasingly urban and growing numbers of people inherit infrastructure, housing, and neighbourhoods that are broken and fragmented, we present contributions exploring what these piecemeal shards can tell us about how people create worlds, satisfy desire, and engender meaning