The genesis and spread of the novel coronavirus COVID-19 have transformed urban social life across the world. In this essay, I show how COVID-19 epitomizes but does not exclusively define global reach of China's cities, which is weaving new interconnections between humans and non-humans, including viruses and endangered wildlife.

In the UK, this movement has authorized itself around the claim that ‘the people’ want to leave the European Union. This poses a problem for oppositional movements, as making arguments for a cosmopolitan politics, a supra-national account of citizenship, and the movement of people across borders is now equated with rejecting the view of ‘the people’.

The majority of spaces of “activism” we see on campuses today are those produced by and for administrations, usually through student affairs divisions, in order to commodify and control dissent on campus. The shiny social justice activism sold by universities is marketed in student friendly packages in spaces that offer no real autonomy or control over programming for students.

In the evening of August 13th, 2016, the Sherman Park neighborhood of Milwaukee, Wisconsin erupted into protest. Earlier that day, a Milwaukee police officer had shot and killed 23-year old neighborhood resident Sylville Smith, prompting hundreds of people to flood the streets of Milwaukee’s north side. For three days, protestors faced down police in riot gear and snipers situated atop nearby buildings.

The “Mi(e)s-conception” essay was originally published in 2000, so it is undoubtedly an example of Preciado’s earlier work, but at the same time, it can also be read as the beginning of his trajectory toward more developed thinking on gender, sex, and the built environment, as evidenced in "Pornotopia". The question, for geographers and other spatially-oriented thinkers, is How can this corpus of work be productively adapted to their research?