In this paper, we analyse the intersections between care and place in mundane spaces not explicitly designed for the provision of care, and where digital technologies are used to mediate ecologies of distress in the city. We locate our analysis alongside studies of how digital technologies impact the experience of care within non-clinical spaces, whilst noting that much research on the use of technologies for care remains haunted by clinical imaginaries. Bringing together ideas of multi-sited therapeutic assemblages, technogeographies of care, and how places-by-proxy can act as conduits for care, we explore an example of an online app being used in public space to manage experiences of anxiety in an everyday urban environment. We reflect on this illustrative example to trace the movement of care as it is mediated through digital technologies—out of the clinic, beyond the home, and into the ordinary spaces of the city. We conclude that the entanglements of digital technologies and ordinary urban places prompt us to entirely reconsider questions of the where of care.

Current debates about Northern English cities and their role in national economic strategies cannot be read simply through the lens of contemporary politics. We therefore take the Northern Powerhouse as our starting point to trace a long history of policy and planning discourses about the North of England. We use Russell’s chronology of key historical moments in which Northern English cities hold a particular charge in cultural narratives of the nation to guide our analysis of contemporaneous tensions in debates about planning and governance. A focus on representations about the North of England over the last two centuries reveals four interlocking themes: the role of London in directing debates about the North; a tension between political and spatial approaches to planning; the characterisation of cities in the North as intrinsically problematic; and the continued issue of poverty in these cities.