Compassion in urban settings is manifested less as a definitive practice than as a panoply of spatial and temporal orientations that lend uncertainty to the dispositions of actions and events. This is an uncertainty that can be either generative or debilitating, and it is difficult to predict which in advance. Thus, apertures and opportunities can appear beyond the consideration of eligibility or preparedness, and there can be a refusal of the terms on offer. In this way, the intersections of bodies, materials, built environments and political structures can generate unanticipated opportunities amid what otherwise seem to be innumerable foreclosures.