In the course of the present Syrian revolution, Syria’s third largest city, Homs, gained notoriety as the capital of the revolution—first as the site of sustained, peaceful protest and later as the site of intense violence running along largely sectarian lines. Before either of these narratives became the animating theme of the revolution in Homs, thousands of Homsis gathered in the city’s central square in March 2011 to demand a number of reforms. One of their demands stands out in comparison with those made in other Syrian cities: the sacking of their governor, Ayad Ghazal. Local politics—from the sectarian tensions underlying long run rural-urban migration patterns, to the unequal provision of public services, to the forced displacement of thousands for the governor’s pet development project, the ‘Homs Dream’—figured largely into Homsis’ mobilization and the content of their demands. The sectarian violence into which the city descended has a local character as well, often pitting neighbor against neighbor. The paper concentrates on the first year of the Syrian revolution and explores the extent to which the distribution of populations across space structures contentious processes in the city: How has the spatial proximity of different groups, whether ethnic, occupational or income-based, shaped the course of the revolution in Homs? What is the role of the state, both in shaping long run settlement patterns and channeling interactions during the conflict? More fundamentally, how do identifications with existing social groups drive sorting of populations across space, and does spatial dispersion, in turn, give rise to new identifications? The paper employs a mixed-methods approach. First, it uses event history analysis to understand the broad patterning of contention within the city and relate it structural factors like income, timing of settlement, tribal linkages and ethnicity. It proceeds, drawing interview and documentary sources, to explicate the historical background and divergent revolutionary trajectories of two neighborhoods: al-Waer and Baba Amr. The former is a planned suburb that remained relatively isolated from protest or violence in the time period under study. The latter is an informal settlement that the governorate tried to dismantle in the late 2000s; it witnessed intense violence from an early point in the uprising (The residents of both neighborhoods are overwhelmingly Sunni Arab.). The paper argues that class and ethnic politics intersect in the sorting of peoples across physical space and the struggle for control of those spaces.