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Essays

Sheffield Music Factory: The Legacy of Red Tape Studios

Sam Holden - 7 January 2025

Opening in 1986, in defiance of government cuts, Red Tape Studios was the first municipal recording studio in the UK. Sam Holden demonstrates how the studio brought together the city council, third sector, and community in a time of ideological individualism, drawing lessons for the renewed, contemporary interest of municipal socialism in the UK.

Essays

From Universal Basic Income to Guaranteed Basic Income: An Experiment for Cities on the Brink

Marc Doussard - 17 December 2024
Surprisingly, US cities have led the charge in basic-income experiments, despite the country’s aversion to social...
Debates

The Banality of Innovation: Mythic Discourse and the Long Road to Shore Power in New York City

Iain McDavid - 3 December 2024
If the New York City Economic Development Corporation is committed to the city’s “green transformation, ” then why is...
Focus
Debates

Deconstructing Gentrification

Todd Swanstrom & Jason Hackworth - 5 November 2024
Can changing the way we understand the process of gentrification open possibilities for political and social change? Todd Swanstrom and Jason Hackworth debate this proposition. Summary Deconstructing Gentrification – by Todd Swanstrom On the Significance of Gentrification in Low-Demand Environments: A Reply to...
From the Field

In Norway, Housing Schemes Designed with Children in Mind

Grégoire Tortosa & translated by Oliver Waine - 22 November 2024
How can cities take more of a “child’s eye view”? Grégoire Tortosa shows how avant-garde housing developments in Oslo...
From the Field

When the Poor Make a Living from the Waste of the Rich

Simon Joxe & translated by Oliver Waine - 15 November 2024
In Buenos Aires, cartoneros—poor individuals who collect the waste of the rich—have managed to formalize their...
Interviews

Can Universities Learn to Leave Behind Air Travel?

Tamara Ben Ari & Parke Wilde - 22 October 2024
At a time when global research is showing that aviation is a carbon-intensive form of transport whose growth...
Interviews

Blueprints of Hope: How Architects Shape a Brighter Future

Nasser Golzari & Yara Sharif - 15 October 2024
In a conversation centered around the ongoing injustices in Palestine, particularly in Gaza, and the need for...
Debates

Discrimination and Everyday Politicization in Working-Class Neighborhoods in France

Marion Carrel & translated by Oliver Waine - 8 October 2024
Drawing on a collective study, Marion Carrel highlights how experiences of discrimination structure people’s...
Essays

The Impact of Tort Reform Liability Shields During the Covid‑19 Pandemic: Hyper-Preemption in the States

Davia C. Downey & William M. Myers - 1 October 2024
The Covid‑19 pandemic exposed how federal and state preemption hamstrings local policymaking. Using the case of tort...
Debates

When Rising Expectations Meet Rising Reaction: New York’s 2024 Housing Policy Fight and the Prospects for the Future

Oksana Mironova & Samuel Stein - 10 September 2024
How did New York housing policy fare with Democratic control of the executive, legislative and judicial branches of...
Metropolitics

Summer Reading 2024

The Editorial Board - 23 July 2024
The Editorial Board is now on summer break and will be posting new articles again in September. We’ve curated a...
Interviews

“There Is No Excused Absence in Prison”

Tanisha Cannon & Dylan O’Donoghue - 19 July 2024
More than 150 years after the passage of the 13th Amendment, the fight to abolish forced labor in the United States...
View all articles

Series

Black Power and Black Self-Determination in a New Time and New Spaces
Urban Wastes, Present and Future
New York Dossier: The Food Industry Faces the Covid‑19 Pandemic
Cities in the Age of Financialization
Contemporary Housing Struggles: Crises, Activism, and Critical Research
New York Tech Dossier: The Dark Side of New York’s Tech Economy
Progressive Mayors and Urban Social Movements
Land Rights in the Urban Global South
Climate Change and Social Change

Featured

From the Field

Covid-19 Transformed New York’s Destination Food Markets

Ivana Mellers - 5 October 2021
Ivana Mellers analyzes how New York’s destination markets—key spaces of economic and social interactions—coped during...
From the Field

Moving Inside City Limits: The Urban Mobility of Undocumented Youth

Stephen P. Ruszczyk - 4 June 2019
The urban context and public transportation shape how undocumented youths move within cities. In a comparison of...
Reviews

Filming Ethnic Diversity in New York

Stéphane Tonnelat & translated by Christina Mitrakos - 21 October 2016
Frederick Wiseman’s fortieth documentary film, In Jackson Heights (2015), returns to an urban theme explored in...
From the Field

Looking Inward, Across the Border

Harel Shapira - 19 April 2016
In the constellation of anti-immigrant politics in the United States, groups like the Minutemen, civilians who...
Essays

The Political Aesthetics of Drag

Shaka McGlotten - 13 October 2015
Drag, or the diverse art form and culture of performance that typically plays with gender and sex, is an integral...
Debates

Disarm the Police

Gregory Smithsimon - 29 September 2015
In the current political debates about discriminatory policing, there has been a lack of serious discussion of...

Other resources online

Cycles of Violence: Analysing Media Discourse in the Newspaper...

Mobile Lives Forum
How are cyclist and pedestrian deaths depicted in newspaper reports, and how do these reports help shape...

Lahti: The First Carbon-Rationing Experiment Applied to Local...

Mobile Lives Forum
The city of Lahti in Finland was the first to experiment with a carbon-trading scheme among its inhabitants to...

Is Rationing Carbon for Travel a Fair, Efficient, and Realistic...

Mobile Lives Forum
In the wake of the pandemic, a carbon tax at Europe’s borders is now on the agenda, but a domestic version for...

Reducing Carbon-Emitting Travel: A Factor of Social Cohesion and...

Mobile Lives Forum
As part of France’s Mission on the Future of the Economic Model of Public Transportation, commissioned by the French...

Strasbourg, An Example of a Cycling City

Mobile Lives Forum
Strasbourg is the leading city for cycling in France and a constant source of inspiration for all French cities...

The Trinity of Walking, Cycling and Public Transportation Must Be...

Mobile Lives Forum
While emissions from the transportation sector remain at a very high level, all hopes are currently pinned on the...

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Journal supported by the Institut des Sciences Humaines et Sociales (Institute of Human and Social Sciences) of the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS)

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