China

From the Field

The Politics of Urban Heritage-Making in the Yongqingfang Redevelopment Project in Guangzhou, China

Yimeng Yang - 29 March 2022
Yimeng Yang uses the case of a redevelopment project in Guangzhou, China, to interrogate heritage-led urban...
From the Field

Covid‑19 in China: A Civil Society in the Making

Beiyi Hu - 18 May 2021
Beiyi Hu examines responses to Covid‑19 in China, focusing on civil-society efforts at the social, political, and...
From the Field

Made in China, Sold in West Africa

Anne Bouhali & Nora Mareï & Mamadou Dimé & translated by Oliver Waine - 31 May 2019
From a small border post between Senegal and Mauritania, Anne Bouahli, Nora Mareï and Mamadou Dimé follow the journey...
From the Field

Beneath the Surface of Chinese Cities: Abandoned Places and Contemporary Ruins

Judith Audin & translated by Oliver Waine - 28 September 2018
Urban ruins represent a marginal subject of research within the field of Chinese studies, and yet are a precious...
From the Field

Shanghai’s West Bund Cultural Corridor Exemplifies the Opportunities and Risks of State-Driven Cultural Development

Siqi Tu - 8 May 2018
The West Bund Cultural Corridor in Shanghai is the latest entrant in a global competition to attract investment by...
Essays

Bargain hunting in the “small-commodity city” of Yiwu, China

Alison Hulme - 10 November 2015
China’s rise in the global economy has been largely based on the manufacturing of both cheap and expensive goods....
From the Field

The Massive Death of China’s Urban Villages

Stefan Al - 17 March 2015
As expanding Chinese cities engulfed their hinterlands, chengzhoncun—villages within the city—became an affordable...
From the Field

Mass-Producing the World’s Factory

Stefan Al - 9 February 2015
The economic transformation of China into a global manufacturing mecca has emptied many rural areas, creating tens...
Debates

The difficulties of housing the Chinese “sandwich class”

Jie Chen & Bernard Vorms & translated by Oliver Waine - 21 December 2011
In China, young people from the middle classes are said to belong to a “sandwich class”: they do not have enough...

Series

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
Shrinking Cities

Featured

Debates

Covid-19, War, and Working-Class Neighborhoods

Pierre Gilbert & translated by Oliver Waine - 5 June 2020
The residents of France’s working-class neighborhoods, accused of exacerbating the coronavirus pandemic through...
Essays

Sentinel Territories: A New Concept for Looking at Environmental Change

David Blanchon & Frédéric Keck & François-Michel Le Tourneau & Stéphane Tonnelat & Adriana Zuniga-Teran - 8 May 2020
In this essay, the authors develop the concept of “sentinel territories,” or environments where humans can perceive...
From the Field

Who Cleans Paris? Garbage Collectors in Their Own Words

Coline Ferrant & Marie Mourad & translated by Oliver Waine - 21 June 2019
Who are Paris’s garbage collectors? Coline Ferrant and Marie Mourad highlight the diverse working conditions covered...
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...
Interviews

Teaching Art and the History of Tattoos at Rikers Island: An Interview with Tamara...

Lisa Jean Moore - 22 January 2019
An interview with Tamara Santibanez, who teaches art and the cultural and social history of tattoos to youth...
From the Field

Snowbirds’ Gift Economy in the Arizona Desert

David Frati - 7 November 2017
Each year, 200,000 retired people spend the winter in and around the small town of Quartzsite, Arizona, in the...

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...
Centre national de recherche scientifique
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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