United States

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

When Cities Fail, Babies Die

Monica J. Casper - 2 February 2016
Detroit, Michigan is often identified as the worst city in the United States, with excessive poverty, racism, and...
Essays

Parallel Lives? Elena Ferrante’s Naples and My West New Rochelle

Bella Mirabella - 26 January 2016
Elena Ferrante’s acclaimed Neapolitan novels, which trace the lives of two girls born in a working class district in...
Debates

Reskilling Urban Manufacturing: Workforce Solutions from the Inside Out

Nichola Lowe - 15 December 2015
In the United States, a four-year college education has gradually come to be assumed as a prerequisite for entry...
From the Field

Federal Anti-Segregation Milestones Demand Local Mobilization

Justin Steil - 24 November 2015
In June 2015, the US Supreme Court affirmed a legal tool that stands to hold municipalities and lenders accountable...
From the Field

Civic Innovation and Creative Campaigns: How Fresh Ideas Are Compromising Local Democracy

Stephanie Savell & Gianpaolo Baiocchi & Elizabeth A. Bennett & Alissa Cordner & Peter Taylor Klein - 27 October 2015
The trend of civic innovation in contemporary activism relies much on modern tools of communication as a...
Debates

Hardening Racial Lines in Public Space

Naomi Adiv - 7 July 2015
On Friday, June 5, Black teenagers in McKinney, Texas, were violently subdued by a police officer following a...
Debates

New York’s de Blasio bargains with FIRE

Tom Waters - 16 June 2015
Frantic deal-making over an obscure but costly New York City real-estate tax incentive (421‑a) provides a window...
From the Field

Taking Research to the Streets

Jonathan R. Wynn & Richard E. Ocejo - 9 June 2015
Residents of iconic neighborhoods in New York City have grown accustomed to walking tourism in their midst—clumps of...
From the Field

Clitoral Mass: A Women-of-Color Ride Through Los Angeles

Jennifer Candipan - 2 June 2015
Every year in the summer, a group of women, women of color, and women-identified riders cycle through the city of...
Reviews

All the Gayborhoods are White

Marcus Anthony Hunter - 19 May 2015
The urban “gayborhood,” the place where gay men and women found refuge for their sexuality from bigotry, is gradually...
Essays

In Cathedrals of Craft: Workplaces for the New Elite Service, Retail, and Manual Labor Jobs

Richard E. Ocejo - 12 May 2015
As artisanal economies emerge in postindustrial cities, the symbolic language and craft culture of the industrial...
From the Field

Food Deserts and Wage Deserts: The Importance of Metaphor in Policy and Activism

Laura Wolf-Powers - 28 April 2015
So-called “food deserts,” or neighborhoods deprived of businesses that sell healthy foods, are also poor...
Debates

Occupy Mall Street?

Anthony Maniscalco - 21 April 2015
The quintessential suburb is home to the shopping mall, an indoor space of anchor departments stores, small...
Essays

“Portlandia” in Portland: Curated Life in the Utopian City

Jeff London - 7 April 2015
Popular among educated creatives, hipsters, foodies, and other crunchy urbanites, the US television show Portlandia...
From the Field

The Future of Asbury Park: Gentrification and Youth in a Coastal Community

Alicia Raia-Hawrylak - 31 March 2015
Once known as a successful beach community, with a lively boardwalk and thriving rock music scene, the city of...
From the Field

Arts Districts Without Artists

Meghan Ashlin Rich - 23 March 2015
Numerous studies have examined gentrification’s harmful effects for low-income residents, but few examine the...
Debates

The Right to Public Space

Gregory Smithsimon - 10 March 2015
Many of the commonly defended human rights (freedom of expression, of assembly, of information, of movement, etc.)...
From the Field

The Other Side of Austin, Texas

Caitlyn Collins & Katherine Jensen & Kristine Kilanski & Javier Auyero - 2 March 2015
Despite a booming economy, Austin, Texas, is a city where inequalities persist and grow in the shadow of neoliberal...
Reviews

Constructing Crises

Marla Nelson - 23 February 2015
A new book by Kevin Fox Gotham and Miriam Greenberg foregrounds the disturbing parallels between two seemingly...
From the Field

Paying to Play in the Mission District

Naomi Adiv - 16 February 2015
Naomi Adiv unpacks a viral video showing an argument between longtime San Francisco residents and “dot-commers” over...
From the Field

When Predator Becomes Prey: Rental Housing in Low-Income Minority Neighborhoods

Clément Théry - 2 February 2015
In the growing low-income rental market, predator and prey roles can shift, as landlords and tenants alike can fall...
Debates

Interrupting Inequality: Crisis and Opportunity in Low-Income Housing Policy

Susan Saegert - 26 January 2015
Inequality in the United States is deeply rooted in issues of property ownership, wealth, race and class....
Essays

Looking Backward into the Future of New York

Ted Steinberg - 12 January 2015
Can the lesson of Hurricane Sandy dampen the enthusiasm of New York City’s growth machine? Ted Steinberg, author of...
Debates

The Age of the Renter

Tony Roshan Samara - 5 January 2015
Not all Americans own their home. In fact, more and more of them rent it. More and more of them also end up paying...
Essays

A Right to the Suburb? New Urbanism, Public Space, and the Law

Anthony Maniscalco - 8 December 2014
The American suburb is changing. It is racially and economically diverse. Its sterile spaces are being redesigned...
From the Field

Participatory Budgeting in New York City

Celina Su - 1 December 2014
Over the last four years, participatory budgeting has spread from one to more than 45 cities in the US. Reporting...
From the Field

The Abattoir’s Call: At the Margins of New York City’s Foodie Movement

Richard E. Ocejo - 17 November 2014
Food-conscious urban consumers often ask their butcher where their meat comes from. But how many wonder about the...
Debates

Finance as a New Terrain for Progressive Urban Politics

Desiree Fields - 6 November 2014
Since the foreclosure crisis, inequalities have only deepened in the US, with most wealth accruing to the 1%....
From the Field

Fighting for Retreat after Sandy: The Ocean Breeze Buyout Tent on Staten Island

Liz Koslov - 23 April 2014
On October 29, 2012, Staten Island, a borough of New York City, was on the front line when Hurricane Sandy ravaged...

| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |

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...
Centre national de recherche scientifique (CNRS)
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)

Partners