disaster

From the Field

A Construction Boom in an Urban Floodplain: Long Island City, Queens, NYC

Christopher Ryan - 11 February 2020
New York City has encouraged development in Long Island City, Queens, even as the neighborhood has not recovered...
From the Field

Rio de Janeiro: Storms, Militia, and Urban Development

Leandro Benmergui & Rafael Soares Gonçalves & translated by Oliver Waine - 8 November 2019
The dramatic consequences of storms at the beginning of 2019 in a favela in Rio de Janeiro reveal the ongoing...
From the Field

Planning for the Unimaginable: Puerto Rico and Strategies for Climate-Change Adaptation

Cecelia Walsh-Russo - 1 May 2018
The damage from the two hurricanes that struck Puerto Rico was multiplied by US austerity plans that deprived the...
Debates

Storm Recovery: Local Efforts, Municipal Constraints, and New Ways Forward

Michael P. McCabe - 28 November 2017
Climate change-induced storm surges and rising sea levels will steadily cause more damage to homes in low-lying...
Essays

After Fukushima: The Silence of Environmental Organizations on Nuclear Catastrophe

Michael Dreiling & Nicholas Lougee & Tomoyasu Nakamura - 22 September 2015
The nuclear catastrophe at the Fukushima plants in Japan in 2011 raised global awareness of the massive dangers...
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...
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...
From the Field

New York’s Two Sandys

Daniel Aldana Cohen & Max Liboiron - 30 October 2014
According to New Yorkers, two different Hurricane Sandys hit their city in 2012. The first was a one-time...
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...
From the Field

Haiti after the earthquake: camps, shanty towns and housing shortages

Gerry L’Étang & translated by Oliver Waine - 2 May 2012
In Haiti, in the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake, public squares became the sites of makeshift camps to provide...
From the Field

New Orleans Post-Katrina: the Uses of the Web in Times of Crisis

Jean Samuel Bordreuil & translated by Oliver Waine - 24 June 2011
What is the role of the internet media, particularly blogs, in mobilizing action in the aftermath of a major...
From the Field

Making sustainability public: the bayou observation deck in the Lower 9th Ward of New Orleans

Stéphane Tonnelat & translated by Eric Rosencrantz - 20 June 2011
How can the residents of a flooded neighborhood in New Orleans, torn between reconstruction imperatives and...
Debates

Who cares about care? Health care rationalization and the demise of a public hospital after Katrina

Anne M. Lovell - 8 June 2011
Charity Hospital served the poor and uninsured in one of the US’s unhealthiest cities. Though repaired after...
From the Field

The Build/No-Build Line

Richard Campanella - 1 June 2011
The Katrina flooding of 2005 ignited a debate between abandonists and maintainers. Should the city move to higher...
Debates

Bienville’s Dilemma: New Orleans Between Site and Situation

Richard Campanella - 25 May 2011
Ever since its founding at the mouth of the Mississippi river, New Orleans is the result of a delicate compromise...

Series

CALL FOR PAPERS | Urban Waste, Presents and Futures
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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