environment

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...

Essays

The Emergence of Ecological Thinking in the City

Charles-François Mathis & translated by Oliver Waine - 27 September 2022

What place does ecological thinking have in the field of urban planning? In describing the use of vegetation in...

Debates

The Slow Violence of Planned Obsolescence

Elise Mason - 20 September 2022

Elise Mason critiques planned obsolescence as a form of slow violence. She argues for an ethic of care, rooted in...

Series

Urban Wastes, Present and Future

Lily Baum Pollans - 29 April 2022

Lily Pollans guest-edits this series for Metropolitics that focuses on the various ways in which waste is part of...

Debates

Aéroports de Paris: A Strategic Lever for the French State?

Nathalie Roseau & translated by Oliver Waine - 26 January 2021

Following growing controversy surrounding the French government’s plans to privatize the Aéroports de Paris (ADP)...

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...

Reviews

Aubervilliers: Portrait of a Working-Class Suburb

Anaïs Albert & translated by Oliver Waine - 21 February 2020

The republication of an early-20th‑century realist novel set in the northern Paris suburb of Aubervilliers brings...

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

How Can Talking Save Trees?

Léo Magnin & translated by Oliver Waine - 12 July 2019

In rural France, tree exchange systems seek to avoiding the felling that typically accompanies exchanges of parcels...

Essays

From non-planning to cutting-edge policy: the transformation of waste management in Boston since the 1980s

Lily Baum Pollans - 11 June 2019

Recycling and composting are hot topics. Lily Baum Pollans argues that Boston’s changing approach to waste...

From the Field

How to Defend the Planet in Law

Valérie Cabanes & translated by Oliver Waine - 19 April 2019

In the face of a growing raft of evidence that increasingly points to an imminent global catastrophe—the very...

Interviews

Global Climate Crisis and the City: An Interview with Ashley Dawson

Ashley Dawson & Maura McGee - 3 April 2019

An interview with Ashley Dawson, professor of English at the College of Staten Island and the Graduate Center,...

From the Field

Bare Mountaintops and Thirsty Cities: On California and its Snowpack

Sayd Randle - 29 January 2019

Figuring how to represent the oncoming effects of climate change is a common challenge faced by whistleblowers and...

From the Field

Killing Them Softly: The Environmental Vulnerability of Black Women in Albany, New York

Tanesha A. Thomas - 23 October 2018

In Albany’s South End, a predominantly low-income African-American neighborhood, tanks storing environmentally...

Essays

Local Leadership and Global Goals: How City Sustainability Networks are Changing Progressive Policymaking

Emma French & Supraja Sudharsan & Jennifer Clark - 18 September 2018

While national governments often struggle to address global climate change, cities are in a better position to...

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...

Series

Climate Change and Social Change

Gregory Smithsimon - 3 April 2018

Cities are home to more than half the world’s population and the source of most global CO2 emissions—and yet often...

Reviews

Nature’s Worth: Using Human Markets to Value Ecosystems’ Contributions

Anna Krol & Lisa Jean Moore - 20 February 2018

Mattijs van Maasakkers’ The Creation of Markets for Ecosystem Services in the United States: The Challenge of...

Essays

Institutional Roadblocks to Achieving Environmental Justice Through Public Participation: The Case of CSO Control in US Cities

Rebekah Breitzer - 24 January 2018

Rather than meaningfully involving representatives of environmental-justice communities in decisions about the...

Interviews

“Build a Wall”: The Wrong Solution for Our Coastal Problems. An Interview with Jennifer Mattei

Jennifer H. Mattei & Lisa Jean Moore - 7 February 2017

Metropolitics editorial committee member and sociologist Lisa Jean Moore interviewed biologist Jennifer Mattei, an...

From the Field

Proclaiming “Veggie Pride” in Paris and New York

Elizabeth Cherry - 22 November 2016

How do animal-rights activists promote vegetarianism? Many activists use environmental and health arguments, but...

Debates

Climate Action Plans and the “Climate-Just” City

Cecelia Walsh-Russo - 27 September 2016

In the face of major climatic changes, more and more US cities are developing climate action plans. But while these...

From the Field

Where Did the Bees Go? New York City Beekeeping Amid Ecological Crises

Mary Kosut & Lisa Jean Moore - 5 April 2016

The decline and extinction of bees and other pollinators threatens the global food supply. Residents in cities like...

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...

From the Field

Exporting French-style “sustainable cities” to Morocco

Pierre-Arnaud Barthel & translated by Oliver Waine - 1 May 2015

In Morocco, environmental urban projects are the order of the day. For these projects, French expertise is being...

Reviews

Cities transformed by hygienism: 100 years of local innovation

Sabine Barles & translated by Oliver Waine - 27 March 2015

Hygiene is a “battle”, and the “hygienist revolution” of the 19th and early 20th centuries transformed our urban...

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

The Horseshoe Crab, our Environment and our Health

Lisa Jean Moore - 15 December 2014

Will we erase all animal diversity in the name of modernity, or will we follow the hints given by the study of the...

Reviews

Detroit: Origins of the Urban Crisis Revisited

Andrew Newman - 24 November 2014

The recent reprint of Sugrue’s classic history of Detroit’s urban crisis highlights the roots of the city’s present...

Reviews

Entry into the Anthropocene

André Micoud & translated by Oliver Waine - 20 November 2014

Christophe Bonneuil and Jean-Baptiste Fressoz, backed up by an impressive amount of data, trace the history of our...

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