history

From the Field

Plague and Urban Policy in Bombay, 1896–1914

Vanessa Caru & translated by Oliver Waine - 18 November 2022
What consequences can an epidemic have on a city? Vanessa Caru describes the ways in which a plague epidemic in...
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...
Essays

We Have Been Here Before: Crisis, Response, and the Stasis of Urban Policy

Robert W. Lake - 29 June 2021
The disruptions produced by the global pandemic have spawned predictions of sweeping change that are unlikely to...
Interviews

What Has Happened in Berlin Since 1989?

Thibaut de Ruyter & Olivier Gaudin & translated by Oliver Waine - 12 June 2020
Since the fall of the Wall in November 1989, Berlin has metamorphosed into one of the world’s most popular urban...
Essays

Educating Tenants: A Historic Remit of Social Housing

Danièle Voldman & translated by Oliver Waine - 17 April 2020
In France, the professions of social worker and concierge both emerged in the early 20th century, and both...
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...
Debates

The Limits of the Accepted Orthodoxy on Rent Control

Loïc Bonneval & François Robert & translated by Oliver Waine - 22 March 2019
In response to a recent critique of their work, Loïc Bonneval and François Robert defend their method and results. In...
Essays

As NYC (Again) Considers Comprehensive Planning, History Offers Insight

K. C. Alvey - 12 February 2019
Comprehensive planning can be a progressive governance tool, helping leaders keep broad principles like equity and...
Reviews

Photographing the Slums of 1900s Berlin

Danièle Voldman & translated by Oliver Waine - 14 September 2018
At the turn of the 20th century, the dramatically poor conditions of urban working-class housing was a cause of...
Reviews

Miscounting Americans Correctly: Post-Truth as a Guide to Race and the US Census

Gregory Smithsimon - 12 June 2018
Paul Schor’s book Counting Americans demonstrates that, in the hands of the US Census Bureau, the concept of race...
Essays

Looking Forward to 2020 While Looking Back: A Brief History of the US Census

Frank Donnelly - 27 February 2018
As preparations for the 2020 census are under way in the United States, Frank Donnelly looks back at how the census...
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...
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...
Reviews

History of Modern Architecture Revisited

Karla Britton - 3 October 2012
The latest work by Jean-Louis Cohen is an original contribution to the history of modern architecture. His fresh...

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

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...
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...
Reviews

The Dangers of Security

Médéric Martin-Mazé & translated by Oliver Waine - 22 May 2015
In Against Security, Harvey Molotch highlights – through various examples, including the New York subway, airports,...

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)

Partners