housing policy

Reviews

Dakar, Portrait of a Capital City

Armelle Choplin - 12 September 2025
Dakar, métamorphoses d’une capitale, by architects Carole Diop and Xavier Ricou, takes readers on a journey through...
From the Field

Integration or Chainsaw: Some Reflections on the Policies of Cruelty in Milei’s Argentina Based on the ReNaBaP Case | Integración o motosierra: Reflexiones sobre las políticas de crueldad en la Argentina de Milei a partir del caso ReNaBaP

Facundo A. Corti - 20 May 2025
Policy efforts in Argentina to reduce housing inequality have been met with Milei’s chainsaw. Facundo A. Corti shows...
Series

Horizons in the Housing Struggle

Jaime Jover & Kristen Hackett - 14 February 2025
We are living through a polycrisis, a multidimensional, interlinked series of capitalism’s structural problems...
Debates

When Rising Expectations Meet Rising Reaction: New York’s 2024 Housing Policy Fight and the Prospects for the Future

Oksana Mironova & Samuel Stein - 10 September 2024
How did New York housing policy fare with Democratic control of the executive, legislative and judicial branches of...
From the Field

Regulating Basement Conversions in New York City

Ooha Uppalapati - 14 July 2023
Ooha Uppalapati examines the regulation of basement apartments in New York City and the implications of proposed laws...
Debates

Changes in Contemporary Brazilian Housing Policy: The Dismantling of Social Housing and Grassroots Mobilization

Thalles Vichiato Breda - 21 October 2022
Thalles Vichiato Breda argues that since 2016, with the rise of right-wing governments in Brazil, the federal...
Debates

The Second Coming of the Accessory Dwelling Unit

Joseph Weil Huennekens - 26 October 2021
Joseph Weil Huennekens discusses the history of accessory dwelling units (ADUs) in the context of housing in the...
From the Field

The Financialization of Rent-Regulated Housing in New York City after Rent Reform

Benjamin F. Teresa - 4 December 2020
In New York City, rent-controlled housing stock has been progressively deregulated over the last three decades, to...
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...
Debates

The Damage Inflicted by French Rent Controls between 1914 and 1948

Robert C. Ellickson & David Le Bris - 26 February 2019
In an essay in Metropolitics, Loïc Bonneval questioned the consensus among economists that strict rent controls have...
From the Field

The Cost of Affordability: Inclusionary Zoning and Displacement in East New York

James Shelton - 20 March 2018
What are the impacts of New York City’s Mandatory Inclusionary Housing program upon low-income communities of color?...
Essays

Urban Shrinkage in France: An Invisible Issue?

Rémi Dormois & Sylvie Fol & translated by Oliver Waine - 13 September 2017
Although the phenomenon of urban shrinkage affects a significant number of French towns and cities, it is an issue...
From the Field

The Actually Existing Markets of Shrinking Cities

Joshua Akers - 18 April 2017
In a bid to halt urban decline, Michigan’s state government sought to create incentives for the creation of urban...
From the Field

Estate Regeneration in London: Politics and Protest

Gerald Koessl - 31 January 2017
Gerald Koessl describes dilemmas facing social-housing providers in London, where social housing often serves as the...
Debates

On Our Own: Protecting and Developing Social Housing in the Trump Era

John Krinsky - 13 January 2017
In response to a tense post-election moment in the US, the Metropolitics editorial committee has initiated...
Essays

Managing New York City’s Rental Housing Catastrophe: The Once and Future Potential of Tax-Foreclosed Properties

John Krinsky - 20 October 2015
New York City faces a rental housing crisis, with homelessness at record levels, more than a million households...
Debates

Social housing in Africa: a model to be (re)invented?

Alexandra Biehler & Armelle Choplin & Marie Morelle & translated by Oliver Waine - 16 October 2015
While the question of housing for working-class populations remains a recurrent issue in sub‑Saharan African cities,...
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 into...
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....
Interviews

Professionalisation, gentrification and welfare reform: 20 years of socio-spatial change in London

Manuel Appert & Anaïs Collet & Chris Hamnett - 19 June 2013
The 2008 financial crisis called time on a long period of economic transformation in European cities that has seen...
Interviews

Solving the housing crisis: opening up private housing to the social sector

Lise Bourdeau-Lepage & Jean-Pierre Lévy & Nadine Roudil & translated by Oliver Waine - 13 February 2013
Jean-Pierre Lévy has devoted much of his work to the issue of poor housing conditions. Here, for Metropolitics, he...
Interviews

The Design-Politics of American Public Housing

Sandra Parvu & Lawrence J. Vale - 4 July 2012
Lawrence J. Vale goes back to the early days of American history to discuss public housing policy in the US: he...
Debates

Housing: for an act III of the decentralization process

Patrice Lanco & translated by Michael Stokes - 18 February 2011
Although housing has not been concerned before now by decentralization, the contrasted realities of local markets...

Series

Horizons in the Housing Struggle
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

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 New...
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 patrol...
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

“Our hallway’s big enough to play football in!” The council housing...

The Guardian
Boasting two-sink kitchens, Tower Court in north London is tailored for the Haredi Jewish community – but its...

Saudi Arabia: How is Mobility Being Transformed in the Oil Kingdom?

Mobile Lives Forum
04 April 2025, by Aniss Mouad Mezoued The launch of the Riyadh metro in late November 2024 once again highlighted...

Transport for Suburbia: Beyond the Automobile Age (Paul Mees)

Mobile Lives Forum
27 March 2025, by Javier Caletrío Can suburbia avoid car dependence? Can low-density areas enjoy first-rate public...

Geopolitics and Electric Vehicles: The Rise of Climate Protectionism

Mobile Lives Forum
17 February 2025, by Xabier Gangoiti and Graham Parkhurst The electric vehicle (EV) revolution is not just a...

One Way to Fight Rising Food Prices: Public Grocery Stores

The New Republic
New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani has proposed opening government-owned grocery stores as a solution to...

The Quiet Power of Car-Free Neighborhoods

CityLab
Restricting or banning vehicles in congested city centers pays off with cleaner air and safer streets. We need to...
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)

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