local governance

Essays

Breaking Down the NYPD: How Reconsidering Political District Maps Could Open New Doors to Police Accountability

Toby Irving - 16 February 2024
Efforts to stem the power of the NYPD and the violence such power facilitates require accountability to the people...
Reviews

(Re)Constructing Inequality: Community Development in Public and Private

Claire Dunning - 14 December 2021
Claire Dunning reviews Jeremy R. Levine’s new book, Constructing Community, an ethnographic study of community...
Interviews

In Search of Grand Paris: Pierre Mansat on the Eve of the June 2020 Municipal Elections

Magda Maaoui & Pierre Mansat - 26 June 2020
Magda Maaoui interviews Pierre Mansat, former deputy mayor of Paris and a founding father of “le Grand Paris” (the...
From the Field

Inclusive Place-Based Leadership: Lesson-Drawing from Urban Governance Innovations in Bristol, UK

Robin Hambleton - 9 October 2018
Across the world, progressive city leaders are working to limit the damaging impact of decisions made by “placeless”...
Reviews

Jerusalem: divisive urban planning at the heart of the Holy City

Vincent Lemire & translated by Oliver Waine - 19 June 2015
How is the Israeli–Palestinian conflict reflected in the way the city of Jerusalem has been planned and developed?...
Reviews

Northern Mafias: the territorial spread of organised crime in Italy

Fabrizio Maccaglia & translated by Oliver Waine - 26 February 2015
The presence of Mafia organisations outside the Mezzogiorno, long downplayed by the Italian public authorities, has...
Debates

Is rurality a thing of the past?

Philippe Dubourg & translated by Oliver Waine - 8 January 2015
In the era of globalisation and metropolisation, is rurality an old-fashioned concept, a thing of the past? The...
From the Field

The mixed success of Toronto’s metropolitan merger

Guillaume Poiret & translated by Oliver Waine - 20 November 2013
While the debate on local-government reform rages on in France, Guillaume Poiret looks back at the municipal...
Reviews

The role of proximities in improving territorial governance

Lise Bourdeau-Lepage & translated by Oliver Waine - 10 July 2013
What can be done to improve territorial governance? André Torre and Jean-Eudes Beuret emphasise the role of...
Debates

The Negotiated Urbanism of Grand Paris Express

Lara Belkind - 12 June 2013
In the fragmented context of Paris’s metropolitan and regional politics, the Grand Pari(s) design consultation and...
Debates

When agriculture meets the city…

André Torre & Lise Bourdeau-Lepage & translated by Oliver Waine - 10 April 2013
In this article, André Torre and Lise Bourdeau-Lepage consider the role of nature in the city through the prism of...
Reviews

The politics of municipal mergers (and demergers) in Montreal

Richard Harris - 6 March 2013
In the late 1990s, the province of Quebec reacted to metropolitan growth in Montreal by merging the city with 27 of...
Debates

Participatory democracy in large-scale contexts: citizen participation in urban planning in Paris and Córdoba

Héloïse Nez & translated by Oliver Waine - 19 October 2011
Participatory urban planning often comes up against the question of scale, with local councillors accepting to...

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)

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