local governance

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

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
The Resurgence of Towers in European Cities
Children in the City

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

Suburban living the worst for carbon emissions – new research

The Conversation
Work, education, entertainment, or simply better connectivity all draw people to cities. By the end of this...

When New Lifestyles Disrupt Daily Mobility in England

Mobile Lives Forum
Thanks to new “remote” practices enabled by the development of teleworking and online shopping, we can perform our...

Autonomous Vehicles: What Role Can They Play in the Mobility...

Mobile Lives Forum
At a time when companies and governments are focusing all their energy on innovation, autonomous vehicles seem to...

Call for Papers | Southern Diaries: Mobilities Research in the...

Mobile Lives Forum
“Southern Diaries” is a space on the Mobile Lives Forum website that promotes mobilities research in the Global...

“Manuel de sociologie des mobilités géographiques”, by Leslie...

Mobile Lives Forum
While mobility in all its forms has been the subject of an increasing amount of research over the past 20 years,...

History of the Concept of Mobility

Mobile Lives Forum
Defining mobility is especially important because the term is highly polysemous. When geographers use the term...
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