nature

From the Field

How Cities Function Ecologically: The Importance of Urban Soils

Sophie Joimel & Baptiste Grard & Laure Vieublé Gonod & Claire Chenu & translated by Oliver Waine - 2 April 2024
What do we know about the diversity of urban soils? Ecologists and soil scientists show that a detailed study of...
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...
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...
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 Trading...
Essays

Birdwatching in the City: A Case for Multispecies Tourism

Elizabeth Cherry & August Davidson-Onsgard & Lisa Jean Moore - 16 January 2018
This essay analyzes the growth of urban avitourism—wildlife tourism focused on birds—as an activity that drives...
Debates

The Violence of Sustainable Urbanity

Erik Swyngedouw - 10 November 2014
If Nature is an ideological construction that separates us from the environment, the contemporary search for...
From the Field

Flowers under the flagstones

Cédric Ansart & Emmanuel Boutefeu & translated by Oliver Waine - 8 October 2014
Cédric Ansart and Emmanuel Boutefeu explore new ways of enhancing city streets through the small-scale greening of...
Debates

What role for urban farming?

Laure Le Gall & translated by Oliver Waine - 17 September 2014
While the benefits of farming activities in large West African cities are starting to be recognised within the...
Essays

For cities of a different nature

Jérémy Grangé & Sylvain Petitet & translated by Oliver Waine - 26 March 2014
City-dwellers want to see more of their metropolitan areas turned over to nature and urban public spaces; however,...
Debates

The poetry of the urban landscape

Émeline Bailly & translated by Oliver Waine - 9 October 2013
The ideal of “nature in the city” is a key characteristic of many urban projects. Émeline Bailly shows that the...
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...
Debates

The desirable city or the sustainable city: what is the role of green spaces?

Jean-François Guet & translated by Birdwell Institute - 2 November 2011
While green spaces are in great demand among city-dwellers, their presence alone is not enough to make the city...

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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