public policy

From the Field

Covid‑19 in China: A Civil Society in the Making

Beiyi Hu - 18 May 2021
Beiyi Hu examines responses to Covid‑19 in China, focusing on civil-society efforts at the social, political, and...
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...
From the Field

Bare Mountaintops and Thirsty Cities: On California and its Snowpack

Sayd Randle - 29 January 2019
Figuring how to represent the oncoming effects of climate change is a common challenge faced by whistleblowers and...
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

Building a Multifaceted Campaign for Public Higher Education

Stephen Brier & Michael Fabricant - 4 October 2016
In their new book, Austerity Blues: Fighting for the Soul of Public Higher Education, Michael Fabricant and Stephen...
Essays

Urban renewal and the “defensible space” model: the growing impact of security issues on the way our cities develop

Camille Gosselin & translated by Oliver Waine - 12 February 2016
In transforming the urban planning and architecture of social-housing estates, urban-renewal policies are not just...
From the Field

How Children Cope When Home is a Hotel

Erwan Le Méner & translated by Christina Mitrakos - 5 February 2016
Emergency housing in social hotels is affecting a growing number of families in the Paris region. How does this...
Debates

Reskilling Urban Manufacturing: Workforce Solutions from the Inside Out

Nichola Lowe - 15 December 2015
In the United States, a four-year college education has gradually come to be assumed as a prerequisite for entry...
Essays

Thirty Years of Urban Sociology

Christian Topalov & translated by Oliver Waine - 30 October 2015
What is urban sociology in France? Christian Topalov, one of the key players in the history of this discipline,...
From the Field

Public authorities and Roma populations in Turin

Elisabetta Rosa & translated by Oliver Waine - 5 March 2015
For the last three decades or so, European cities have had to deal with the issue of land occupation by migrant...
From the Field

In the Paris metro, hell is other people

Luke Haywood & Martin Koning & translated by Oliver Waine - 15 January 2015
In the medical field, it is not unusual for remedies prescribed to combat a particular condition to have...
Essays

Is it possible to write a history of urban knowledge?

Stéphane Van Damme & translated by Oliver Waine - 11 September 2013
Historian Stéphane Van Damme puts the origins and foundations of urban studies into perspective, highlighting the...
Reviews

Free public transport: from social experiment to political alternative?

Maxime Huré & translated by Oliver Waine - 20 March 2013
In a work combining storytelling and reflection, a local councillor and a philosopher analyse the policy of free...
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...

Series

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
The Resurgence of Towers in European Cities

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

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)

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