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Cities, architecture, and territories
Cities, architecture, and territories
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suburbs
Reviews
The Black Middle Class, or the Harsh Reality of the American Dream
Sylvie Tissot & translated by Oliver Waine
- 24 January 2023
The suburbs of the United States, once the epicenter of racial segregation, are now home to more African Americans...
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...
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...
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 their...
From the Field
How the Youth of the
Banlieues
See the
Gilets Jaunes
Ahmed & Baptiste & Hachimia & Jeremy & Karima & Lisa-Marie & Louiza & Thibaut & translated by Oliver Waine
- 24 April 2020
Do the “Yellow Vests” and the youth of France’s banlieues share a common vision of the inequalities and...
Essays
The New Suburban Secession: A Postfascist Turn in Atlanta’s Cityhood Movement
Coleman Allums & Scott Markley
- 10 March 2020
In this essay, Coleman Allums and Scott Markley analyze a suburban secessionist movement in Atlanta, Georgia. They...
Reviews
Aubervilliers: Portrait of a Working-Class Suburb
Anaïs Albert & translated by Oliver Waine
- 21 February 2020
The republication of an early-20th‑century realist novel set in the northern Paris suburb of Aubervilliers brings the...
Debates
Masculine Sports and “Respectable” Men in Working-Class Neighborhoods
Carine Guérandel & translated by Oliver Waine
- 12 March 2019
In a work rich in ethnographic material, Akim Oualhaci questions how socialization through sports contributes to the...
Reviews
Political Conservatism and the Working Classes in France
David Gouard & translated by Oliver Waine
- 25 January 2019
In her latest book, Le Vote FN au village (“The National Front Vote in the Village”), sociologist Violaine Girard...
From the Field
Photography, Ethnography and Exhibitions in the Projects
Camilo León-Quijano & translated by Oliver Waine
- 11 January 2019
Pictures taken by photographer and sociologist Camilo León-Quijano with the initial aim of understanding the sporting...
From the Field
Rendering a Redeveloped France
Alex Schafran & Giorgia Aiello & Theresa Enright & Yohann Le Moigne
- 7 June 2017
As urban redevelopment projects remake the Greater Paris region, it is impossible to separate an avalanche of new...
From the Field
Citizen Outsider: Racism, Marginalization, and Immigration in France
Jean Beaman
- 31 May 2017
As refugee crises have emerged and immigration has increased in many regions of the world, several Western countries...
Reviews
“Grands Ensembles”: Retracing a History of Rejection
Stéphane Füzesséry & translated by Oliver Waine
- 15 January 2016
From its very beginnings, the urban model of the “grand ensemble” – the large-scale high-rise housing estate – has...
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, looks...
Debates
Occupy Mall Street?
Anthony Maniscalco
- 21 April 2015
The quintessential suburb is home to the shopping mall, an indoor space of anchor departments stores, small specialty...
Debates
The Right to Public Space
Gregory Smithsimon
- 10 March 2015
Many of the commonly defended human rights (freedom of expression, of assembly, of information, of movement, etc.)...
Essays
A Right to the Suburb? New Urbanism, Public Space, and the Law
Anthony Maniscalco
- 8 December 2014
The American suburb is changing. It is racially and economically diverse. Its sterile spaces are being redesigned for...
Debates
Using heritage status to combat segregation: the case of French housing estates
Marc Bertier & Hervé Marchal & Jean-Marc Stébé & translated by Oliver Waine
- 22 October 2014
Challenging the idea that demolishing housing estates is all it takes to eradicate the social problems with which...
From the Field
Splitting suburban homes
Anne-Claire Davy & Peggy Mertiny & Mélanie Richard & translated by Oliver Waine
- 1 October 2014
Many local stakeholders in the Paris region have expressed concern regarding the emergence of a process of...
From the Field
The Communists’ Urban Archipelago
Roger Martelli & translated by Oliver Waine
- 24 September 2014
While the Socialist Party was the big loser in France’s municipal elections in March, the French Communist Party was...
Reviews
How journalists see “the suburbs”: lifting the veil on a cliché
Julie Sedel & translated by Oliver Waine
- 10 September 2014
“La banlieue”: in France, few terms convey such a clear and constant image: high-rise social housing, young men “of...
Essays
Another Vision of the Suburbs
Jean-Christophe Bardot & Laurent Devisme & translated by Oliver Waine
- 7 May 2014
Images of the urban fringes of French cities often tend either to condemn their ugliness or to revel in a strange...
Reviews
Catholics, sociologists and the city
Frédéric Dejean & translated by Oliver Waine
- 27 November 2013
Far removed from the habitual image of a Church incapable of dealing with the de-Christianisation that has...
Essays
Racism: a blind spot in French urban sociology?
Élise Palomares & translated by Oliver Waine
- 2 October 2013
Why has the analysis of interethnic relations been so long ignored by French urban sociology? For Élise Palomares,...
Debates
The grandeur and decadence of the suburbs
Violaine Girard & Jean Rivière & translated by Oliver Waine
- 18 September 2013
Periurban areas emerged in the 2000s as “new” spaces indicative of recent changes in French society – the weakening...
Essays
Explaining the periurban right-wing vote: “social frustrations” of low-income households or the reshaping of the working classes?
Violaine Girard & translated by Oliver Waine
- 13 June 2012
There is a growing interest in voting patterns in periurban areas, which tend to lean to the right or even far right....
Essays
The media construction of the suburbs in France: looking back on the 2007 presidential campaign
Jean Rivière & Sylvie Tissot & translated by Oliver Waine
- 23 May 2012
In the run-up to the recent French presidential elections, the question of la banlieue – the (generally poor) suburbs...
Debates
Suburbanization as a Project
Martin Vanier & translated by Christina Mitrakos
- 6 April 2011
Experts and policies fail to recognize the contradictions that urban sprawl creates and rarely go beyond directives....
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...
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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