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...

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 discrimination...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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,...

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...

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...

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 of...

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...

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)...

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...

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