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Debates

Debates

Aéroports de Paris: A Strategic Lever for the French State?

Nathalie Roseau & translated by Oliver Waine - 26 January 2021
Following growing controversy surrounding the French government’s plans to privatize the Aéroports de Paris (ADP)...
Debates

When Revolution Reinvents Public Space in Beirut

Ines Lakrouf & translated by Oliver Waine - 18 September 2020
In the fall of 2019, peaceful protesters in Lebanon were demanding an end to corruption and calling for a movement...
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...
Debates

Diverting Eyes and Bodies: The Management of Homeless Visibility in New York City

Eric Goldfischer - 19 November 2019
Eric Goldfischer argues that homeless diversion programs in New York City simultaneously divert the bodies of...
Debates

What Does a Just Housing Plan Look Like? NYC and National Housing Movements Show the Way

Oksana Mironova & Sylvia Morse - 22 October 2019
How could we develop a housing plan that is not rooted in capitalism? Oksana Mironova and Sylvia Morse describe how...
Debates

Can Cannabis Be Legalized in France Without Inflaming the Banlieues?

Christian Ben Lakhdar & Aymeric Reyre & translated by Oliver Waine - 5 July 2019
France is a place of paradoxes: cannabis is widely consumed, and yet legalization does not seem to be on the cards,...
Debates

Reclaim Value Capture for Equitable Urban Development

Laura Wolf-Powers - 28 May 2019
Land-value capture mechanisms have become a popular tool for fiscally constrained urban policymakers. However, such...
Debates

Post–Amazon HQ2 Incentive Reform: We can have good deals—but not without transparency and meaningful public participation

Mary Donegan - 21 May 2019
What does the collapse of New York City’s Amazon HQ2 deal mean for the future of economic development incentive...
Debates

Private Infrastructure and Urban Government: How Vélib’ Veered Off Course in Paris

Maxime Huré & translated by Oliver Waine - 17 May 2019
When the city of Paris entrusted its decade-old bike-share service, Vélib’, to a new provider in January 2018,...
Debates

The Limits of the Accepted Orthodoxy on Rent Control

Loïc Bonneval & François Robert & translated by Oliver Waine - 22 March 2019
In response to a recent critique of their work, Loïc Bonneval and François Robert defend their method and results. In...
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...
Debates

Fixing the Accessibility Gap in Municipal Procurement

Emily Holloway & Nicholas Shatan - 5 March 2019
How can minority- and women-owned businesses overcome structural disadvantages to building wealth through...
Debates

The Damage Inflicted by French Rent Controls between 1914 and 1948

Robert C. Ellickson & David Le Bris - 26 February 2019
In an essay in Metropolitics, Loïc Bonneval questioned the consensus among economists that strict rent controls have...
Debates

Does Rent Control Prevent Investment in Real Estate?

Loïc Bonneval & translated by Oliver Waine - 8 February 2019
While rent-control measures kept private rental housing in France affordable for much of the 20th century, it has...
Debates

Deafening Discord: Reclaiming Residents’ Anger in Working-Class Neighborhoods

Pierre Chabard & translated by Oliver Waine - 26 October 2018
We recently published an article showing how, in Roubaix in northern France, elected officials took steps to...
Debates

Silent Suppression: How Local Politicians Stifle Collective Action in Working-Class Neighborhoods

Julien Talpin & translated by Oliver Waine - 19 October 2018
Taking as its starting point a study of a neighborhood roundtable in the northern French city of Roubaix, this...
Debates

Can the Commons Pave the Way to Greater Land Security?

Irène Salenson & Claire Simonneau & translated by Oliver Waine - 22 June 2018
Experiences of collective forms of ownership, based on the concept of the commons, have flourished throughout the...
Debates

Where Does Public Land Come From? Municipalization and Privatization Debates

Oksana Mironova & Samuel Stein - 6 March 2018
This article illuminates contemporary land-use and disposition struggles in New York City by tracing the history of...
Debates

The Cost of Good Intentions: Planning Gridlock in San Francisco

David Prowler - 30 January 2018
The culture of protest that marked development and planning in San Francisco during the 1970s and 1980s was a...
Debates

Storm Recovery: Local Efforts, Municipal Constraints, and New Ways Forward

Michael P. McCabe - 28 November 2017
Climate change-induced storm surges and rising sea levels will steadily cause more damage to homes in low-lying...
Debates

When Does Police Violence Cause Urban Unrest?

Cathy Lisa Schneider - 14 November 2017
In the summer of 2014, police killed Michael Brown in Ferguson and Eric Garner in New York. Both men were black and...
Debates

How Anti-Trans Bathroom Bills Hurt Girls and Women

C. Ray Borck - 16 May 2017
Do recent “bathroom bills” protect girls and women from sexual predators? Sociologist C. Ray Borck shows how—contrary...
Debates

Building a Resilient and Equitable City: How to Advance Environmental Justice Through the OneNYC Plan

Eddie Bautista & Annel Hernandez & Juan Camilo Osorio & Pamela Soto - 1 March 2017
Many of the challenges that cities face today stem from historic and entrenched systemic policies and processes...
Debates

On Our Own: Protecting and Developing Social Housing in the Trump Era

John Krinsky - 13 January 2017
In response to a tense post-election moment in the US, the Metropolitics editorial committee has initiated...
Debates

On Clinton, Obama, Trump and the Failures of Liberal Urban Policy

James DeFilippis - 15 November 2016
Many progressives are still in shock at the outcome of the recent US presidential election. In this contribution to...
Debates

Climate Action Plans and the “Climate-Just” City

Cecelia Walsh-Russo - 27 September 2016
In the face of major climatic changes, more and more US cities are developing climate action plans. But while these...
Debates

Let Bodegas Be Bodegas

Dory Thrasher - 20 September 2016
A new rule proposed by the US Department of Agriculture would impose new stocking rules on food stores that accept...
Debates

Technocratic Values and Uneven Development in the “Smart City”

Taylor Shelton & Jennifer Clark - 10 May 2016
In the US, the idea of “smart cities” is coming to dominate federal government involvement in, and funding for, urban...
Debates

More Affordable Transit Fares

Alexis Perrotta - 26 April 2016
Low-income urban residents often struggle to afford transit fares. Seattle recently established half-fares for poor...
Debates

Streetcars Named Desire

Luc Gwiazdzinski & translated by Oliver Waine - 15 March 2016
Luc Gwiazdzinski provides an original and critical analysis of the changes affecting today’s cities and contemporary...

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Series

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
The Renewed Relevance of Urban-Planning Models?

Featured

From the Field

Arts Districts Without Artists

Meghan Ashlin Rich - 23 March 2015
Numerous studies have examined gentrification’s harmful effects for low-income residents, but few examine the...
Debates

Interrupting Inequality: Crisis and Opportunity in Low-Income Housing Policy

Susan Saegert - 26 January 2015
Inequality in the United States is deeply rooted in issues of property ownership, wealth, race and class....
Debates

Kanal İstanbul: a “crazy project” serving political ambitions

Yoann Morvan & translated by Oliver Waine - 7 December 2011
The current proliferation of mega-projects in the Istanbul metropolitan area is both undeniable and impressive. The...

Other resources online

Are Homeless People “Vagrants”?

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The image of the “homeless person” is associated with the older figure of the wandering vagrant. In reality,...

Mobilities: The French Government Has to Back Up Its...

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In the field of transportation, France’s “ecological transition” is inadequate when it comes to meeting the challenges...

Twelve Discourses of Climate Delay in the Transportation...

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Perhaps one of the few good-news items of the 2020s is that climate denial is on its way out. In most of Europe, it...

Being a Bicycle Delivery Rider: Passion or Exploitation?

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In recent years, takeaway delivery has exploded, in a context where consumer practices are changing, last-mile...

Digital Nomads in the Era of the Covid‑19 Pandemic

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No longer deciding where you live based on where you work – that is the choice made by digital nomads, the traveling...

Personal Carbon Allowances for Travel: Is It Possible, Fair, and...

Mobile Lives Forum
Transportation is responsible for 30% of greenhouse-gas emissions in France, and this figure is constantly...
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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