Essays

Essays

Visible Minorities, Visible Risk: Toronto’s Unequal Eviction Burden

Prentiss Dantzler & Khalil Martin & Abigail Meza - 16 September 2025

In Toronto, who gets evicted isn’t random—it follows the city’s racial and economic divides. Canada’s data practices...

Essays

Settling on the Financial Periphery: Alternative Housing Practices in Hegang, China

Yimeng Yang - 17 June 2025

Can valuing a home for its use value constitute a form of resistance to housing financialization? Considering the...

Essays

Planning in the Age of Political Populism: Kolkata’s Tram Debate

Tathagata Chatterji - 10 June 2025

Using the case of Kolkata’s tram system, Tathagata Chatterji shows how two distinct political strategies—populism and...

Essays

Using Cross-Class Politics to Challenge Urban Housing Inequality in Islamabad, Pakistan

Hafsah Siddiqui - 1 April 2025

When redevelopment schemes target a city’s poor for removal to provide opportunities for the privileged, how can poor...

Essays

Marielle Franco and the Fight for the City Statute in Rio de Janeiro

Ty Redden - 14 February 2025

Marielle Franco’s 2018 assassination roiled social media and sent shockwaves through activist communities. The...

Essays

Multiplied Displacement Under Racial Capitalism: The “Migrant Crisis” in Berlin and New York City

René Kreichauf - 31 January 2025

Berlin and New York City, both self-proclaimed “migrant-friendly cities,” have long been destinations for...

Essays

Sheffield Music Factory: The Legacy of Red Tape Studios

Sam Holden - 7 January 2025

Opening in 1986, in defiance of government cuts, Red Tape Studios was the first municipal recording studio in the UK....

Essays

From Universal Basic Income to Guaranteed Basic Income: An Experiment for Cities on the Brink

Marc Doussard - 17 December 2024

Surprisingly, US cities have led the charge in basic-income experiments, despite the country’s aversion to social...

Essays

The Impact of Tort Reform Liability Shields During the Covid‑19 Pandemic: Hyper-Preemption in the States

Davia C. Downey & William M. Myers - 1 October 2024

The Covid‑19 pandemic exposed how federal and state preemption hamstrings local policymaking. Using the case of tort...

Essays

Paris and the Triangle Tower, or a Half-Century of High-Rise Debate

Julie Gimbal & translated by Oliver Waine - 21 June 2024

The introduction of a bioclimatic local planning scheme in Paris has put the brakes on high-rise projects in the...

Essays

The Attractiveness Myth

Michel Grossetti & translated by Oliver Waine - 11 June 2024

Drawing on more than a decade of research, Michel Grossetti debunks theories suggesting that cities have the means to...

Essays

On a Road to Nowhere? Military Urbanism and the Architecture of Segregation

Tim Cunningham - 3 May 2024

Comparing the experiences of Belfast, Northern Ireland, with the United States, Tim Cunningham shows how physical...

Essays

Giving Voice to Stammerers

Abigail Bourguignon & translated by Oliver Waine - 19 March 2024

By meeting in self-help groups, far from the usual stigmas, people with stammers are able to talk together. This kind...

Essays

Breaking Down the NYPD: How Reconsidering Political District Maps Could Open New Doors to Police Accountability

Toby Irving - 16 February 2024

Efforts to stem the power of the NYPD and the violence such power facilitates require accountability to the people of...

Essays

Self-Determination for Who?

John Arena - 17 November 2023

Newark mayor Cory Booker garnered national accolades, and tens of millions in foundation funding, to advance his...

Essays

Feminist Non-Mixity: For Women or Against Men?

Alban Jacquemart & translated by Oliver Waine - 10 October 2023

For women, the choice to gather together serves a variety of objectives within feminist mobilizations. Looking back...

Essays

Navigating Jefes Fantasmas in New York City’s Urban Platform Economy

Jackson Todd - 3 March 2023

How has the “platform economy” altered urban life, infrastructure, and labor? Jackson Todd examines New York City’s...

Essays

Visualizing “Superdiversity” in New York City

H. Jacob Carlson - 8 November 2022

A new set of visualization and mapping tools focused on “superdiversity” shows the complexity and intersectionality...

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...

Essays

New Tourism Geographies and the Politics of Tourist Taxation

Elizabeth Strom - 7 June 2022

The changing geography of urban tourism has led to new forms of political contestation. How hotel-tax revenues are...

Essays

Before Redlining and Beyond

Alex B. Hill - 2 November 2021

There is a larger story of spatial racism in cities before and beyond redlining. Spatial racism was not limited to a...

Essays

Teacher Unionism and the Bargain for the Common Good

Claire Cahen - 6 July 2021

Rank-and-file teachers across the United States challenge their unions to embrace social democratic ideals, and fight...

Essays

We Have Been Here Before: Crisis, Response, and the Stasis of Urban Policy

Robert W. Lake - 29 June 2021

The disruptions produced by the global pandemic have spawned predictions of sweeping change that are unlikely to...

Essays

A Global Right-to-Housing Movement Versus Financialization

Jaime Jover - 23 June 2021

Financialization enables a wealthy transnational class to accumulate capital through land, enhances inequalities...

Essays

What Is Land?

Sai Balakrishnan & Mattijs van Maasakkers - 1 June 2021

Market-oriented land-use instruments presume that is possible to delink development or pollution rights from a...

Essays

Fablabs in Africa: Digital Innovation for Sustainable Cities?

Armelle Choplin & Martin Lozivit & translated by Oliver Waine - 16 April 2021

In a context where “smart cities” are being promoted in urban projects in Africa, Armelle Choplin and Martin Lozivit...

Essays

The House is Ours: How Moms 4 Housing Challenged the Private-Property Paradigm

Lauren Everett - 6 October 2020

In the midst of a global housing affordability crisis that has been heightened by the Covid‑19 pandemic, it is time...

Essays

Shelters for Profit, Not People: The Rise of Tax-Credit Investment in US Cities

Renee Tapp - 22 September 2020

Tax-credit investment in US cities provides tax havens for investors, and squanders taxpayer resources on market-rate...

Essays

Create, Don’t Destroy: Laying the Foundation for a Public Discourse on Racial Justice in Germany

Janina L. Selzer - 15 September 2020

A night of violence left Stuttgart, a usually peaceful German city, with many unanswered questions. While politicians...

Essays

Community-Rooted Organizations: Enhanced Accountability and Capacity Building for Community Development

Camryn Smith & Danielle Spurlock & Aliyah Abdur-Rahman & Kay Jowers - 10 July 2020

Communities in Partnership, in Durham, North Carolina, uses a “community-rooted” approach to its work that leverages...

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