Essays

Essays

Urban Shrinkage in France: An Invisible Issue?

Rémi Dormois & Sylvie Fol & translated by Oliver Waine - 13 September 2017

Although the phenomenon of urban shrinkage affects a significant number of French towns and cities, it is an issue...

Essays

The Happy Few and the Unhappy Many: Endangered Artists in Global Cities

Boris Grésillon & translated by John Barrett - 15 June 2017

While participating or having participated in reshaping urban spaces, artists seem to be increasingly driven away...

Essays

American Shrinking Cities May Not Need to Grow

Deborah E. Popper & Frank J. Popper - 25 April 2017

Successful cities are expected to continually grow, and when this doesn’t happen, city managers typically try to...

Essays

Urban Decline Is Not Natural

Jason Hackworth - 11 April 2017

Is urban decline inevitable for cities affected by deindustrialization? While many scholars espouse the idea that it...

Essays

Counterpublic Spaces and Movement-Building

Oksana Mironova - 8 March 2017

To make themselves and their causes visible in traditional public arenas like streets and parks, social activists...

Essays

The Arts as Fundamental—and Fragile—in Community Life

Andrew Zitcer & Julie Hawkins & Neville Vakharia - 22 February 2017

Arts funding in America mirrors the inequality found in society more broadly. Yet amid persistent poverty and other...

Essays

This is Not How it Ends: Post-Election Immigration Organizing in the United States

Folasade K. Famakinwa - 7 December 2016

In response to a tense post-election moment in the US, the Metropolitics editorial committee has initiated...

Essays

Cracks Where the Light Gets in: Recent Legal Breakthroughs in Detention and Crimmigration in Canada

Petra Molnar & Stephanie J. Silverman - 7 December 2016

While the criminalization of immigrants has been pervasive—leading many to adopt the word “crimmigration”—that does...

Essays

Remaking Black Political Spaces for Black Liberation

Akira Drake Rodriguez - 1 December 2016

What are the political implications of the redistribution of the Black population in the US? Akira Drake Rodriguez...

Essays

Overcoming the “Scalar Stalemate” in Community Development

Evan Casper-Futterman - 14 October 2016

When urban practitioners undertake local projects, they are often working not only to achieve material gains in...

Essays

The Crisis of Geographical Imagination in Turkey

Luka Lucić - 21 June 2016

Ethnic, nationalistic and social tensions are at an all-time high in Turkey, exacerbated by the re‑emergence of the...

Essays

The Wrecker’s Pick. The Rationales and Hidden Agendas of Urban Renewal in the 19th and 20th Centuries

Alain Faure & translated by Christina Mitrakos - 7 June 2016

Alain Faure, a scholar of the social history of cities, puts urban renewal into perspective. He questions the...

Essays

In Havana, Tourism Development Before the US Tsunami

Lily M. Hoffman - 22 March 2016

The easing of Cuban–US relations will likely bring a new wave of tourists to Cuba. Although the Cuban government...

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...

Essays

Immigrant Growth Machines: Metropolitan Reinvention in Los Angeles

Melody Chiong & Jan Lin - 9 February 2016

Building on Logan and Molotch’s highly influential concept of the urban “growth machine,” Jan Lin and Melody Chiong...

Essays

When Cities Fail, Babies Die

Monica J. Casper - 2 February 2016

Detroit, Michigan is often identified as the worst city in the United States, with excessive poverty, racism, and...

Essays

Democratic public spaces in the face of terrorism

Carole Gayet-Viaud & translated by Oliver Waine - 29 January 2016

The collective harm inflicted by the terrorist attacks in Paris on Friday 13 November 2015 results in part from the...

Essays

Parallel Lives? Elena Ferrante’s Naples and My West New Rochelle

Bella Mirabella - 26 January 2016

Elena Ferrante’s acclaimed Neapolitan novels, which trace the lives of two girls born in a working class district in...

Essays

The Tokyo skyline, or the hidden order behind opportunistic construction

Raphaël Languillon-Aussel & translated by Oliver Waine - 13 November 2015

Behind the apparent disorder, Tokyo’s current skyline in fact complies with complex rules. While the first towers in...

Essays

Bargain hunting in the “small-commodity city” of Yiwu, China

Alison Hulme - 10 November 2015

China’s rise in the global economy has been largely based on the manufacturing of both cheap and expensive goods....

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...

Essays

The “Dozois Plan”: lessons learned from urban-renewal policies and the history of urban planning in Montreal

Frédéric Mercure-Jolette & translated by Oliver Waine - 23 October 2015

Urban-renewal policies justify their actions by decrying neighbourhoods earmarked for demolition. Frédéric...

Essays

Managing New York City’s Rental Housing Catastrophe: The Once and Future Potential of Tax-Foreclosed Properties

John Krinsky - 20 October 2015

New York City faces a rental housing crisis, with homelessness at record levels, more than a million households...

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...

Essays

What we can learn from babies’ sociability

Carole Gayet-Viaud & translated by Oliver Waine - 9 October 2015

The sociability of very young children reveals a neglected dimension of relations and interactions in public, and...

Essays

After Fukushima: The Silence of Environmental Organizations on Nuclear Catastrophe

Michael Dreiling & Nicholas Lougee & Tomoyasu Nakamura - 22 September 2015

The nuclear catastrophe at the Fukushima plants in Japan in 2011 raised global awareness of the massive dangers...

Essays

Transition towns, or the desire for an urban alternative

Adrien Krauz & translated by Oliver Waine - 15 May 2015

The entry of the term “transition” into the vocabulary of public action shows that questions regarding how to build...

Essays

In Cathedrals of Craft: Workplaces for the New Elite Service, Retail, and Manual Labor Jobs

Richard E. Ocejo - 12 May 2015

As artisanal economies emerge in postindustrial cities, the symbolic language and craft culture of the industrial...

Essays

A Right to the City in the Global South?

Marianne Morange & Amandine Spire & translated by Oliver Waine - 17 April 2015

The idea of the right to the city has been the subject of strongly renewed interest in academic milieux, activist...

Essays

“Portlandia” in Portland: Curated Life in the Utopian City

Jeff London - 7 April 2015

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