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From the Field

From the Field

The Spectacle of Reuse: Recirculating Urban Salvage at Pittsburgh’s Construction Junction

Susan M. Ross - 16 May 2022
Susan M. Ross examines a building-materials reuse center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, arguing that it is an...
From the Field

The Professionalization of Migrant Assistance in Tunisia

Camille Cassarini & translated by Oliver @Waine - 15 April 2022
In Tunisia, the management of sub-Sahran migration has in recent years become a new sector of employment. Camille...
From the Field

The Politics of Urban Heritage-Making in the Yongqingfang Redevelopment Project in Guangzhou, China

Yimeng Yang - 29 March 2022
Yimeng Yang uses the case of a redevelopment project in Guangzhou, China, to interrogate heritage-led urban...
From the Field

The Promises and Realities of Data-Driven Community Development

Austin Harrison - 22 February 2022
Tennessee nonprofit Innovate Memphis has spent nearly a decade designing the Memphis Property Hub, a public data...
From the Field

Refugee Encampment on Europe’s Borders

Marie Bassi & translated by Oliver @Waine - 4 February 2022
Much media attention on the issue of migration is focused on attempts to cross the Mediterranean Sea and the often...
From the Field

Double Jeopardy for Single-Parent Families: When Housing Conditions and Lockdown Collide

Laure Crepin & Fanny Bugeja-Bloch & translated by Oliver @Waine - 5 November 2021
Single-parent families are among those households most affected by economic precarity and the current health...
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

Between Two Crises: New York’s Artisanal Food Startup Founders

Nga Than - 28 September 2021
The Covid‑19 pandemic forced a pause to a decade of growth for New York City’s artisanal food startups. Strategies...
From the Field

Covid-19 in Seine-Saint-Denis (2/2): How the Health System Exacerbates Inequalities

Audrey Mariette & Laure Pitti & translated by Oliver @Waine - 24 September 2021
Although public health measures and local solidarity have helped mitigate the impact of the coronavirus epidemic,...
From the Field

Can the New Economy Survive without Coffee Shops (and Their Wi‑Fi)?

Thomas R. Chung - 21 September 2021
Thomas R. Chung argues that coffee shops play an important role in the creative and tech sectors of the...
From the Field

Covid-19 in Seine-Saint-Denis (1/2): When the Pandemic Entrenches Health Inequalities

Audrey Mariette & Laure Pitti & translated by Oliver @Waine - 17 September 2021
The Seine-Saint-Denis département, to the northeast of Paris, was hit particularly hard by the coronavirus pandemic....
From the Field

Inciting Hopes for the Future: Civic Activism in London, Mumbai, and Paris Amid the Covid‑19 Crisis

Öznur Yardımcı & Josué Gimel & Khushboo Srivastava & Jitendra Borday - 8 June 2021
Ethnographic research in London, Mumbai, and Paris during Covid‑19 lockdowns reveals how civic associations filled...
From the Field

Policing Social Housing in Paris: The Role of GPIS

Virginie Malochet & translated by Oliver @Waine - 28 May 2021
Social landlords in France recently obtained the right to organize surveillance and security operations themselves...
From the Field

Covid‑19 in China: A Civil Society in the Making

Beiyi Hu - 18 May 2021
Beiyi Hu examines responses to Covid‑19 in China, focusing on civil-society efforts at the social, political, and...
From the Field

Holding Their Own: Gilets Jaunes’ Occupation of Public Space

Antoine Bernard de Raymond & Sylvain Bordiec & translated by Oliver @Waine - 30 April 2021
The Gilets Jaunes (“Yellow Vests”) movement that emerged in France in the fall of 2018 was striking by dint of both...
From the Field

Reflections on Four Years of Housing-Justice Support Work with Mapping Action Collective

Sachi Arakawa & Tim Hitchins - 13 April 2021
Mapping Action Collective, based in Portland, Oregon, leverages mapping and data to support housing-justice...
From the Field

Landlord Tech in Covid‑19 Times

Erin McElroy & Wonyoung So - 30 March 2021
Covid‑19 has expanded trends in surveillance technology deployed by landlords and property managers—resulting in...
From the Field

Algeria’s Hirak: When a Social Movement Puts Citizenship Under the Microscope

Islam Amine Derradji & Amel Gherbi & translated by Oliver @Waine - 26 March 2021
The popular mobilization that rose up in Algeria in 2019 was not only a revolt against living conditions that had...
From the Field

Understanding Why Homeless People Refuse Emergency Accommodation

Édouard Gardella & translated by Oliver @Waine - 9 March 2021
The refusal of emergency accommodation by many homeless people expresses the intensity of their attachment to the...
From the Field

Industrial Wasteland and the Commons

Jules Desgoutte & translated by Oliver @Waine - 26 February 2021
Long considered places of experimentation, sharing and freedom, friches culturelles, or temporary cultural spaces,...
From the Field

Montreal’s Alleyways: A Laboratory for Democratic Life

Joëlle Zask & translated by Oliver @Waine - 12 February 2021
The participation of a city’s inhabitants in democratic life begins with forms of everyday sociability and...
From the Field

The Asylum Story: Narrative Capital and International Protection

Emily Reid - 2 February 2021
Obtaining international protection relies upon an ability to successfully navigate the host country’s asylum regime....
From the Field

Electoral Organizing During a Pandemic: Lessons from Wisconsin

Aaron Shapiro - 12 January 2021
The global Covid‑19 pandemic has radically altered social and political practices. Aaron Shapiro reflects on the...
From the Field

Manifested Stories

Rebecca Blythe Pryor - 5 January 2021
Rebecca Pryor traces the history of the revitalization of the Bronx River, illustrating an alternative narrative to...
From the Field

Post-Election Dispatches from Luzerne County, Pennsylvania

Jamie Longazel - 22 December 2020
Jamie Longazel reflects on organizing for the 2020 general election in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania. A longtime...
From the Field

Cleaning and Care Worker Cooperatives in NYC: Empowerment Through Collectivization of Labor

Nora Komposch - 8 December 2020
Worker cooperatives have been shown to reduce precariousness and economic exclusion of marginalized groups....
From the Field

The Financialization of Rent-Regulated Housing in New York City after Rent Reform

Benjamin F. Teresa - 4 December 2020
In New York City, rent-controlled housing stock has been progressively deregulated over the last three decades, to...
From the Field

The Brazilian Experience of Financialization Through Urban Redevelopment: The Case of “Urban Operations”

Laisa Eleonora Marostica Stroher - 1 December 2020
Laisa Stroher examines the history of large-scale urban regeneration projects in Brazil and shows how a policy...
From the Field

Fragile Financialization: The Struggle for Power and Control in Indian Real-Estate Investment

Llerena Guiu Searle - 27 November 2020
How does the financialization of real estate—a global phenomenon—affect urban development in India? In this...
From the Field

Sale of the Century: Chicago’s Infrastructure Deals and the Privatization State

Philip Ashton & Marc Doussard & Rachel Weber - 24 November 2020
Since 2004, the City of Chicago has been engaged in a new wave of infrastructure privatizations, selling...

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Series

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
Climate Change and Social Change
Shrinking Cities

Featured

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...
Essays

Sentinel Territories: A New Concept for Looking at Environmental Change

David Blanchon & Frédéric Keck & François-Michel Le Tourneau & Stéphane Tonnelat & Adriana Zuniga-Teran - 8 May 2020
In this essay, the authors develop the concept of “sentinel territories,” or environments where humans can perceive...
From the Field

Who Cleans Paris? Garbage Collectors in Their Own Words

Coline Ferrant & Marie Mourad & translated by Oliver @Waine - 21 June 2019
Who are Paris’s garbage collectors? Coline Ferrant and Marie Mourad highlight the diverse working conditions covered...
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...
Interviews

Teaching Art and the History of Tattoos at Rikers Island: An Interview with Tamara...

Lisa Jean Moore - 22 January 2019
An interview with Tamara Santibanez, who teaches art and the cultural and social history of tattoos to youth...
From the Field

Snowbirds’ Gift Economy in the Arizona Desert

David Frati - 7 November 2017
Each year, 200,000 retired people spend the winter in and around the small town of Quartzsite, Arizona, in the...

Other resources online

Cycles of Violence: Analysing Media Discourse in the Newspaper...

Mobile Lives Forum
How are cyclist and pedestrian deaths depicted in newspaper reports, and how do these reports help shape...

Lahti: The First Carbon-Rationing Experiment Applied to Local...

Mobile Lives Forum
The city of Lahti in Finland was the first to experiment with a carbon-trading scheme among its inhabitants to...

Is Rationing Carbon for Travel a Fair, Efficient, and Realistic...

Mobile Lives Forum
In the wake of the pandemic, a carbon tax at Europe’s borders is now on the agenda, but a domestic version for...

Reducing Carbon-Emitting Travel: A Factor of Social Cohesion and...

Mobile Lives Forum
As part of France’s Mission on the Future of the Economic Model of Public Transportation, commissioned by the French...

Strasbourg, An Example of a Cycling City

Mobile Lives Forum
Strasbourg is the leading city for cycling in France and a constant source of inspiration for all French cities...

The Trinity of Walking, Cycling and Public Transportation Must Be...

Mobile Lives Forum
While emissions from the transportation sector remain at a very high level, all hopes are currently pinned on the...
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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