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From the Field

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...
From the Field

The Contestations and Contradictions of the New York City Housing Authority’s Plan for Mixed-Income Redevelopment

Valerie E. Stahl - 10 November 2020
The New York City Housing Authority, faced with a capital shortfall of nearly $40 billion, is pursuing a series of...
From the Field

Photographing Prison

Andrea Eichenberger & Carole Gayet-Viaud & Valérie Icard & translated by Oliver Waine - 2 October 2020
The photographs presented here were taken by Andrea Eichenberger at the former men’s and women’s prison in Beauvais,...
From the Field

Social Housing in Postcolonial Contexts

Clémence Léobal & translated by Oliver Waine - 25 September 2020
What happens when national social-housing policies developed in mainland France are transposed in overseas...
From the Field

#IStayCamp. Health Conditions, Food Deprivation and Solidarity Problems in the First Days of Lockdown in the Roma Villages of Rome

Carlo Stasolla & Tommaso Vitale - 28 April 2020
Activist research in formal settlements of emergency housing in Rome during the Covid‑19 lockdown reveals how such...
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...
From the Field

When Memory is Confined: Politics of Commemoration on Avenida 26, Bogotá

Violante Torre - 7 April 2020
After more than five decades of conflict, the Colombian capital, Bogotá, is undergoing processes not just of...
From the Field

From Transit to Settlement. A Mexican Border Town’s Transition from a Transit Space to a Waiting Territory

Isabel Gil-Everaert - 3 March 2020
Tanapan, a border town in southern Mexico has long been a point of passage for Central American migrants bound for...
From the Field

Unlikely Inter-Class Cooperation in Urbanizing Rural Colombia

Sebastián F. Villamizar Santamaría - 25 February 2020
Sebastián F. Villamizar Santamaría examines a case of rural gentrification outside of Bogotá, Colombia, and shows how...
From the Field

A Construction Boom in an Urban Floodplain: Long Island City, Queens, NYC

Christopher Ryan - 11 February 2020
New York City has encouraged development in Long Island City, Queens, even as the neighborhood has not recovered...
From the Field

Displacement, Demobilization, and Democracy: Current Eviction and Historic Dispossession in Richmond, Virginia

Kathryn Howell & Benjamin F. Teresa - 4 February 2020
High eviction rates in Black Richmond neighborhoods must be understood in the context of a long history of...
From the Field

Nuits Debout Across Greater Paris: The Spread of a Political Innovation

Laurent Beauguitte & Nicolas Lambert & translated by Oliver Waine - 20 December 2019
As France experiences strikes and demonstrations in protest against pension reforms, we look back to the spring of...
From the Field

Culture and the Nighttime Economy: A Conversation with London’s Night Czar and Culture-at-Risk Officer

Amin Ghaziani - 12 November 2019
Amin Ghaziani describes the high closure rate of LGBTQ nighttime venues in London, and the city’s recognition of...

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Series

CALL FOR PAPERS | Black Power and Black Self-Determination in a New Time and New Spaces
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

Featured

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...
Reviews

Filming Ethnic Diversity in New York

Stéphane Tonnelat & translated by Christina Mitrakos - 21 October 2016
Frederick Wiseman’s fortieth documentary film, In Jackson Heights (2015), returns to an urban theme explored in...
From the Field

Looking Inward, Across the Border

Harel Shapira - 19 April 2016
In the constellation of anti-immigrant politics in the United States, groups like the Minutemen, civilians who...
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...
Debates

Disarm the Police

Gregory Smithsimon - 29 September 2015
In the current political debates about discriminatory policing, there has been a lack of serious discussion of...
Reviews

The Dangers of Security

Médéric Martin-Mazé & translated by Oliver Waine - 22 May 2015
In Against Security, Harvey Molotch highlights – through various examples, including the New York subway, airports,...

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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