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From the Field

From the Field

National and Urban Politics Converge in Moscow: Will Local Activism Prevail?

Anna Zhelnina - 1 October 2019
Recent elections in Moscow and across Russia reflect the convergence of local activism and national anti-Kremlin...
From the Field

Understanding the Causes of Eviction-Based Urban Displacement: Bringing Critical Urban Theory Back In

J. Revel Sims - 24 September 2019
Close analysis of eviction patterns in Dane County, Wisconsin, between 2000 and 2016 suggests that tenant poverty...
From the Field

How Can Talking Save Trees?

Léo Magnin & translated by Oliver Waine - 12 July 2019
In rural France, tree exchange systems seek to avoiding the felling that typically accompanies exchanges of parcels...
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...
From the Field

Made in China, Sold in West Africa

Anne Bouhali & Nora Mareï & Mamadou Dimé & translated by Oliver Waine - 31 May 2019
From a small border post between Senegal and Mauritania, Anne Bouahli, Nora Mareï and Mamadou Dimé follow the journey...
From the Field

How to Defend the Planet in Law

Valérie Cabanes & translated by Oliver Waine - 19 April 2019
In the face of a growing raft of evidence that increasingly points to an imminent global catastrophe—the very...
From the Field

The Risk of “Foodwashing” in Calls for Innovative Urban Projects

Paula Macé Le Ficher & translated by Oliver Waine - 22 February 2019
Paula Macé Le Ficher analyzes the ways in which farming and food issues have been integrated into calls for...
From the Field

Bare Mountaintops and Thirsty Cities: On California and its Snowpack

Sayd Randle - 29 January 2019
Figuring how to represent the oncoming effects of climate change is a common challenge faced by whistleblowers and...
From the Field

Saving Ivy Island: A Civil War in North Portland

Lauren Everett - 15 January 2019
Lauren Everett examines two different approaches by community activists confronting change in a tight-knit Portland...
From the Field

Photography, Ethnography and Exhibitions in the Projects

Camilo León-Quijano & translated by Oliver Waine - 11 January 2019
Pictures taken by photographer and sociologist Camilo León-Quijano with the initial aim of understanding the...
From the Field

Race and Progressive Politics in Chicago

John J. Betancur & Leonor Vanik - 9 January 2019
The progressive movement in Chicago may not be as broad-minded as depicted in the academic literature. Racial...
From the Field

Young People and Cars: A Case of Frustrated Desire?

Yoann Demoli & translated by Oliver Waine - 30 November 2018
By comparing the results over time of a travel survey in western France, Yoann Demoli challenges the notion that...
From the Field

Backpedaling in Birmingham

William Grady Holt - 20 November 2018
Despite the 2017 election of progressive, black mayors in major southern US cities, citizens who supported these...
From the Field

When Progressive Mayors Aren’t Enough: Homes for All and Trans-Local Social Movements

H. Jacob Carlson & Marnie Brady & Gianpaolo Baiocchi - 13 November 2018
Progressive governments are often pulled away from their campaign promises by local growth-coalition interests or...
From the Field

Killing Them Softly: The Environmental Vulnerability of Black Women in Albany, New York

Tanesha A. Thomas - 23 October 2018
In Albany’s South End, a predominantly low-income African-American neighborhood, tanks storing environmentally...
From the Field

Inclusive Place-Based Leadership: Lesson-Drawing from Urban Governance Innovations in Bristol, UK

Robin Hambleton - 9 October 2018
Across the world, progressive city leaders are working to limit the damaging impact of decisions made by “placeless”...
From the Field

Beneath the Surface of Chinese Cities: Abandoned Places and Contemporary Ruins

Judith Audin & translated by Oliver Waine - 28 September 2018
Urban ruins represent a marginal subject of research within the field of Chinese studies, and yet are a precious...
From the Field

The Leaderless Urban Social Movement as Problem and Solution

Caio Teixeira - 25 September 2018
Today, with urban uprisings driven by leaderless social movements, the future of the would-be progressive agenda...
From the Field

Rio de Janeiro: An (Inequitably) Connected City?

Francesca Pilo’ & translated by Oliver Waine - 21 September 2018
The tangled webs of electrical wires, a symbol of the favelas, are also the sign of an electricity service that...
From the Field

Invisible Lines in the Sand: Bather Arrests in Early 20th-Century Los Angeles

Elsa Devienne & translated by Oliver Waine - 13 July 2018
Can beaches reveal the tensions that run through society at a given moment in time? Here, Elsa Devienne shows how...
From the Field

Dunkirk as a New “Laboratory” for Free Transit

Henri Briche & Maxime Huré & translated by Oliver Waine - 29 June 2018
From September 2018, the public transport network in Dunkirk, France, will be free of charge for all users. Henri...
From the Field

Marielle Franco and Brazilian Democracy at a Crossroads

Natália Alves & Isabella Gonçalves Miranda & Felipe Magalhães - 26 June 2018
Marielle Franco’s life and death raised questions about the limits of Brazil’s New Republic. It revealed the rising...
From the Field

Paving the Silk Road: Rethinking Ethnic Solidarity in Los Angeles’ Korean Garment District

Angie Y. Chung & Sookhee Oh - 19 June 2018
In this piece on Koreans in Los Angeles’ garment industry, sociologists Angie Chung and Sookhee Oh discuss the...
From the Field

Land Regularization on the Fringes of Mexico City: A Recipe for Reducing Inequalities?

Jean-François Valette & translated by Oliver Waine - 8 June 2018
Mexico City’s working-class neighbourhoods are the focus of numerous land-regularization operations. Jean-François...
From the Field

Land Insecurity in Khartoum: When Land Titles Fail to Protect Against Public Predation

Alice Franck & translated by Oliver Waine - 6 June 2018
The unstable economic and political context in Sudan has encouraged people to invest massively in land in urban...
From the Field

You Can’t Kill Marielle

Meg Stalcup & Erika Robb Larkins - 29 May 2018
Marielle Franco was part of a new generation of progressive activists in Brazilian politics. She was assassinated...
From the Field

Taste of Home: A Sociocultural Exploration of Food Habits and Health Among Bangladeshi Immigrants in New York City

Fatema Kamal - 22 May 2018
Resettlement in an entirely different country may have drastic consequences for an individual’s health. This is...
From the Field

Immigrant Men and Voluntary Work in a Swiss City

Agnès Aubry - 15 May 2018
Across Europe, refugees and immigrants find themselves in uncertain civil and legal territory; precariousness...
From the Field

Shanghai’s West Bund Cultural Corridor Exemplifies the Opportunities and Risks of State-Driven Cultural Development

Siqi Tu - 8 May 2018
The West Bund Cultural Corridor in Shanghai is the latest entrant in a global competition to attract investment by...

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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”?

Mobile Lives Forum
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...

Mobile Lives Forum
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?

Mobile Lives Forum
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

Mobile Lives Forum
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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