Who we are
Metropolitics is an editorially peer-reviewed online journal that publishes concise academic essays and papers aimed at an international audience. The journal’s mission is public scholarship: short-form work about cities and urban politics, based on original research, on a time frame that allows researchers to contribute contemporaneously to public debate and make their scholarly work more relevant to a broad readership.
Metropolitics was established by, and works in collaboration with, Métropolitiques, a French-language peer-reviewed online journal based in Paris, France. With a network of corresponding editors around the world, Metropolitics and Métropolitiques provide spaces for analysis of and debate about social, cultural and economic politics in cities around the world. Because the journal is online, authors can illustrate their work with maps, photographs, videos and drawings.
What we publish
● Essays (1,500 words), which draw on empirical work to develop arguments relating to societal and political debates, and which provide a new perspective on key urban issues and challenges.
● Debates (1,500 words), which relate to current social, professional or political developments on current issues, and concisely present the state of knowledge bearing on current public debate.
● Reports from the Field (1,500 words), which draw on case studies, experiments or remarkable situations to shed new light on urban phenomena and developments.
● Reviews (1,000 words), which offer authors’ perspectives on books, films, exhibitions and other events, evaluating their intellectual contributions for a wide audience.
● Interviews with activists and policymakers, presented in audio, video or text form.
Access to Metropolitics is free. Articles can be downloaded as PDF files; videos are available as podcasts.
To submit an article for consideration
Metropolitics publishes an original article every Tuesday, as well as occasional English translations of articles in French originating from the Métropolitiques site in Paris. The journal is editorially peer-reviewed: all submissions are reviewed by at least two members of the editorial committee. If two members agree to accept a piece, the paper is automatically accepted; if the two original editors request the help of other committee members, they all must agree to reach a decision to publish. Articles may be published within as little as a month of submission, though the editorial process sometimes takes longer if a piece is adjudged to be in need of substantial revision. Our turnaround, however, is often substantially faster than academics have come to expect from standard peer-reviewed journals.
An editorial director oversees the editorial process with the support of the managing editor. For the 2024/2025 academic year, the editorial director is John Krinsky, and the managing editor is Jakob Kendall Schneider. Articles may be submitted directly to the managing editor by email (jakobks13 [at] gmail [dot] com) or by clicking on the “Submit a paper” button below.
