The articles below engage with a broad range of topics: resistance to “fifteen-minute cities” in England; police accountability; explorations of New York City past and present; military urbanism in Northern Ireland; queer social infrastructure in Toronto; the realities of forced labor in American prisons; and, from earlier in the year, a series of pieces on Black Power and Black self-determination.
If you are crafting syllabi for the upcoming academic year, we encourage you to consider these articles and explore our archives, which are full of accessible scholarly research perfect for both undergraduate and graduate courses. If you are a researcher, we hope you will submit a manuscript for review. A short-form piece in Metropolitics can help you to develop an embryonic idea, draw attention to a book or longer academic article that you have already published, and engage with a broad public audience. You can find Metropolitics’ style guide and word limits here.
Have a wonderful summer!
James DeFilippis (Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy, Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey)
Editorial Director, Metropolitics
From the Field | Fifteen-Minute Prisons? A Reflection on the Far-Right Backlash Against Sustainable Development in Britain
Garrett L. Grainger
In an era of increasing political polarization, right-wing activists are targeting sustainable planning initiatives. Analyzing online media coverage and posts on X (formerly Twitter), Garrett L. Grainger explores why activists are contesting “15‑minute cities” in Oxfordshire and how resistance to them reaches across the globe and affects local planning efforts.
Series | Black Power and Black Self-Determination in a New Time and New Spaces
Coordinated by James DeFilippis and Akira Drake Rodriguez
Black Power organizing in cities in the United States and around the world has a long history. This special series of articles focuses on efforts for Black political and economic power in the contemporary period, while drawing upon the efforts of those who have come before.
From the Field | We Are From Nairobi (#panthershit): Black Power Spatial Imaginaries in Silicon Valley
Kimberley S. Johnson
East Palo Alto’s Black, Latiné and Pacific Islander residents deploy #panthershit—a Black Power spatial imaginary as a means of resisting the gentrification and displacement triggered by Silicon Valley’s tech industry, thereby reclaiming a “right to their city” based on a recognition of the deep roots of past political activism and organizing that emerged during the city’s Black Power era.
Essays | Self-Determination for Who? The Case of Ras Baraka’s Neoliberal Newark
John Arena
Newark mayor Cory Booker garnered national accolades, and tens of millions in foundation funding, to advance his neoliberal reform agenda for the city’s public schools. Locally, though, he was met by a wave of popular opposition to his privatization drive and thus decided on an exit to the US Senate. His successor, Ras Baraka, rode that opposition to the city hall, though the demands of this movement also conflicted with his economic development agenda. John Arena looks at how Black self-determination ideology helped manage the contradictory pressures facing the self-described radical mayor.
From the Field | The Black Radical Imagination in a Rural Forgotten Space
Brad Stephens, Chris Stephenson, and Max O. Stephenson, Jr.
How does the Black Radical imagination manifest in “forgotten places” amid shifting populations? Brad Stephens, Chris Stephenson, and Max Stephenson, Jr., attend to this question by considering the role of “communitas” in the work of St. Paul’s College 4 Life, a group working to reimagine the possibilities for a shuttered historically Black college in rural Lawrenceville, Virginia.
From the Field Walking and Knowing New York City
Michael B. Kahan
“What can we learn and what can we know about a city like New York by walking through it?” Reflecting on his experience of co‑leading an experiential learning course in New York City, Michael B. Kahan explores this question and suggests the answer lies beyond the act of walking itself.
Essays | Breaking Down the NYPD: How Reconsidering Political District Maps Could Open New Doors to Police Accountability
Toby Irving
Efforts to stem the power of the NYPD and the violence such power facilitates require accountability to the people of New York City. Yet such accountability is hindered by uneven distributions of power across fragmented political geographies and those closest to their communities—city council members—often have multiple police precincts with jurisdiction over their districts. In this essay, Toby Irving outlines a pathway to greater accountability through redistricting city council seats to better align with the NYPD precincts.
Interviews | Education Myths, Black Self-Determination, and University Accountability to the City. An Interview with Christopher R. Rogers, PhD
Laura Wolf-Powers and Christopher R. Rogers
Laura Wolf-Powers interviews scholar and community organizer Chris Rogers about his extensive work in Philadelphia. They discuss his journey to Penn and activism against the University of Pennsylvania’s “parasitic relationship to Black Philadelphia,” including policing on campus, housing struggles, and efforts for payments in lieu of taxes (PILOTs).
Reviews | Finding the People’s City
Benjamin Holtzman
In A People’s Guide to New York City, Carolina Bank Muñoz, Penny Lewis and Emily Tumpson Molina provide an engaging exploration into sites throughout the city. The authors expose complicated histories, of both iconic and lesser-known sites, that highlight change from below while also demonstrating how powerful institutions have shaped New York in the face of grassroots resistance.
Reviews | Reflecting on the New York Commune at 20 Years
Daphne Lundi
What happened in the decades after the Hunts Point Insurrection? M. E. O’Brien and Eman Abdelhadi use speculative oral history to share the stories of the everyday people involved in making New York City’s abolitionist future.
Essays | On a Road to Nowhere? Military Urbanism and the Architecture of Segregation
Tim Cunningham
Comparing the experiences of Belfast, Northern Ireland, with the United States, Tim Cunningham shows how physical barriers, especially roads, can precipitate the dismembering of targeted communities from the wider city ecosystem, in turn accentuating patterns of spatial inequality and deprivation.
From the Field | The Struggle to Preserve Hanlan’s Point Beach as Queer Social Infrastructure
Ahmed Allahwala
The march of neoliberal urbanism poses grave threats to nature and the people that use it. In this article, Ahmed Allahwala considers how activism against the City of Toronto’s plans for a music venue on Hanlan’s Point Beach, an important site for 2SLGBTQ+ life and history as well as a sensitive coastal area, might inform preservation struggles against such threats, in and beyond Toronto.
Interviews | “There Is No Excused Absence in Prison”: an interview with Dr. Tanisha Cannon on the nexus of prison labor and human trafficking and imagining a better future
Dylan O’Donoghue and Tanisha Cannon
More than 150 years after the passage of the 13th Amendment, the fight to abolish forced labor in the United States continues. In this interview, Dylan O’Donoghue talks with Tanisha Cannon, organizer and managing director of Legal Services for Prisoners with Children, about her work campaigning for a California state constitutional amendment that would abolish slavery in prisons.
