Metropolitics

What Is Worth Asking About Our Cities?

Naomi Adiv & Anant Maringanti & Harikrishnan Sasikumar — 2026-03-03T06:00:00Z

What is the state of urban theory from the Global South and how can local research simultaneously advance scholarly research and be a vehicle for advocacy? Dr. Naomi Adiv and Dr. Hari Sasikumar explore these questions in their conversation with Anant Maringanti.
A central guiding idea of our work at Metropolitics is to share the knowledge, concepts and practices that academic and activist scholars generate in contemporary cities. In addition to making scholarship public, the journal is

- Interviews / Global South, India, urbanism, Southern urbanism, Hyderabad

Hardening Racial Lines in Public Space

Naomi Adiv — 2015-07-07T05:00:00Z

On Friday, June 5, Black teenagers in McKinney, Texas, were violently subdued by a police officer following a conflict that broke out at a community swimming pool—a place at which their presence provoked anxiety and then panic. Many interpretations of the officer's behavior have turned on the question of who broke what rules, but geographer Naomi Adiv argues that the debate has deeper spatial—and racial—implications.
In the last few weeks, there has been much noise followed by much quiet

- Debates / public space, racism, United States, police, race, Texas, swimming pool, brutality, police violence

Paying to Play in the Mission District

Naomi Adiv — 2015-02-16T05:50:00Z

Naomi Adiv unpacks a viral video showing an argument between longtime San Francisco residents and “dot-commers” over a soccer (futbol) field in the city, raising questions about how public spaces are allocated, who gets to use them, and who counts as “the public.”
The video appears
On October 9, 2014 the details surfaced of the latest battle in the San Francisco gentrification wars: a face-off between longtime residents and newcomer tech industry employees over the use of a soccer field in

- From the Field / gentrification, public space, United States, sport, football, fees, recreation, San Francisco