Metropolitics

Global Climate Crisis and the City: An Interview with Ashley Dawson

Ashley Dawson & Maura McGee — 2019-04-03T09:58:34Z

An interview with Ashley Dawson, professor of English at the College of Staten Island and the Graduate Center, CUNY, about his most recent book Extreme Cities: The Peril and Promise of Urban Life in the Age of Climate Change. He talks with Maura McGee about the global convergence of urbanization and climate change, strategies to confront climate chaos, and how communities and social movements can act.
Cities are the defining social and ecological form of the 21st century. They are home to the

- Interviews / global warming, environment, anthropocène, climate change, sustainable development, Global South, Global North, sea-level rise, crisis, environmental justice, just transition

“People of Color Are Not Props”: Black Branding and Community Resistance in Gentrifying Brooklyn

Maura McGee — 2018-02-06T13:00:00Z

When a new white-owned upscale bar-restaurant in the gentrifying Brooklyn neighborhood of Crown Heights advertised rosé wine served in 40-ounce bottles and a purported “bullet-hole-ridden” wall, the neighborhood erupted with protest. In her analysis of the “bullet-hole bar” controversy, Maura McGee probes the intersection of race, gentrification, and community in a changing commercial landscape.
Summerhill—a “boozy sandwich shop”—opened in the gentrifying historically low-income black

- From the Field / authenticity, gentrification, New York, race, community, Brooklyn, Black neighborhoods, marketing, branding

Between Green Paris and Immigrant Paris: The Politics of the Jardins d'Éole

Maura McGee — 2017-03-21T06:00:00Z

As leaders in global cities reimagine and rebuild their metropolises as green capitals of the future, who has the right to the new sustainable city? In her review of Andrew Newman's Landscape of Discontent: Urban Sustainability in Immigrant Paris, Maura McGee comments on the contradictions of ecological urbanism in northeast Paris.
Global discourse on urban sustainability has sparked a green turn in urban policy, planning, and design. Local officials deploy environmental policies not just to

- Reviews / France, parks, Paris, green spaces, environmental justice, urban sustainability, ecological urbanism, Jardins d'Éole, Cour du Maroc, Mal-Logés, Bertrand Delanoë