Metropolitics

A Geography of Revolt in Alexandria, Egypt's Second Capital

Youssef El Chazli — 2016-02-23T06:00:00Z

How does the layout of a city affect how protest unfolds? How does urban space constrain and enable the choices protesters have both physically and symbolically? How does protest differ from one city to another? Youssef El Chazli takes us inside Alexandria's revolt in January 2011 and contrasts it to the better-known story of the anti-Mubarak uprising of 25 January 2011 in Cairo, showing us the ways in which the protest in Egypt's “second capital” ballooned because of the geographically

- From the Field / public space, collective action, demonstrations, social movement, police, urban geography, protest, Arab Spring, Egypt, geography, Alexandria

Jerusalem: divisive urban planning at the heart of the Holy City

Vincent Lemire & translated by Oliver Waine — 2015-06-19T04:50:00Z

How is the Israeli–Palestinian conflict reflected in the way the city of Jerusalem has been planned and developed? In this book, based on meticulous fieldwork, Irène Salenson reveals the various actors and the manifold complex and contradictory processes involved in this particularly conflictual urban-planning context.
As a revised and abridged version of a PhD thesis defended in 2007, this work – “Jerusalem: Building Two Cities in One” – by geographer Irène Salenson is devoted to examining

- Reviews / segregation, urban planning, Palestine, local governance, Jerusalem, conflict, Israel, religion, urban geography, geopolitics, local politics

“Gentrification or ghetto”: making sense of an intellectual impasse

Anne Clerval & Mathieu Van Criekingen & translated by Oliver Waine — 2015-01-29T06:00:00Z

The debate on the causes, effects and extent of the “gentrification” of working-class neighbourhoods in the central areas of our cities has animated (and divided) the fields of geography and urban sociology for the last decade or so in France. This debate was reignited in September 2013 by the publication of a book by Anne Clerval titled Paris sans le peuple (“Paris Without the People”). In this article, Anne Clerval and Mathieu Van Criekingen reply with force to those fellow researchers and

- Debates / France, ghetto, gentrification, segregation, urban renewal, social diversity, suburbanization, periurban, metropolis, urban regeneration, metropolization, metropolitan areas, urban geography, urban sociology, depoliticization

The electoral effects of social divisions in French cities

Jean Rivière & translated by Oliver Waine — 2014-07-02T04:50:00Z

According to many commentators, France's major cities are bastions of support for the parliamentary left when it comes to election time. However, Jean Rivière's analysis of the situation – far from confirming these kinds of simplifications that contrast city-dwelling “bobos” on the one hand with “suburbanites” on the other – invites us to reconsider the electoral geography of French cities by examining them at polling-district level, revealing their socially composite nature.
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- From the Field / inequalities, vote, elections, mapping, cartography, neighborhood effects, metropolitan areas, urban geography