Metropolitics

Finding the People's City

Benjamin Holtzman — 2024-03-26T06:00:00Z

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.
There is no shortage of guidebooks to New York City. There are guides designed to assist visitors in exploring

- Reviews / New York, tourism, urban tourism, history, urban history, resistance, power play, protest, community

New Tourism Geographies and the Politics of Tourist Taxation

Elizabeth Strom — 2022-06-07T05:00:00Z

The changing geography of urban tourism has led to new forms of political contestation. How hotel-tax revenues are spent—where and for whom—is a central issue. Elizabeth Strom argues that political mobilization can encourage elected officials and the tourism industry to use tax revenues to improve cities for residents, not just tourists.
Two decades ago, Dennis Judd wrote with some concern about the construction of “tourist bubbles”—the downtown enclaves found in US cities that included some

- Essays / tourism, urban tourism, taxation, hotel tax, protest, mobilization, United States

Holding Their Own: Gilets Jaunes' Occupation of Public Space

Antoine Bernard de Raymond & Sylvain Bordiec & translated by Oliver Waine — 2021-04-30T05:00:00Z

The Gilets Jaunes (“Yellow Vests”) movement that emerged in France in the fall of 2018 was striking by dint of both its reach and its duration. An ethnographic survey conducted in southwestern France shows that this success was in part due to the organizational, symbolic and social resources offered by the occupation of traffic circles and the construction of shacks.
The Gilets Jaunes (“Yellow Vests”) movement started with a national day of blockades and demonstrations organized on November

- From the Field / public space, gilets jaunes, mobilization, protest, social movement, occupation, periurban, France

Algeria's Hirak: When a Social Movement Puts Citizenship Under the Microscope

Islam Amine Derradji & Amel Gherbi & translated by Oliver Waine — 2021-03-26T06:00:00Z

The popular mobilization that rose up in Algeria in 2019 was not only a revolt against living conditions that had become unacceptable. It was also a movement that turned the country's streets into a stage for the organized construction of collective and political life by citizens seeking to revisit their history and assert their independence.
Since February 22, 2019, Algeria has been living to the rhythm of unprecedented mobilizations. Millions of Algerians took to the streets to oppose

- From the Field / North Africa, Maghreb, Africa, collective action, mobilization, civic organizing, demonstrations, protest, Algeria, social movement, citizenship, citizens

Post-Election Dispatches from Luzerne County, Pennsylvania

Jamie Longazel — 2020-12-22T06:00:00Z

Jamie Longazel reflects on organizing for the 2020 general election in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania. A longtime Democratic stronghold, the County voted for Trump in the 2016 election. Longazel discusses the role deindustrialization, job loss, and immigration have played in election politics.
On a warm August evening in 2018, I gave a speech outside of a Trump rally in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. The stage was the top of a grassy hill that sloped downward from a shopping-center parking lot.

- From the Field / community organizing, civic organizing, mobilization, US election, presidential election, elections, vote, Donald Trump, immigration, Latinx, protest, United States, Pennsylvania, Wilkes-Barre

How the Youth of the Banlieues See the Gilets Jaunes

2020-04-24T05:00:00Z

Do the “Yellow Vests” and the youth of France's banlieues share a common vision of the inequalities and discrimination that divide contemporary societies? A roundtable discussion organized as part of research on participation in working-class neighborhoods sheds light on the ambivalent views that certain young people in these areas have regarding the Gilets Jaunes movement.
Since the beginning of the Gilets Jaunes (“Yellow Vests”) movement, in October 2018, a number of commentators have noted

- From the Field / banlieue, suburbs, gilets jaunes, youth, collective action, mobilization, working-class neighborhoods, working classes, demonstrations, protest, discrimination, Paris region, Île-de-France, France, Paris

Nuits Debout Across Greater Paris: The Spread of a Political Innovation

Laurent Beauguitte & Nicolas Lambert & translated by Oliver Waine — 2019-12-20T06:00:00Z

As France experiences strikes and demonstrations in protest against pension reforms, we look back to the spring of 2016 and the Nuit Debout movement that developed almost spontaneously in opposition to a proposed shake‑up of France's labor laws. Although Place de la République in Paris was the nexus of events—and virtually the sole focus of media attention—plenty was going on elsewhere in France, especially in towns and suburbs around Paris, where local offshoots sought to redefine citizen

- From the Field / Nuit debout, mobilization, protest, politics, political participation, engagement, public space, territory, mapping, Paris region, Greater Paris, Paris, France, Île-de-France

Estate Regeneration in London: Politics and Protest

Gerald Koessl — 2017-01-31T07:00:00Z

Gerald Koessl describes dilemmas facing social-housing providers in London, where social housing often serves as the only affordable housing in gentrifying, high-cost neighbourhoods, but is also increasingly in disrepair. He critically assesses the emphasis on densification as a solution, and describes recent resident-led protest movements. The situation has strong parallels with the HOPE VI program in the US, which we hope to explore in a future article.
The regeneration of social-housing

- From the Field / gentrification, housing policy, social housing, London, public housing, protest, HOPE VI program

Building a Multifaceted Campaign for Public Higher Education

Stephen Brier & Michael Fabricant — 2016-10-04T06:39:27Z

In their new book, Austerity Blues: Fighting for the Soul of Public Higher Education, Michael Fabricant and Stephen Brier trace the waning support for public higher education and its deleterious effects on students, faculty, and American society at large. Here, they reflect on what helped the Professional Staff Congress at the City University of New York win the most recent round in the fight for public higher education at a time when greater access to public universities is sorely needed to

- From the Field / participation, inequalities, United States, media, New York, public policy, protest, education, public action, public education, mobilization, higher education, university, austerity, budget cuts, public investment, CUNY

The French Republic and the Paris Spring

Gregory Smithsimon — 2016-09-06T05:00:00Z

Has the French Spring arrived yet? Gregory Smithsimon documents La Nuit Debout, a self-named social movement that has taken root in one of Paris's main squares, where demonstrators have gathered since March 31 to protest the rollback of labor rights, repressive national security and refugee policies, political corruption, and indifference to ecological crisis. The main challenge for such movements, he argues, is to bridge the divide between the newly disenfranchised and those who were never

- From the Field / France, public space, ethnicity, intégration, social movement, Paris, protest, race, integration, Occupy