Metropolitics

Rio de Janeiro: Storms, Militia, and Urban Development

Leandro Benmergui & Rafael Soares Gonçalves & translated by Oliver Waine — 2019-11-08T06:00:00Z

The dramatic consequences of storms at the beginning of 2019 in a favela in Rio de Janeiro reveal the ongoing evolution of informal urbanization in the city. The development of militias, as a result of security problems and the withdrawal of public authorities in these neighborhoods, also affects building construction. Leandro Benmergui and Rafael Soares Gonçalves highlight the dangers of these developments.
At the beginning of 2019, in Rio de Janeiro, two violent storms caused a significant

- From the Field / Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, favela, militias, informal housing, vulnerable housing, informality, precarity, catastrophe, disaster, Latin America, safety

How Children Cope When Home is a Hotel

Erwan Le Méner & translated by Christina Mitrakos — 2016-02-05T06:00:00Z

Emergency housing in social hotels is affecting a growing number of families in the Paris region. How does this experience impact the lives of children? What are the consequences on children's relationship to space, on how they grow up, and on how they learn, make friends and play? Erwan Le Méner shows how school plays a central role in stabilizing an otherwise precarious situation.
---- Series: Children in the City Today, one in five people experiencing homelessness in the Paris region are

- From the Field / France, Paris region, housing, children, public policy, sociabilities, vulnerability, homelessness, precarity, vulnerable housing, emergency accommodation, social emergency, social hotel, school

Public authorities and Roma populations in Turin

Elisabetta Rosa & translated by Oliver Waine — 2015-03-05T05:50:00Z

For the last three decades or so, European cities have had to deal with the issue of land occupation by migrant populations from Eastern Europe. The city of Turin has adopted various measures with respect to the “Roma question”: the closure of certain illegal camps, tolerance of others – facilitating their consolidation – and the creation of supervised “official” camps. Despite the apparent contradictions, these policies in fact all lead to similar outcomes: spatial relegation and the

- From the Field / camps, Italy, exclusion, public policy, migration, expulsions, Turin, Roma, vulnerable housing