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

Community Movements and Housing Liberalism: Reflections on the Bank of America Low‑Income Housing Competition

Avi Garelick — 2019-10-15T05:00:00Z

Avi Garelick describes how the imperative for realism in affordable housing production conflicts with the goals of a community-based movement for housing justice and control.
The movement for low-income housing in the United States traditionally has been dominated by liberalism. Top-down, centralized institutions led by experts and insulated from grassroots political pressure have managed the project of developing below-market housing stock. In many cities in the 1970s, however, a

- From the Field / affordable housing, housing, community land trusts, community, community organizing, housing justice, New York, Manhattan, United States, Washington Heights

As NYC (Again) Considers Comprehensive Planning, History Offers Insight

K. C. Alvey — 2019-02-12T06:00:00Z

Comprehensive planning can be a progressive governance tool, helping leaders keep broad principles like equity and resilience in mind as they consider infrastructure systems and neighborhood-level interventions. But as New York City's experience shows, balancing a citywide vision with flexibility and activism at the community scale has proven to be a challenge. Moreover, for some interests, comprehensive public planning—whether community-responsive or not—poses a threat.
In the context of

- Essays / urban planning, New York, history, consultation, community, comprehensive planning, community input

Saving Ivy Island: A Civil War in North Portland

Lauren Everett — 2019-01-15T08:13:58Z

Lauren Everett examines two different approaches by community activists confronting change in a tight-knit Portland neighborhood, and the struggle that ensued. She considers how official decision-making processes may or may not include mechanisms for considering community input, and the challenges of working with a community plan that leaves room for interpretation.
The community plan for the neighborhood of St Johns in the north of Portland, Oregon, prioritizes both neighborhood

- From the Field / participation, public space, United States, neighborhood, consultation, community, Portland (Oregon), neighborhood preservation

“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

The Arts as Fundamental—and Fragile—in Community Life

Andrew Zitcer & Julie Hawkins & Neville Vakharia — 2017-02-22T06:00:00Z

Arts funding in America mirrors the inequality found in society more broadly. Yet amid persistent poverty and other challenges, West Philadelphia residents assert that arts access and participation are central to their conception of a life well-lived. Andrew Zitcer, Julie Hawkins and Neville Vakharia discuss their research in West Philadelphia, noting the vibrant cultural production taking place there and maintaining that arts should be considered a fundamental right.
Amid the existential

- Essays / culture, United States, art, artist, arts, community, Philadelphia, community development, community arts

Filming Ethnic Diversity in New York

Stéphane Tonnelat & translated by Christina Mitrakos — 2016-10-21T08:23:11Z

Frederick Wiseman's fortieth documentary film, In Jackson Heights (2015), returns to an urban theme explored in previous films such as Central Park (1989) and Public Housing (1997). This time he chose an entire New York City neighborhood characterized by great racial and ethnic diversity.
Frederick Wiseman's latest documentary, In Jackson Heights, plunges us into a three-hour uninterrupted exploration of the institutions, the streets, and the concerns of the inhabitants of a multiethnic

- Reviews / immigration, gentrification, ethnicity, New York, neighborhood, community, Queens, institution, street, film, documentary, diversity, Featured

Liberty, Community and Religion: A Hispano-Moroccan Family in Andalusia

Alain Cottereau & translated by Oliver Waine — 2016-10-11T05:00:00Z

In Europe, the relationship that migrants originating from the Arab Muslim world – whether first- or second-generation – maintain with Islam is both a little-explored subject and a source of confused concern. An ethnographic study of an Andalusian family conducted by Alain Cottereau and Mokhtar Marzok sheds light on the different ways in which people relate to religion, and calls into question what is often presumed to be a binary opposition between religiousness and a return to tradition on the

- From the Field / gender, Spain, ethnography, religion, migration, citizenship, community, Islam, Muslim, Andalusia, family, identity, belonging, male–female relations, domestic life

Looking Inward, Across the Border

Harel Shapira — 2016-04-19T05:00:00Z

In the constellation of anti-immigrant politics in the United States, groups like the Minutemen, civilians who patrol the border with military gear, stand out for taking matters into their own hands. Harel Shapira explains that these militiamen are motivated not just by reflexive right-wing anti-immigrant ideology, but also by a nostalgia for their own lost worlds of work and meaning forged in military careers.
Presidential candidate Donald Trump has made the construction of a high border

- From the Field / immigration, United States, work, migration, borders, community, Minutemen, patrol, military, nostalgia, Mexico, immigration control, Featured

The Future of Asbury Park: Gentrification and Youth in a Coastal Community

Alicia Raia-Hawrylak — 2015-03-31T04:55:00Z

Once known as a successful beach community, with a lively boardwalk and thriving rock music scene, the city of Asbury Park, New Jersey, faced steep decline as investment shifted to the suburbs and other places of amusement. With gentrification occurring since the early 2000s, Alicia Raia-Hawrylak documents the experience of an oft-neglected group in both academic research and urban politics, the city's youth, and considers their inclusion in future urban planning.
Asbury Park, New Jersey is a

- From the Field / gentrification, United States, children, teenagers, tourism, youth, community