Metropolitics

Urban Public Transit: A Choice Between Two Models

Arnaud Passalacqua & Philippe Poinsot & translated by Oliver Waine — 2025-12-02T06:00:00Z

Public transportation has a decisive role to play in any meaningful ecological transition. And yet key players in the sector continue to prioritize technical innovations that consume huge quantities of resources. Arnaud Passalacqua and Philippe Poinsot re‑examine past experiences in France in order to identify solutions that are more technically modest and available in the shorter term.
Urban public transportation is considered an important tool for public policies aimed at promoting a

- Essays / funding, innovation, mass transit, mobility, model, public transportation, resources, technical innovation, transport, urban technical networks

Planning in the Age of Political Populism: Kolkata's Tram Debate

Tathagata Chatterji — 2025-06-10T05:00:00Z

Using the case of Kolkata's tram system, Tathagata Chatterji shows how two distinct political strategies—populism and clientelism—operate in a symbiotic relationship to circumvent formal planning processes in India's third-largest city.
Political populism and clientelism are two distinct political strategies with significant conceptual overlaps. From a theoretical standpoint, political populism is associated with charismatic leaders who mobilise mass support through ideological and rhetorical

- Essays / India, Global South, Asia, Kolkata, mass transit, rapid transit, transport, transport policy, public transportation, tram, clientelism, populism, streetcar, light rail, tramway

Episodes from the Social Life of the Delhi Metro

Sneha Mandhan — 2023-01-20T06:00:00Z

What is the impact of a new metro on a large and growing city? As new metros are cropping up across Asia, Rashmi Sadana documents the changes brought to the city of Delhi by a sprawling new transportation system. She shows that the Delhi metro is both similar to other subways of the world and unique in its inscription in a distinctive cultural landscape.
Infrastructures straddle the line between large, shiny artefacts imposed on urban landscapes marking modernity, and the backdrop for scenes

- Reviews / India, Delhi, transport, public transportation, mass transit, rapid transit, metro, subway, infrastructure, ethnography, vignettes, public space

(Re)Constructing Inequality: Community Development in Public and Private

Claire Dunning — 2021-12-14T06:00:00Z

Claire Dunning reviews Jeremy R. Levine's new book, Constructing Community, an ethnographic study of community development projects in Boston.
For a book about urban poverty and redevelopment, Constructing Community recounts few protests or headline-grabbing incidents. Instead, the drama unfolds slowly over the course of a decade in poorly lit community rooms, downtown board rooms, and the backseats of cars. This is a book about the banalities of bureaucracy and governance—a fact that author

- Reviews / Boston, Massachusetts, United States, mass transit, rapid transit, transport, public transportation, community-based organizations, urban poverty, redevelopment, poverty, governance, local governance, urban governance, ethnography

In Search of Grand Paris: Pierre Mansat on the Eve of the June 2020 Municipal Elections

Magda Maaoui & Pierre Mansat — 2020-06-26T05:00:00Z

Magda Maaoui interviews Pierre Mansat, former deputy mayor of Paris and a founding father of “le Grand Paris” (the metropolitan authority for Greater Paris), about Grand Paris and the limits of political action at the municipal level in light of the upcoming municipal elections.
Less than a week before 12 million Parisians vote in the second round of elections for their mayors and their municipal councils, which has now been delayed from March 22 to June 28 owing to the coronavirus lockdown,

- Interviews / Grand Paris, Grand Paris Express, Greater Paris, Paris region, Paris, Île-de-France, France, banlieue, suburbs, metropolitan areas, metropolitan restructuring, metropolis, territorial equality, territorial reform, governance, local governance, metropolization, coronavirus, Covid-19, public transportation, transport, mass transit, intercommunality

Covid-19, War, and Working-Class Neighborhoods

Pierre Gilbert & translated by Oliver Waine — 2020-06-05T05:00:00Z

The residents of France's working-class neighborhoods, accused of exacerbating the coronavirus pandemic through their supposed “incivility,” have been the target of speeches that have sought to reactivate the fantasy of the urban ghetto. In reality, however, multiple sources of inequality—housing, health, transportation—have in fact made lockdown especially difficult in housing projects and exposed their residents to a greater risk of infection.
The epidemic that is sweeping the planet is an

- Debates / inequalities, Covid-19, coronavirus, lockdown, housing, social housing, housing estates, housing projects, banlieue, suburbs, working classes, working-class neighborhoods, overoccupancy, health, transport, public transportation, mass transit, France, pandemic

A Construction Boom in an Urban Floodplain: Long Island City, Queens, NYC

Christopher Ryan — 2020-02-11T06:00:00Z

New York City has encouraged development in Long Island City, Queens, even as the neighborhood has not recovered from damage due to Superstorm Sandy in 2012, and remains vulnerable to future flooding.
A high risk for flooding
With four of its five boroughs located on islands off the coast of the continental United States, New York City is particularly vulnerable to coastal impacts of climate change. The New York City Panel on Climate Change (2019) outlines multiple climate-change risks,

- From the Field / New York, Queens, resilience, vulnerability, flooding, natural risks, disaster, ecological disaster, catastrophe, environment, sea-level rise, climate change, transport, public transportation, Long Island City

Moving Inside City Limits: The Urban Mobility of Undocumented Youth

Stephen P. Ruszczyk — 2019-06-04T05:00:00Z

The urban context and public transportation shape how undocumented youths move within cities. In a comparison of New York City and Paris, Stephen Ruszczyk shows how cities can strengthen mobility for undocumented youths, and for all residents, regardless of legal status.
Five years after Liang's parents left him and their hometown of Wenzhou in southeastern China, Liang, who was then 13 years old, reunited with them in central Paris. He lacked a visa to enter France, and had taken a plane,

- From the Field / RESF, immigration, immigration control, immigration policy, youth, undocumented youth, illegality, public transportation, transport, mass transit, Paris, New York, Featured

Private Infrastructure and Urban Government: How Vélib' Veered Off Course in Paris

Maxime Huré & translated by Oliver Waine — 2019-05-17T05:00:00Z

When the city of Paris entrusted its decade-old bike-share service, Vélib', to a new provider in January 2018, multiple problems ensued. Maxime Huré looks back on the opportunities and pitfalls presented by the changes of scale and operator that this switchover entailed, and sheds light on public authorities' mistakes, misgivings, and above all their growing dependence on large, globalized firms.
The Vélib' bicycle-sharing system, launched in 2007 in partnership with French

- Debates / bicycles, mobility, transport, public transportation, self-service, urban public service, Île-de-France, Paris region, Greater Paris, Paris, privatization, public–private partnership, municipal, urban services, urban technical networks, active mobility, Vélib', bicycle-sharing, cycling

The Leaderless Urban Social Movement as Problem and Solution

Caio Teixeira — 2018-09-25T05:00:00Z

Today, with urban uprisings driven by leaderless social movements, the future of the would-be progressive agenda has been called into question. Inspired by Brazil's “June Journeys”, Caio Teixeira explores how we might situate leaderless social movements and their forward-looking agenda within the context of the leftist political spectrum.
---- Series: Progressive Mayors and Urban Social Movements The literature on urban politics has shown the enduring role of progressive social movements in

- From the Field / public transportation, local government, São Paulo, social movement, transport, state, mass transit, progressive urban politics, Brazil, fares, political power, policymaking, mayors, progressive mayors, horizontality, leaderless social movements