Metropolitics

A Masterpiece in Peril: The Garden Suburb of La Butte-Rouge

Renaud Epstein & translated by Oliver Waine — 2026-02-24T06:00:00Z

La Butte-Rouge, built in the mid-20th century in Paris's southern suburbs, is the archetypal example of a French cité-jardin. In a recent work retracing its history, Élise Guillerm highlights the urban and architectural qualities of this eco-neighborhood before its time, whose very existence is now threatened by an urban renewal project.
Analysis of urban policies, and particularly urban renewal policies, dispels the idea that historical knowledge can prevent the repetition of past mistakes.

- Reviews / urban planning, cité-jardin, HLM, urban heritage, heritage, Châtenay-Malabry, Hauts-de-Seine, Île-de-France, social housing, sustainable development, garden city, garden suburb, France, Paris region, Paris, history, urban history, environment, urban renewal, landscape

From Scientific Uncertainty to Strategic Ignorance

Gwenola Le Naour & Valentin Thomas & translated by Oliver Waine — 2023-11-24T06:00:00Z

In the absence of data, uncertainties about the health risks of industrial pollution abound, and are used by private firms to assert that their activities are not harmful. In this article, Gwenola Le Naour and Valentin Thomas analyze how this “scientific ignorance” is maintained in the “chemical valley” to the south of Lyon in France.
On May 10, 2022, a public meeting was held in Lyon to present the results of an investigation by France Télévisions journalists into perfluorinated pollution

- From the Field / Lyon, pollution, Rhône-Alpes, risk, France, health, industry

Closing the Loop or Looping Close By?

Marine Frantz & Gabriel Renault — 2023-02-07T06:00:00Z

Marine Frantz and Gabriel Renault explore the spatial dimension of the circular economy, particularly in regard to waste management issues. Based on research conducted in Lille, France, they outline steps municipalities could take to develop a more local recycling industry.
---- Series: Urban Wastes, Present and Future In the last decade, the notion of a circular economy has been imposed as a major public policy feature at various scales of governance, from European to local. Circular economy

- From the Field / waste management, waste, Lille, France, Hauts-de-France, Northern France

Spaces of Inclusion and Exclusion: Algerians in Paris, France

Elizabeth Nelson — 2022-10-04T05:00:00Z

In the context of contemporary French republicanism, how do Algerians in Paris assert their identities and negotiate spaces of inclusion and exclusion in the public sphere?
The social and spatial integration practices of Algerian immigrants and their descendants living in Paris, France, illustrate local-level integrative practices that often involve feelings of unease related to living and working in an environment where a French/white/secular identity is normative and pervasive. French

- From the Field / Algerians, Paris region, Paris, France, Île-de-France, banlieue, exclusion, inclusion, space, republicanism

Lockdown Experiences of the Youth of the Paris Banlieues

Jeanne Demoulin & Collectif Pop-Part & translated by Oliver Waine — 2022-09-16T05:00:00Z

How did young people from working-class neighborhoods in France experience lockdown during the Covid-19 crisis? A collective survey conducted in different towns in the Paris suburbs highlights the resources they mobilized to cope with coronavirus.
The youth of working-class neighborhoods in France covers a diverse reality, particularly in terms of age, gender, origin, and religion (Kakpo 2006; Marlière 2011; Truong 2015). Nevertheless, they share a common experience of inequality, which the

- From the Field / lockdown, France, Covid-19, Île-de-France, coronavirus, youth, working-class neighborhoods, Paris region

Double Jeopardy for Single-Parent Families: When Housing Conditions and Lockdown Collide

Laure Crepin & Fanny Bugeja-Bloch & translated by Oliver Waine — 2021-11-05T06:00:00Z

Single-parent families are among those households most affected by economic precarity and the current health crisis. In this paper, Laure Crepin and Fanny Bugeja-Bloch show that, in France, housing conditions for these families have been in decline since the early 2000s—long before the Covid lockdowns.
School closures and the shutdown of most shops and businesses, exhortations to work from home, short-time working (which has affected one in three private-sector employees in France), limits on

- From the Field / family, Covid-19, France, precarity, housing, coronavirus, inequalities, lockdown

The Belhoumi Family and the Sociologist

Adèle Momméja & translated by Oliver Waine — 2021-10-15T05:00:00Z

What are the objective and intimate conditions for the social ascension of the children of immigrants? And what roles do family relationships—between parents and children, but also between brothers and sisters—and residential rootedness play in this process? Stéphane Beaud's 2018 book La France des Belhoumi takes the form of a long-term biographical study that explores the differences in social trajectories between genders and generations within a family of Algerian origin.
The French

- Reviews / immigration, Algerians, social trajectories, France, North Africans, Algeria, working classes, education, upbringing, family, youth

Covid-19 in Seine-Saint-Denis (2/2): How the Health System Exacerbates Inequalities

Audrey Mariette & Laure Pitti & translated by Oliver Waine — 2021-09-24T05:00:00Z

Although public health measures and local solidarity have helped mitigate the impact of the coronavirus epidemic, the département of Seine-Saint-Denis, whose health infrastructure has been profoundly weakened by reforms in recent decades, was more severely affected than other parts of France.
The Covid-19 pandemic has exposed and increased the accumulation of social inequalities in Seine-Saint-Denis: it aggravates the already degraded health status of the urbanized and racialized working

- From the Field / Covid-19, coronavirus, pandemic, health, inequalities, socio-spatial inequalities, Seine-Saint-Denis, Paris region, France, Île-de-France

Covid-19 in Seine-Saint-Denis (1/2): When the Pandemic Entrenches Health Inequalities

Audrey Mariette & Laure Pitti & translated by Oliver Waine — 2021-09-17T05:00:00Z

The Seine-Saint-Denis département, to the northeast of Paris, was hit particularly hard by the coronavirus pandemic. In the first of two articles, Audrey Mariette and Laure Pitti present their analysis of the epidemic within the département, highlighting its impact in terms of regional inequalities in health.
From the very beginning of the first lockdown, on March 17, 2020, a number of French media outlets reported on the social inequalities that were emerging in the face of the current

- From the Field / Covid-19, coronavirus, pandemic, health, inequalities, socio-spatial inequalities, Seine-Saint-Denis, Île-de-France, Paris region, France

Policing Social Housing in Paris: The Role of GPIS

Virginie Malochet & translated by Oliver Waine — 2021-05-28T05:00:00Z

Social landlords in France recently obtained the right to organize surveillance and security operations themselves within their properties. Virginie Malochet studies the case of GPIS, a social-housing security force founded in 2004 in Paris, and explores the rationale and nature of this kind of policing, which reflects both the rise of security concerns and the increased involvement of social-housing organizations in the process of ensuring urban security.
In social-housing neighborhoods in

- From the Field / policing, surveillance, social housing, Paris, public housing, profession, housing projects, night, security, public order, France