Metropolitics

The Black Radical Imagination in a Rural Forgotten Space

Brad Stephens & Chris Stephenson & Max O. Stephenson Jr. — 2024-01-16T06:00:00Z

How does the Black Radical imagination manifest in “forgotten places” amid shifting populations? Brad Stephens, Chris Stephenson, and Max Stephenson, Jr., attend to this question by considering the role of “communitas” in the work of St. Paul's College 4 Life, a group working to reimagine the possibilities for a shuttered historically Black college in rural Lawrenceville, Virginia.
---- Series: Black Power and Black Self-Determination in a New Time and New Spaces On the surface,

- From the Field / Black Power, Black politics, university, space, race, Blackness, United States, Virginia

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

Urban Wastes, Present and Future

Lily Baum Pollans — 2022-04-29T05:00:00Z

Lily Pollans guest-edits this series for Metropolitics that focuses on the various ways in which waste is part of the urban environment—how waste produces urban space, the local management of waste, its environmental impacts, and the forms of social justice it gives rise to.
---- ▼ Jump to the list of articles in this series ▼ All cities are made, one way or another, from waste. Some cities, like the coastal cities of the northeastern United States, are literally constructed on land conjured

- Series / waste, waste management, space, production of the city, environment

Dwelling—Living—Waiting: Transformations of a Refugee Reception Camp in Germany

Nina Riewe — 2017-11-21T06:00:00Z

In wealthy German cities, which have received tens of thousands of refugees from the Middle East and Northern Africa in recent years, officials have scrambled to provide adequate physical accommodation. In this paper, Nina Riewe explores refugees' negotiation of space in an initial reception camp in Hamburg. Considered under law to be “dwelling” but not actually “living” there, they continually struggle to maintain privacy, sociability, and physical and psychological comfort in a place

- From the Field / camps, refugees, Germany, migration, space, migrants, refugee camps, state of exception, zones of exception, Agamben, Hamburg, asylum

Remaking Black Political Spaces for Black Liberation

Akira Drake Rodriguez — 2016-12-01T06:00:00Z

What are the political implications of the redistribution of the Black population in the US? Akira Drake Rodriguez looks back at the long-running strategies of Black political mobilization and the political economic contexts that have hindered them. She calls for moving beyond place-based electoral strategies with a full embrace of the Movement for Black Lives policy platform.
Following a politically volatile and racially charged election, this moment marks a particularly precarious state for

- Essays / gentrification, elections, race, space, Blackness, electoral geography, Black politics, political geography

The Tokyo skyline, or the hidden order behind opportunistic construction

Raphaël Languillon-Aussel & translated by Oliver Waine — 2015-11-13T06:00:00Z

Behind the apparent disorder, Tokyo's current skyline in fact complies with complex rules. While the first towers in Tokyo appeared in the late 1960s, the “verticalization” of the city has in reality taken place over two distinct periods: the 1980s – the era of the construction of the global city – and the 2000s – Tokyo's renaissance. Since the 2000s, the skyline has tended to respect certain spatial codes, specific to the Japanese context, against a backdrop of dynamic tension between the

- Essays / architecture, culture, skyline, towers, development, Tokyo, Japan, space, verticality