Metropolitics

Marielle Franco and the Fight for the City Statute in Rio de Janeiro

Ty Redden — 2025-02-14T06:00:00Z

Marielle Franco's 2018 assassination roiled social media and sent shockwaves through activist communities. The subsequent investigation revealed that her death was a part of a larger land-grabbing plot enacted by militias and enabled by local politicians. This case study explores the City Statute and its relationship to housing struggles—particularly, how the City Statute has forged a brutal partnership of oppression in Rio de Janeiro's most vulnerable neighborhoods.
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- Essays / Brazil, Rio de Janeiro, militias, favela, informal settlements, local politics, politics, race, gender, activism

Making Routes on the Sea

Natasha N. Iskander — 2023-02-24T06:00:00Z

Natasha N. Iskander reviews Sinews of War and Trade: Shipping and Capitalism in the Arabian Peninsula by Laleh Kalili, which elucidates the labor, power, and politics of international trade routes from the vantage point of the sea.
Ninety percent of the world's goods travel by ship. This is the statistic with which Laleh Khalili opens her magisterial foray into the making of the trade routes that crisscross our oceans and seas. We depend on these routes, and on the tankers and ships that

- Reviews / capitalism, Arabian Peninsula, Middle East, trade, shipping, labor, politics, power play

Nuits Debout Across Greater Paris: The Spread of a Political Innovation

Laurent Beauguitte & Nicolas Lambert & translated by Oliver Waine — 2019-12-20T06:00:00Z

As France experiences strikes and demonstrations in protest against pension reforms, we look back to the spring of 2016 and the Nuit Debout movement that developed almost spontaneously in opposition to a proposed shake‑up of France's labor laws. Although Place de la République in Paris was the nexus of events—and virtually the sole focus of media attention—plenty was going on elsewhere in France, especially in towns and suburbs around Paris, where local offshoots sought to redefine citizen

- From the Field / Nuit debout, mobilization, protest, politics, political participation, engagement, public space, territory, mapping, Paris region, Greater Paris, Paris, France, Île-de-France

Migrants' Occupation of Lycée Jean Quarré: The Refugee Cause and the Cause of a Neighborhood

Isabelle Coutant & translated by Oliver Waine — 2018-11-16T06:00:00Z

The flows of migrants seeking refuge in Europe since the summer of 2015 have led to temporary settlements—legal or otherwise—in various urban locations. What is the impact of their presence on individual neighborhoods and relations with local communities? A study by Isabelle Coutant on the occupation of a disused high school in northeastern Paris sheds light on these impacts and the associated expressions of solidarity, engagement and tension that emerge.
In the summer of 2015, the

- Essays / France, immigration, refugees, public space, working-class neighborhoods, collective action, Paris, proximity, neighborhood, migration, sociabilities, RESF, hospitality, politics, school, migrants, engagement, occupation, local action, asylum

The Making of a Progressive Mayor: James Kenney of Philadelphia

Richardson Dilworth — 2018-10-17T05:00:00Z

Philadelphia's voters elected James Kenney Mayor in 2015 after he had served more than two decades as an at‑large member of the city council. Given Kenney's roots in relatively conservative South Philadelphia, there was little to suggest that he would become a progressive mayor. Yet his personal proclivities—and need for votes as an at‑large councilmember—ultimately led him to construct an electoral coalition that combined Black, White working-class, and liberal groups.
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- Essays / United States, progressive urban politics, Philadelphia, local politics, politics, mayors, progressive mayors

Democratic public spaces in the face of terrorism

Carole Gayet-Viaud & translated by Oliver Waine — 2016-01-29T06:00:00Z

The collective harm inflicted by the terrorist attacks in Paris on Friday 13 November 2015 results in part from the fact that the perpetrators of these attacks took the specific qualities of urban public spaces and turned them against the city: hospitality, anonymity and the presumption of trust in others. All these characteristics form the foundations of civil exchanges in democratic public spaces.
The terrorist acts of which we were victims in Paris on Friday 13 November 2015 caused both

- Essays / public space, democracy, sociabilities, attacks, citizenship, civility, hospitality, trust, mores, politics, street, terrorism