Metropolitics

Using Cross-Class Politics to Challenge Urban Housing Inequality in Islamabad, Pakistan

Hafsah Siddiqui — 2025-04-01T05:00:00Z

When redevelopment schemes target a city's poor for removal to provide opportunities for the privileged, how can poor residents assert a right to their home? With Islamabad as a case study, Hafsah Siddiqui shows how cross-class politics can be the basis for collaborative efforts for the poor to maintain a right to the city.
---- Series: Horizons in the Housing Struggle Islamabad is touted as Pakistan's loveliest city, with lush greenery and clean public spaces. The slogan “Islamabad the

- Essays / Global South, Asia, Pakistan, Islamabad, housing, right to housing, informal housing, urban services, social class, mobilization, urban inequality

Reclaim Value Capture for Equitable Urban Development

Laura Wolf-Powers — 2019-05-28T05:00:00Z

Land-value capture (LVC) mechanisms have become a popular tool for fiscally constrained municipal policymakers. However, there is evidence that many such policies exacerbate existing patterns of urban inequality. Drawing from work with the Pratt Center for Community Development in New York City, Laura Wolf-Powers urges a four-step approach that centers equity and resource redistribution.
The term “value capture” describes policies intended to “secure societal benefits from increases in land

- Debates / Atlanta, New York, urban planning, urban policy, real estate, inequalities, urban inequality, value capture, Georgia

Technocratic Values and Uneven Development in the “Smart City”

Taylor Shelton & Jennifer Clark — 2016-05-10T05:00:00Z

In the US, the idea of “smart cities” is coming to dominate federal government involvement in, and funding for, urban places. But the smart cities approach, which focuses on using digital applications to promote efficiency, competitiveness, and citizen participation in governance, raises questions about technocentrism in the reproduction of inequality and socio-spatial fragmentation.
The idea of “smart cities” is becoming more important to the way future cities are planned, developed and

- Debates / United States, smart city, urban inequality, technocracy, President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology