Metropolitics

On a Road to Nowhere? Military Urbanism and the Architecture of Segregation

Tim Cunningham — 2024-05-03T05:00:00Z

Comparing the experiences of Belfast, Northern Ireland, with the United States, Tim Cunningham shows how physical barriers, especially roads, can precipitate the dismembering of targeted communities from the wider city ecosystem, in turn accentuating patterns of spatial inequality and deprivation.
By the late 1960s, Belfast was experiencing many of the secular challenges that afflicted industrial cities across western Europe and the US at that time (Bryan 2012). Economic crises precipitated

- Essays / Belfast, Northern Ireland, Ireland, United Kingdom, United States, infrastructure, segregation, urban planning, urbanism, military urbanism, socio-spatial inequalities, barriers

Solidarity Economics and Rights to the Contested City in Belfast

Brendan Murtagh — 2018-12-19T06:00:00Z

Is Lefebvre's right to the city capable of extending the abstract meaning of formal “rights” to practical applications? With this question in mind, Brendan Murtagh scrutinizes a self-organization project in a neighborhood on the periphery of post-conflict Belfast in Northern Ireland.
---- Series: 50 ans après : actualités du droit à la ville d'Henri Lefebvre The wave of Occupy protests that followed the financial crisis in 2008 reinvigorated populist claims to the city, specific campaigns

- Essays / United Kingdom, autogestion, Lefebvre, solidarity, right to the city, Belfast, women, periphery, Ireland, Northern Ireland, self-organization, contested city, social economy, surplus, peace

Urban Decline Is Not Natural

Jason Hackworth — 2017-04-11T05:00:00Z

Is urban decline inevitable for cities affected by deindustrialization? While many scholars espouse the idea that it is a normal part of a place's economic life cycle, Jason Hackworth argues that urban decline is not natural, but rather produced, typically by factors that have little to do with economics and everything to do with social and political—and often racial—conflict.
---- Series: Shrinking Cities The fate of formerly industrial cities in the Global North—places like Detroit,

- Essays / racism, Rust Belt, Montreal, race, Detroit, urban decay, shrinking cities, urban decline, social conflict, Global North, Liverpool, Leipzig, Belfast, Duluth, Cleveland, Buffalo