Metropolitics

Finding the People's City

Benjamin Holtzman — 2024-03-26T06:00:00Z

In A People's Guide to New York City, Carolina Bank Muñoz, Penny Lewis and Emily Tumpson Molina provide an engaging exploration into sites throughout the city. The authors expose complicated histories, of both iconic and lesser-known sites, that highlight change from below while also demonstrating how powerful institutions have shaped New York in the face of grassroots resistance.
There is no shortage of guidebooks to New York City. There are guides designed to assist visitors in exploring

- Reviews / New York, tourism, urban tourism, history, urban history, resistance, power play, protest, community

New Tourism Geographies and the Politics of Tourist Taxation

Elizabeth Strom — 2022-06-07T05:00:00Z

The changing geography of urban tourism has led to new forms of political contestation. How hotel-tax revenues are spent—where and for whom—is a central issue. Elizabeth Strom argues that political mobilization can encourage elected officials and the tourism industry to use tax revenues to improve cities for residents, not just tourists.
Two decades ago, Dennis Judd wrote with some concern about the construction of “tourist bubbles”—the downtown enclaves found in US cities that included some

- Essays / tourism, urban tourism, taxation, hotel tax, protest, mobilization, United States

Birdwatching in the City: A Case for Multispecies Tourism

Elizabeth Cherry & August Davidson-Onsgard & Lisa Jean Moore — 2018-01-16T06:00:00Z

This essay analyzes the growth of urban avitourism—wildlife tourism focused on birds—as an activity that drives humans and revenue to urban centers. Two sociologists and a birder/wildlife photographer consider the implications of heightened human awareness of nature in cities.
Birds as urban celebrities
In early December of 2015, a painted bunting was sighted in Brooklyn's Prospect Park. Birders from all over the New York metropolitan area learned of the bird's arrival through their “rare

- Essays / parks, nature, New York, tourism, wildlife, urban tourism, avitourism, urban wildlife, migratory birds, bird habitats, birds, birding, birdwatching, wildlife tourism, ecotourism, urban parks