Metropolitics

On the Land Question in India: The Case of Sriperumbudur Industrial Region in Peri-Urban Chennai

V. Gajendran — 2025-12-23T06:00:00Z

Amidst intense demand for land, farmers near Chennai, India face dispossession by neglect.
---- Series: Provincializing the “Real-Estate Turn” My essay begins with a puzzle. The past two decades have been called the decades of intense land conflicts in India. There has been an outpouring of media and academic scholarship on agrarian landowners resisting and protesting the acquisition of their land for urban and infrastructure projects. In this context of land dispossession and opposition to

- Essays / India, Global South, land, land use, agriculture, farming, real estate, real-estate turn, periurban, Chennai

Large-Scale Farming in the Face of Competing Land Uses in Abidjan District, Côte d'Ivoire

Adjoba Marthe Koffi-Didia & translated by Oliver Waine — 2025-03-21T06:00:00Z

To the west of Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire's largest city, large farming operations—owned by multinational companies geared toward export markets—are today facing an obstacle posed by Abidjan's growing urban sprawl and the rise of land claims among Indigenous communities whose customary rights are threatened.
Songon Subprefecture is located to the west of the Abidjan metropolitan area, 23 km (14 miles) from Abidjan's central business district (Le Plateau), and covers an area of 621.71 km² (240.04

- From the Field / land rights, Côte d'Ivoire, Abidjan, Global South, agriculture, farming, land use, Africa, customary law, access to land, West Africa

New York City's Descent into Neoliberal Policy: A Review of Benjamin Holtzman's The Long Crisis

John Krinsky — 2022-07-19T05:00:00Z

Benjamin Holtzman's The Long Crisis tells the story of New York's prolonged descent into neoliberal policy. For those trying to innovate community-based solutions to the shredding of welfare-state programs, it is a cautionary tale of cooptation and twisted intentions.
Benjamin Holtzman's The Long Crisis is a sharp account of New York City's turn toward neoliberal governance over the last 50 years. In six substantive, jargon-free chapters covering low-income housing, middle-class rental

- Reviews / housing, neoliberalism, land use, real estate, urban renewal, New York

What Is Land?

Sai Balakrishnan & Mattijs van Maasakkers — 2021-06-01T05:00:00Z

Market-oriented land-use instruments presume that is possible to delink development or pollution rights from a particular plot of land, transfer these rights across space, and assemble them at some other location. When the social, ecological, and economic value of land is separated from its location, these processes can produce idiosyncratic planning outcomes, and a priori narrow understandings of land, which run counter to the planning ethic of getting to know a site's identity and of keeping

- Essays / land, land use, land-use planning, property rights, ecosystem services, development rights

Fighting for Housing Justice: An Interview with Two Youth Organizers in Curtis Bay, Baltimore

Nicole Fabricant & Carlos Sanchez & Terriq Thompson — 2021-03-16T06:00:00Z

Two Baltimore youth organizers discuss the importance of community land trusts, for housing and beyond.
---- Series: Contemporary Housing Struggles: Crises, Activism, and Critical Research Free Your Voice began as an informal after-school program inside Baltimore's Benjamin Franklin High School. It has evolved into a powerful youth-led movement to end incineration, build community land trusts, and push for zero waste and just transition in Baltimore.
The group organized between 2012 and

- Interviews / community land trusts, community organizing, activism, mobilization, youth, youth organizing, housing, affordable housing, housing justice, Baltimore, United States, Maryland, land use, land rights

Can the Commons Pave the Way to Greater Land Security?

Irène Salenson & Claire Simonneau & translated by Oliver Waine — 2018-06-22T05:00:00Z

Experiences of collective forms of ownership, based on the concept of the commons, have flourished throughout the world. Irène Salenson and Claire Simonneau ask what opportunities they offer for reducing the precarity of the most disadvantaged city dwellers in the Global South.
---- Series: Land Rights in the Urban Global South. Regularization and Land-Ownership Policies in Low-Income Neighbourhoods A large proportion of urbanites in the Global South live in informal neighbourhoods – around a

- Debates / property, land, Africa, Global South, community land trusts, Latin America, land tenure, land rights, property ownership, land use, land insecurity, land regularization, commons, land commons, urban land commons

Land Insecurity in Khartoum: When Land Titles Fail to Protect Against Public Predation

Alice Franck & translated by Oliver Waine — 2018-06-06T05:00:00Z

The unstable economic and political context in Sudan has encouraged people to invest massively in land in urban areas. In Khartoum, the land rush concerns everyone, from the elite to the working classes – and, above all, the authorities, who maintain a stranglehold over these precious assets. Title deeds are regularly disputed, suggesting that land insecurity is on the increase.
---- Series: Land Rights in the Global South. Regularization and Land-Ownership Policies in Low-Income

- From the Field / property, land, Africa, Global South, insecurity, land tenure, land rights, land titles, property rights, property titles, property tenure, Khartoum, land titling, property ownership, public land, land use, title deeds, land insecurity, Sudan

Land Rights in the Urban Global South

Armelle Choplin & Éric Denis (†) & translated by Oliver Waine — 2018-05-18T05:00:00Z

In choosing to focus on the Global South, Metropolitics turns its attention to a key aspect of contemporary cities: land and land rights. By shedding light on situations in Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Arab world, this series analyses land-rights strategies deployed by residents of low-income neighbourhoods to access land, and the way these populations benefit – or not – from land reform and from land-titling policies.
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Despite a slight slowdown

- Series / land, Global South, land tenure, land rights, land titles, land titling, land use

Urban Desires and Lust for Land

Éric Denis (†) & translated by Oliver Waine — 2018-04-20T05:00:00Z

In the Global South, vast swathes of periurban and agricultural land are being sold off and converted into financial windfalls. Éric Denis shows that the working classes also play a role in this commodification of land, giving rise to new means of producing the city. Moreover, this lust for land reveals these populations' desire to see the city expand and reach their doorstep.
---- Series: Land Rights in the Urban Global South. Regularization and Land-Ownership Policies in Low-Income

- From the Field / urban planning, urbanization, urban sprawl, periurban, land, agriculture, farming, Global South, working classes, India, land rights, land titles, land titling, production of the city, land use, commodification

Where Does Public Land Come From? Municipalization and Privatization Debates

Oksana Mironova & Samuel Stein — 2018-03-06T06:00:00Z

This article illuminates contemporary land-use and disposition struggles in New York City by tracing the history of land's passage between the private and public realms. The authors contend that government and community-controlled nonprofit organizations should govern the disposition of the city's remaining public land supply, deliberately deploying this scarce resource to promote the well-being of the people and neighborhoods most at risk in a speculation-fueled real-estate environment.
For

- Debates / land, New York, privatization, community land trusts, tax-lien sales, public land, municipalization, land use