Metropolitics

Useful Transgressions: Informality, Power, and Urban Life in Ciudad del Este, Paraguay

Ryan Thomas Devlin — 2026-02-17T06:00:00Z

Urban informality has been theorized as a process operating at the edges and margins under capitalist urbanization. Yet Outlaw Capital argues that the gray spaces of informality are essential to the vitality of cities, leveraged for different ends by elites and the poor alike.
On the Paraguay side of the Paraná River in Ciudad del Este, smugglers load up small boats with things like electronics and cigarettes bound for the opposite shore and eventually for consumers in Brazil, bypassing

- Reviews / informality, Latin America, South America, Global South, Paraguay, Ciudad del Este, neoliberalism, capitalism, urbanism, urbanization, gray spaces, informal urbanism, urban governance

“Land Is the New Sugar”: A Review of Sai Balakrishnan's Shareholder Cities

Thomas Crowley — 2020-12-15T06:00:00Z

Shareholder Cities argues that India's urban corridors are driven by complex negotiations, transformations, and power struggles, often led by the class and caste groups who control agrarian capital in urbanizing regions.
At the start of her book Shareholder Cities, Sai Balakrishnan quickly and convincingly dismisses popular conceptions of present-day India as a collision of superhighways and bullock carts, “modern, urban, Westernized India, and the primitive, rural, superstitious India” (p.

- Reviews / India, real estate, infrastructure, urbanization, Mumbai, power play, rural, agriculture, farming, Global South

Unlikely Inter-Class Cooperation in Urbanizing Rural Colombia

Sebastián F. Villamizar Santamaría — 2020-02-25T06:00:00Z

Sebastián F. Villamizar Santamaría examines a case of rural gentrification outside of Bogotá, Colombia, and shows how long-time peasants and former factory workers and upper-middle-class newcomers collaborate across class lines to manage fundamental resources, such as water, and pressure the state to provide necessary infrastructure and services.
“A new neighbor welcomes you; your neighbor, nature,” claims a billboard on the road between La Calera, a small town, and Bogotá, the Colombian

- From the Field / Colombia, Latin America, Global South, South America, rural, Bogotá, gentrification, rural gentrification, urbanization, suburbanization, rururbanization, water, urban public service, urban services, urban technical networks, utilities, infrastructure, social class, networks, water access

Right(s) to the City in Hanoi

Divya Leducq & translated by Oliver Waine — 2019-10-11T05:00:00Z

Over the past decade, urban change has accelerated and transformed the physical, social and symbolic landscapes of Hanoi. Taking as her starting point a survey in the Vietnamese capital, Divya Leducq identifies three key means in which residents express their right to the city which, in a context of multiple aspirations, reflect a shared desire for high-quality urban planning.
In recent years, urban transformation processes advocated by proponents of “top-down” planning built around

- From the Field / Hanoi, Vietnam, right to the city, inhabitant, civil society, urbanization, urban planning, urban development, social class, globalization, associations

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

Beyond “planetary urbanization”: recasting contemporary urban research

Matthieu Giroud (†) & translated by Oliver Waine — 2015-11-27T05:55:00Z

We were profoundly shocked to learn of the death of Matthieu Giroud, a victim of the attacks of 13 November in Paris. Matthieu was a gifted researcher, and a specialist in the fields of urban transformations and gentrification processes. He was also a communicator of knowledge and a translator of fundamental texts of critical geography. For many of us, he was above all a colleague and a friend, and we are deeply saddened; he has left us far too soon. We have chosen to publish a translation of

- Reviews / urbanization, capitalism, Lefebvre, urban studies, theory, critical urban theory

The Massive Death of China's Urban Villages

Stefan Al — 2015-03-17T14:42:46Z

As expanding Chinese cities engulfed their hinterlands, chengzhoncun—villages within the city—became an affordable residential choice for migrants seeking jobs in burgeoning commercial and industrial centers, especially in the southeast of the country. Dense, chaotic and crowded, they are well-located and well-priced entry points for the workers at the heart of China's astounding growth. Now they are being torn down. Stefan Al argues that this leaves most of their former residents with a bleak

- From the Field / urban planning, urbanization, China, demolition, migrant workers, urban villages, Chinese urban planning

Mongolian (Urban) Homes

Lucile Chombart de Lauwe & Justine Pribetich & translated by Oliver Waine — 2013-04-29T13:05:57Z

The rapid urbanisation that Mongolia has undergone in recent years has changed the way its population lives. These transformations – at the crossroads between traditional culture, Soviet influence and Westernisation – are here portrayed in pictures by Lucile Chombart de Lauwe and in words by Justine Pribetich.
How are we to address these changes and transformations? How are we to understand them? It is by combining two approaches – the first photographic, the second sociological – that we are

- From the Field / housing, urbanization, Mongolia, Ulan Bator, photography, Le Bar Floréal

Suburbanization as a Project

Martin Vanier & translated by Christina Mitrakos — 2011-04-06T06:42:00Z

Experts and policies fail to recognize the contradictions that urban sprawl creates and rarely go beyond directives. Perhaps the right questions aren't being asked. Rather than calling to limit the growth of these territories, thought of as being “without qualities,” Martin Vanier pleads for a suburban project.
For the past forty years, society has become more and more suburbanized. For the past forty years, scientific observers have described and explained the problem of suburbanization.

- Debates / urbanization, urban sprawl, suburbanization, periurban, suburbs