Metropolitics

Rio de Janeiro: Storms, Militia, and Urban Development

Leandro Benmergui & Rafael Soares Gonçalves & translated by Oliver Waine — 2019-11-08T06:00:00Z

The dramatic consequences of storms at the beginning of 2019 in a favela in Rio de Janeiro reveal the ongoing evolution of informal urbanization in the city. The development of militias, as a result of security problems and the withdrawal of public authorities in these neighborhoods, also affects building construction. Leandro Benmergui and Rafael Soares Gonçalves highlight the dangers of these developments.
At the beginning of 2019, in Rio de Janeiro, two violent storms caused a significant

- From the Field / Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, favela, militias, informal housing, vulnerable housing, informality, precarity, catastrophe, disaster, Latin America, safety

Insecure Lives Under Extreme Climate Conditions: Insights from a Fishing Hamlet in Tamil Nadu, India

Devendraraj Madhanagopal — 2018-04-17T05:00:00Z

In recent years, climate change–induced weather events have exacerbated poverty and insecurity in small fishing villages on the southeastern coastline of India. Author Devendraraj Madhanagopal documents the difficult choices that vulnerable fishermen must make between safety and livelihood, and urges action.
---- Series: Climate Change and Social Change Rainwater and seawater surrounded the whole village, and we were disconnected from the external world for a few days.
[15 March 2016,

- From the Field / safety, poverty, India, climate change, vulnerability, insecurity, precarity, Tamil Nadu, fishing, social change

The Wrecker's Pick. The Rationales and Hidden Agendas of Urban Renewal in the 19th and 20th Centuries

Alain Faure & translated by Christina Mitrakos — 2016-06-07T05:00:00Z

Alain Faure, a scholar of the social history of cities, puts urban renewal into perspective. He questions the concerns with security, the obsession with hygiene, the legal rationales, and the speculative plans of this era. His analysis sheds light on the history of the planning and construction of settlements for “rich and financially solvent clients—the only ones, in fact, who ever mattered for real-estate capitalism.” He reminds us that urban renewal is a history of power relations between

- Essays / France, gentrification, housing, urban renewal, safety, Paris, land, Haussmann, hygienism, settlement, population, public works

Regulating public spaces: the ambiguous role played by new professions

Jacques de Maillard & translated by Oliver Waine — 2013-04-17T13:52:12Z

Despite a hiatus in the debate on community policing in France, the “new professions” involved in regulating public order have been the subject of renewed interest of late. Jacques de Maillard has studied the work of correspondants de nuit (“night-time mediators”) in Paris, and here describes how an alternative – a compromise between repression and abandonment – has been sought.
In the early 1990s, initiatives to manage conflict in public places, on public transport and in social-housing

- From the Field / public space, safety, Paris, proximity, profession, policing, security, public order

Drug-consumption rooms in the city?

Laurent El Ghozi & Nadine Roudil & translated by Oliver Waine — 2011-05-04T05:20:00Z

Following a number of experiments in Geneva and Bilbao, the question of whether supervised injection centres should be opened in France recently shook the nation's political scene, giving rise to lively discussions on the subject. In April 2010, the association Élus, Santé Publique et Territoires (literally "Elected Representatives, Public Health and Territories") initiated a public symposium with the aim of encouraging debate on this issue.
Could you give us a brief outline of the history

- Interviews / public space, health, drugs, safety, Spain, Genève, Bilbao, Switzerland