Metropolitics

The Cities We're Losing—The Cities We Need

Ahmed Allahwala — 2026-03-17T06:00:00Z

Although there is no shortage of work on gentrification, it rarely takes as its object of inquiry those “ordinary” places—diners, corner stores—that are lost. Yet, in The Cities We Need, Gabrielle Bendiner-Viani shows the importance of understanding how their loss impacts not only how we understand neighborhoods, but how we understand ourselves.
The Cities We Need explores what we lose when the spaces that anchor life in urban communities disappear. In this beautiful book, visual artist and

- Reviews / gentrification, nostalgia, place, placemaking, displacement, Brooklyn, New York, Oakland, everyday spaces

The House is Ours: How Moms 4 Housing Challenged the Private-Property Paradigm

Lauren Everett — 2020-10-06T05:00:00Z

In the midst of a global housing affordability crisis that has been heightened by the Covid‑19 pandemic, it is time to reconsider how the right to profit from property ownership is privileged in policy, funding, and ideology in the United States. Oakland-based Moms 4 Housing's bold direct action presented a concrete challenge to the status quo.
On November 18, 2019, in west Oakland, California, Dominique Walker and Sameerah Karim started moving their families into the vacant three-bedroom

- Essays / housing, affordable housing, community land trusts, property ownership, property, homeownership, private property, real estate, speculation, California, United States, Oakland

Disarm the Police

Gregory Smithsimon — 2015-09-29T05:00:00Z

In the current political debates about discriminatory policing, there has been a lack of serious discussion of disarmament. Gregory Smithsimon argues that disarming the police is not only an obvious way to avoid more deaths at the hands of officers, but also a means towards cultivating more respectful relationships between the police and communities of color.
Responding to protests against repeated, blatant police abuse, politicians have met demands for meaningful change with an array of

- Debates / inequalities, police, discrimination, violence, brutality, disarmament, civil rights, police violence, Ferguson, Missouri, New York, Oakland, Baltimore, Featured