Metropolitics

A Masterpiece in Peril: The Garden Suburb of La Butte-Rouge

Renaud Epstein & translated by Oliver Waine — 2026-02-24T06:00:00Z

La Butte-Rouge, built in the mid-20th century in Paris's southern suburbs, is the archetypal example of a French cité-jardin. In a recent work retracing its history, Élise Guillerm highlights the urban and architectural qualities of this eco-neighborhood before its time, whose very existence is now threatened by an urban renewal project.
Analysis of urban policies, and particularly urban renewal policies, dispels the idea that historical knowledge can prevent the repetition of past mistakes.

- Reviews / urban planning, cité-jardin, HLM, urban heritage, heritage, Châtenay-Malabry, Hauts-de-Seine, Île-de-France, social housing, sustainable development, garden city, garden suburb, France, Paris region, Paris, history, urban history, environment, urban renewal, landscape

A Crisis of Habitation in LA's Last Remaining Wetland

Deike Peters & Sam Lutzker — 2025-03-18T06:00:00Z

As housing crises become increasingly entangled with environmental crises, the question of just outcomes requires different ways of thinking. In their exploration of the politics of Los Angeles' Ballona Wetlands, Deike Peters and Sam Lutzker suggest the concept of multispecies justice may offer a pathway for negotiating these conflicts.
The Ballona Wetlands Ecological Reserve lies just south of famous Venice Beach in Los Angeles. Its 600 acres (240 ha) are all that remains of the once mighty

- From the Field / environmental justice, environment, ecology, urban ecology, housing crisis, housing, housing justice, habitat, wetlands, multispecies justice, United States, California, Los Angeles

The Banality of Innovation: Mythic Discourse and the Long Road to Shore Power in New York City

Iain McDavid — 2024-12-03T06:00:00Z

If the New York City Economic Development Corporation is committed to the city's “green transformation, ” then why is it dragging its feet to curb cruise-ship pollution at city ports? Iain McDavid explains how clean air doesn't align with EDC's primary concern of encouraging investment.
By allowing ships to plug into the electrical grid while at berth, shore power installations can drastically reduce carbon emissions and harmful pollutants produced by a vessel's auxiliary engines (CLIA 2024;

- Debates / cruise ships, pollution, air quality, Brooklyn, New York, United States, energy, environmental justice, environment, shore power

Writing the Intellectual History of Bioregionalism

Antoine Dubiau & translated by Oliver Waine — 2023-12-22T06:00:00Z

As bioregionalist ideas spread in France, their history remains partly unwritten. This environmental movement, which originated in the United States, is characterized by a diversity of approaches that are perhaps mutually incompatible.
Among the ecological utopias that emerged in the 1970s, bioregionalism long remained exclusively North American. After two decades of widespread international dissemination, the concept is only just beginning to make its mark in France. The promotion of

- Debates / bioregion, Italy, ecology, environment, United States

The Emergence of Ecological Thinking in the City

Charles-François Mathis & translated by Oliver Waine — 2022-09-27T05:00:00Z

What place does ecological thinking have in the field of urban planning? In describing the use of vegetation in cities since the 19th century, Charles-François Mathis examines the historical evolution of planning choices and the foundations of a new “ecological urbanism.”
Wherever I may go today, if the opportunity arises, if I have an hour to spare in an unknown city, a complacent drift takes me along the streets, towards these placid chlorophyllous enclaves encircled nowadays by the

- Essays / landscape, nature, gardens, ecology, parks, urban development, urban planning, environment, history

The Slow Violence of Planned Obsolescence

Elise Mason — 2022-09-20T05:00:00Z

Elise Mason critiques planned obsolescence as a form of slow violence. She argues for an ethic of care, rooted in Black feminist thinking and writing, to transform waste and our relationship to it.
---- Series: Urban Wastes, Present and Future “We are all entangled. And the fact that entanglement is a slow death doesn't make it any better; it in fact makes it more gruesome. And I mourn the parts of you that lost feeling today” (Gumbs 2020, pp. 103–104).
I have spent my adult life amid the

- Debates / waste, waste management, environment, consumerism, consumer goods, planned obsolescence, feminism, Black feminism, care ethics, ecology

Urban Wastes, Present and Future

Lily Baum Pollans — 2022-04-29T05:00:00Z

Lily Pollans guest-edits this series for Metropolitics that focuses on the various ways in which waste is part of the urban environment—how waste produces urban space, the local management of waste, its environmental impacts, and the forms of social justice it gives rise to.
---- ▼ Jump to the list of articles in this series ▼ All cities are made, one way or another, from waste. Some cities, like the coastal cities of the northeastern United States, are literally constructed on land conjured

- Series / waste, waste management, space, production of the city, environment

Aéroports de Paris: A Strategic Lever for the French State?

Nathalie Roseau & translated by Oliver Waine — 2021-01-26T06:00:00Z

Following growing controversy surrounding the French government's plans to privatize the Aéroports de Paris (ADP) group, Nathalie Roseau looks back at the history of this organization and questions the wisdom of such a reform.
On April 11, 2019, France's lower house of parliament, the Assemblée Nationale (National Assembly) approved a law known as PACTE (Plan d'Action pour la Croissance et la Transformation des Entreprises – Action Plan for Growth and Transformation of Enterprises), paving

- Debates / climate change, Greater Paris, airport, sustainable development, Île-de-France, ADP, France, globalization, Paris region, Paris, transport, transport policy, environment, environmental protection, economic development, territorial development, privatization

Sentinel Territories: A New Concept for Looking at Environmental Change

2020-05-08T05:00:00Z

In this essay, the authors develop the concept of “sentinel territories,” or environments where humans can perceive early warning signs of environmental change. Sentinel territories can illuminate common features of spaces where environmental issues emerge and be used as a tool to advance environmental policies.
This paper attempts to broaden the notion of “sentinel devices,” borrowed from science and technology studies (STS) scholars, to develop the concept of “sentinel territories.”

- Essays / sentinel, sentinel territories, environment, climate change, environmental change, territory, risk, preparedness, mitigation

Aubervilliers: Portrait of a Working-Class Suburb

Anaïs Albert & translated by Oliver Waine — 2020-02-21T06:00:00Z

The republication of an early-20th‑century realist novel set in the northern Paris suburb of Aubervilliers brings the industrial towns of the pre-war era back to life—their smells, their health risks, but above all the lives of their inhabitants—offering today's readers a veritable ethnographic immersion into this working-class town.
Although today largely forgotten, except by historians of the working classes, Léon Bonneff was a major figure of social investigation in the early 20th century.

- Reviews / Aubervilliers, Paris, Greater Paris, France, Île-de-France, Paris region, industry, suburbs, banlieue, pollution, health, work, working classes, history, urban history, literature, environment, workers, blue-collar workers, manual workers