Metropolitics

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

From Scientific Uncertainty to Strategic Ignorance

Gwenola Le Naour & Valentin Thomas & translated by Oliver Waine — 2023-11-24T06:00:00Z

In the absence of data, uncertainties about the health risks of industrial pollution abound, and are used by private firms to assert that their activities are not harmful. In this article, Gwenola Le Naour and Valentin Thomas analyze how this “scientific ignorance” is maintained in the “chemical valley” to the south of Lyon in France.
On May 10, 2022, a public meeting was held in Lyon to present the results of an investigation by France Télévisions journalists into perfluorinated pollution

- From the Field / Lyon, pollution, Rhône-Alpes, risk, France, health, industry

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