Metropolitics

“Build Canada Homes” Will Fail Without Confronting Anti-Black Racism

Prentiss Dantzler — 2026-04-28T05:00:00Z

Canada's new housing agency risks repeating the same injustices that produced today's uneven housing crisis unless it embeds anti-racist frameworks in its development plans.
When the federal government launched Build Canada Homes (BCH) in the fall of 2025, it promised a bold solution to the housing shortage: build faster, build smarter, and finally close the supply gap. The urgency is clear. According to the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, Canada must double new housing starts from

- Essays / housing, affordable housing, housing policy, racism, Canada, North America, housing crisis, inequalities

Immigration in the French Countryside

Julie Fromentin & translated by Oliver Waine — 2024-02-27T06:00:00Z

What place do immigrants occupy in the French countryside? By examining detailed data from the last five decades, Julie Fromentin shows that while there has been moderate growth in their numbers over this period, there has above all been considerable diversification in terms of their countries of origin and the places in which they settle.
Since the 2000s, French society has been marked by growing social and territorial inequalities (Lambert and Cayouette-Remblière 2021; Fleury et al. 2012).

- From the Field / settlement, inequalities, countryside, immigration, segregation, rural

Digital Technology and the City: New Forms of Urban Segregation in Cape Town?

Julien Migozzi & translated by Oliver Waine — 2023-06-23T05:00:00Z

In the age of platform capitalism, how is digital technology reconfiguring real-estate markets and access to housing? In Cape Town, South Africa, credit scoring—a form of selection based on financial behavior—has become the norm in this regard, contributing to the reappearance of apartheid-era segregation.
“We don't take tenants under 622”: the response from Ganief, a real-estate agent in Cape Town, is swift. In order to obtain a lease in International Housing Solutions' housing portfolio, a

- From the Field / real estate, apartheid, digital city, inequalities, tech sector, Cape Town, financialization, tech economy, technology, Africa, South Africa

Girls-Only Sport

Antoine Bréau & translated by Oliver Waine — 2023-05-26T05:00:00Z

Against a backdrop of gender inequalities at school, an experiment in the field of physical education shows that sports classes in single-sex groups allows students room to maneuver in relation to gender norms, albeit without completely eliminating them.
Internationally, in the face of continuing gender inequalities in schools, co-education in schools is once again being debated. In various countries (Canada, South Korea, Australia, United States), the return of single-sex schools is

- From the Field / Switzerland, sport, inequalities, gender segregation, gender, youth, non-mixity, school

Where are the Women Architects?

Collectif Architoo & translated by Oliver Waine — 2023-03-31T05:00:00Z

At the 2020 edition of the Albums des jeunes architectes et paysagistes (AJAP) competition, organized by the French ministry of culture, only two women were among the architects nominated. The Architoo collective underlines the persistent inequalities that still mark the careers of female architects.
The Albums des Jeunes Architectes et Paysagistes (“Young Architects' and Landscape Architects' Albums”)—or AJAP—is a biennial competition that was relaunched by the French ministry of culture in

- Debates / architecture, gender, feminism, sexism, architect, women, teaching, education, inequalities

Migration and Inequalities: The Importance of Social Class

2021-11-19T06:00:00Z

Since the 1990s, Anne-Catherine Wagner's research has focused on migrants from the most affluent classes in society. In this interview, she returns to the notion of international capital, which she used in her work to shed light on inequalities relating to mobility, particularly in her pioneering survey of “expat” executives in France.
Where does your interest in upper-class migration come from, and what do you see as the contribution made by work on this subject?
When I began my PhD

- Interviews / mobility, expatriation, globalization, social class, upper classes, migrants, immigration, migration, school, education, inequalities

Double Jeopardy for Single-Parent Families: When Housing Conditions and Lockdown Collide

Laure Crepin & Fanny Bugeja-Bloch & translated by Oliver Waine — 2021-11-05T06:00:00Z

Single-parent families are among those households most affected by economic precarity and the current health crisis. In this paper, Laure Crepin and Fanny Bugeja-Bloch show that, in France, housing conditions for these families have been in decline since the early 2000s—long before the Covid lockdowns.
School closures and the shutdown of most shops and businesses, exhortations to work from home, short-time working (which has affected one in three private-sector employees in France), limits on

- From the Field / family, Covid-19, France, precarity, housing, coronavirus, inequalities, lockdown

Infrastructure Financing and the Bonds of Inequality

Rachel Weber — 2021-10-19T05:00:00Z

Rachel Weber reviews historian Destin Jenkins' new book, The Bonds of Inequality: Debt and the Making of the American City, which shows how decisions about infrastructure financing reinforce preexisting racial inequalities and hierarchies.
As the United States awaits a massive federal stimulus in the depths of the 2021 pandemic, it is easy to become spellbound by the possibilities of infrastructure. We think that public things—sewers, schools, roads, public housing—will save us, that they

- Reviews / infrastructure, inequalities, debt, United States, finance, local finance

Covid-19 in Seine-Saint-Denis (2/2): How the Health System Exacerbates Inequalities

Audrey Mariette & Laure Pitti & translated by Oliver Waine — 2021-09-24T05:00:00Z

Although public health measures and local solidarity have helped mitigate the impact of the coronavirus epidemic, the département of Seine-Saint-Denis, whose health infrastructure has been profoundly weakened by reforms in recent decades, was more severely affected than other parts of France.
The Covid-19 pandemic has exposed and increased the accumulation of social inequalities in Seine-Saint-Denis: it aggravates the already degraded health status of the urbanized and racialized working

- From the Field / Covid-19, coronavirus, pandemic, health, inequalities, socio-spatial inequalities, Seine-Saint-Denis, Paris region, France, Île-de-France

Covid-19 in Seine-Saint-Denis (1/2): When the Pandemic Entrenches Health Inequalities

Audrey Mariette & Laure Pitti & translated by Oliver Waine — 2021-09-17T05:00:00Z

The Seine-Saint-Denis département, to the northeast of Paris, was hit particularly hard by the coronavirus pandemic. In the first of two articles, Audrey Mariette and Laure Pitti present their analysis of the epidemic within the département, highlighting its impact in terms of regional inequalities in health.
From the very beginning of the first lockdown, on March 17, 2020, a number of French media outlets reported on the social inequalities that were emerging in the face of the current

- From the Field / Covid-19, coronavirus, pandemic, health, inequalities, socio-spatial inequalities, Seine-Saint-Denis, Île-de-France, Paris region, France