Metropolitics

Useful Transgressions: Informality, Power, and Urban Life in Ciudad del Este, Paraguay

Ryan Thomas Devlin — 2026-02-17T06:00:00Z

Urban informality has been theorized as a process operating at the edges and margins under capitalist urbanization. Yet Outlaw Capital argues that the gray spaces of informality are essential to the vitality of cities, leveraged for different ends by elites and the poor alike.
On the Paraguay side of the Paraná River in Ciudad del Este, smugglers load up small boats with things like electronics and cigarettes bound for the opposite shore and eventually for consumers in Brazil, bypassing

- Reviews / informality, Latin America, South America, Global South, Paraguay, Ciudad del Este, neoliberalism, capitalism, urbanism, urbanization, gray spaces, informal urbanism, urban governance

Making Routes on the Sea

Natasha N. Iskander — 2023-02-24T06:00:00Z

Natasha N. Iskander reviews Sinews of War and Trade: Shipping and Capitalism in the Arabian Peninsula by Laleh Kalili, which elucidates the labor, power, and politics of international trade routes from the vantage point of the sea.
Ninety percent of the world's goods travel by ship. This is the statistic with which Laleh Khalili opens her magisterial foray into the making of the trade routes that crisscross our oceans and seas. We depend on these routes, and on the tankers and ships that

- Reviews / capitalism, Arabian Peninsula, Middle East, trade, shipping, labor, politics, power play

Black Homeownership Under Racial Capitalism: A Review of Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor's Race for Profit

Hilary Botein — 2019-12-10T06:00:00Z

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor's Race for Profit examines the urban homeownership programs of the 1960s and 1970s, and shows how they exploited rather than enriched black homeowners and communities, and set the stage for the retreat from racial liberalism.
In Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real-Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor explores black urban homeownership in the 1960s and 1970s, with a focus on the public–private partnerships that facilitated

- Reviews / race, homeownership, property ownership, capitalism, United States, Department of Housing and Urban Development, Black women

Urban Renewal in the USA: A Neoliberal Policy?

Thomas Kirszbaum & translated by Oliver Waine — 2019-05-03T05:00:00Z

By allowing demolitions and evictions in well-located working-class neighborhoods, urban renewal is sometimes described as a neoliberal policy, favorable to land and property investors. But this interpretation, founded on the trauma of postwar urban policies, only tells part of the story when it comes to understanding contemporary urban renewal in the United States.
The policy of urban renewal implemented in the United States in the 1950s and 1960s came to symbolize the collusion of local

- Essays / working-class neighborhoods, working classes, urban renewal, United States, urban policy, capitalism, neoliberalism, demolition, Department of Housing and Urban Development, HOPE VI program

Beyond “planetary urbanization”: recasting contemporary urban research

Matthieu Giroud (†) & translated by Oliver Waine — 2015-11-27T05:55:00Z

We were profoundly shocked to learn of the death of Matthieu Giroud, a victim of the attacks of 13 November in Paris. Matthieu was a gifted researcher, and a specialist in the fields of urban transformations and gentrification processes. He was also a communicator of knowledge and a translator of fundamental texts of critical geography. For many of us, he was above all a colleague and a friend, and we are deeply saddened; he has left us far too soon. We have chosen to publish a translation of

- Reviews / urbanization, capitalism, Lefebvre, urban studies, theory, critical urban theory

Haussmann: from modernity to revolution

Jean-Marie Huriot & translated by Oliver Waine — 2013-05-15T08:32:12Z

Jean-Marie Huriot shows how the latest work by geographer David Harvey to be translated into French sheds new light on the major changes that affected Paris from 1848 to 1871. Through a process of creative destruction, “Haussmannisation” brought with it modernity, but also set the stage for the rise of the Paris Commune.
In the tumultuous period of Paris's history that extends from the barricades of 1848 to the bloody repression of the Commune in 1871, profound transformations occurred that

- Reviews / capitalism, urban history, social movement, Paris, Haussmann, Marxism

Towers of Power

Jean-Marie Huriot & translated by Oliver Waine — 2012-01-25T06:00:00Z

Following on from Manuel Appert's contribution, Jean-Marie Huriot discusses what is at stake in the skyscraper race. He believes the arguments presented in favour of building ever higher towers are biased, or even erroneous, and are a smokescreen for the true reason – something of an open secret – namely their role as a symbol of wealth and economic and financial power in the competitive context of declining global neocapitalism.
---- Series: The Resurgence of Towers in European Cities In

- Debates / architecture, capitalism, skyscrapers, towers, high-rise

For a Critique of the Liberal Foundations of American Cities

David Imbroscio — 2011-06-29T05:04:00Z

Profoundly touched by the consequences of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, David Imbroscio seeks concrete political solutions to transform American cities. In order to do so, he calls for an epistemological repositioning that necessitates abandoning the dominant philosophical foundations of liberalism in the United States, and this as much by academia as by the political Left. This critical and pragmatic project is developed in a recent book, Urban America Reconsidered, which he discusses here.

- Debates / governance, inequalities, urban critique, capitalism, liberalism