Metropolitics

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

The politics of municipal mergers (and demergers) in Montreal

Richard Harris — 2013-03-06T05:55:00Z

In the late 1990s, the province of Quebec reacted to metropolitan growth in Montreal by merging the city with 27 of its suburbs, provoking a major debate and, ultimately, a number of demergers. An account written by one of the leading opponents to amalgamation (and ex-mayor of one of the demerged suburbs) discusses the experience and the issues at stake, providing a timely counterpoint to the French debate on “Greater Paris”.
Detailed accounts of municipal amalgamation can be exciting. Who

- Reviews / local government, decentralization, governance, democracy, local finance, local governance, local authorities, intercommunality, Montreal, Canada

The Fantastical Accounts of Grand Paris

Frédéric Léonhardt & translated by Eric Rosencrantz — 2011-09-28T05:00:00Z

After four years of ongoing debate, the French government's Grand Paris scheme has spawned a large-scale mass transit project called the Grand Paris Express. In response to Nicolas Buchoud's article on the subject, Frédéric Léonhardt sounds the financial alarm: the Grand Paris Express, as he sees it, is headed straight to the wall.
Four years after it was announced with great pomp and circumstance, the Grand Paris project remains precisely that: a much-hyped announcement, a grand pipe dream.

- Debates / Île-de-France, Grand Paris, public transportation, local finance, Greater Paris, mass transit

Integrating the train into the city: some thoughts from Spain

Luis Santos y Ganges & translated by Eric Rosencrantz — 2011-09-21T05:00:00Z

Are inner-city railways condemned to form boundaries or barriers within the city? Based on a critique of the situation in Spain, the author suggests a few ways of integrating the railway into the city. His proposals shed some revealing light on the rationale behind efforts to redevelop derelict railway land in France, too, such as the Jardins d'Éole rehabilitation project in Paris.
The railway system is a fully-fledged urban element unto itself, a vast, complex space that forms an integral

- Debates / public transportation, urban planning, Spain, local finance, mass transit