Metropolitics

Defunding Social Services

Brenden Beck — 2025-07-15T05:00:00Z

Cities around the United States are bracing for federal funding cuts to social services. Yet, as Brenden Beck explains, cities have long been cutting social-service spending while increasing police spending, even as crimes rates have fallen.
When Dallas wrote its city budget last year, something was missing. The city had allocated zero dollars to its Skillman Southwestern library, effectively closing the branch. Seattle joined Dallas in slashing social services later in the year when it

- Debates / budget cuts, public services, social services, municipal budgets, police, United States

Discrimination and Everyday Politicization in Working-Class Neighborhoods in France

Marion Carrel & translated by Oliver Waine — 2024-10-08T05:00:00Z

Drawing on a collective study, Marion Carrel highlights how experiences of discrimination structure people's relationship with politics in working-class neighborhoods. The everyday politicization resulting from these experiences, stifled by institutions, is key to explaining the unrest that followed the death of Nahel Merzouk in the Parisian suburb of Nanterre on June 27, 2023.
On June 27, 2023, in Nanterre, a western suburb of Paris, a youngster aged 17, Nahel Merzouk, was killed at

- Debates / discrimination, émeutes, politisation, police, quartiers populaires

Breaking Down the NYPD: How Reconsidering Political District Maps Could Open New Doors to Police Accountability

Toby Irving — 2024-02-16T04:09:00Z

Efforts to stem the power of the NYPD and the violence such power facilitates require accountability to the people of New York City. Yet such accountability is hindered by uneven distributions of power across fragmented political geographies and those closest to their communities—city council members—often have multiple police precincts with jurisdiction over their districts. In this essay, Toby Irving outlines a pathway to greater accountability through redistricting city council seats to

- Essays / New York, police violence, police accountability, police, United States, fragmentation, local governance, local government, local politics

When Does Police Violence Cause Urban Unrest?

Cathy Lisa Schneider — 2017-11-14T06:00:00Z

In the summer of 2014, police killed Michael Brown in Ferguson and Eric Garner in New York. Both men were black and unarmed. Both their deaths sparked national outrage. And both cases were turned over to a grand jury whose members failed to indict. But while the first case provoked weeks of violent police–community confrontation, the second initiated constructive political action. Drawing on interviews with people close to both men, Cathy Schneider argues that the difference amounts to the

- Debates / racism, United States, police, New York, violence, brutality, police violence, urban unrest, riots, police accountability, St. Louis, Ferguson, Missouri

Childhood Spent Waiting at the Gate

Adeline Perrot & translated by Oliver Waine — 2016-04-01T05:00:00Z

The recent opening of a holding area for “unaccompanied foreign minors” at Paris Charles de Gaulle airport reflects a change in French policy regarding the detention of children at border entry points. Adeline Perrot shows that, in reality, providing care for young people in confinement straddles a fine line between protecting minors in danger and policing migratory movements.
---- Series: Children in the City In July 2011, a closed area for the detention of unaccompanied foreign minors was

- From the Field / architecture, France, Île-de-France, Paris region, Paris, police, children, law, migration, borders, detention centres, airport, hospitality, education, childhood in danger, migratory policy, NGOs, social work

Impossible Compliance: Policing as Violent Struggle over Bodies and Urban Space

Michelle Billies — 2016-03-01T06:00:00Z

The absence of charges brought in the case of a police murder of a Black lesbian in front of the homeless shelter where she lived reveals the impossibility of compliance with police authority for those already made criminal by race, disability, class, gender, and sexuality.
Yvonne McNeil, a 57-year-old Black lesbian who used a cane for walking, was shot to death by police in front of the New York City homeless shelter where she was living in 2011. Short news reports of the incident offer

- Debates / public space, gender, police, race, homelessness, brutality, Blackness, queer

A Geography of Revolt in Alexandria, Egypt's Second Capital

Youssef El Chazli — 2016-02-23T06:00:00Z

How does the layout of a city affect how protest unfolds? How does urban space constrain and enable the choices protesters have both physically and symbolically? How does protest differ from one city to another? Youssef El Chazli takes us inside Alexandria's revolt in January 2011 and contrasts it to the better-known story of the anti-Mubarak uprising of 25 January 2011 in Cairo, showing us the ways in which the protest in Egypt's “second capital” ballooned because of the geographically

- From the Field / public space, collective action, demonstrations, social movement, police, urban geography, protest, Arab Spring, Egypt, geography, Alexandria

Disarm the Police

Gregory Smithsimon — 2015-09-29T05:00:00Z

In the current political debates about discriminatory policing, there has been a lack of serious discussion of disarmament. Gregory Smithsimon argues that disarming the police is not only an obvious way to avoid more deaths at the hands of officers, but also a means towards cultivating more respectful relationships between the police and communities of color.
Responding to protests against repeated, blatant police abuse, politicians have met demands for meaningful change with an array of

- Debates / inequalities, police, discrimination, violence, brutality, disarmament, civil rights, police violence, Ferguson, Missouri, New York, Oakland, Baltimore, Featured

Hardening Racial Lines in Public Space

Naomi Adiv — 2015-07-07T05:00:00Z

On Friday, June 5, Black teenagers in McKinney, Texas, were violently subdued by a police officer following a conflict that broke out at a community swimming pool—a place at which their presence provoked anxiety and then panic. Many interpretations of the officer's behavior have turned on the question of who broke what rules, but geographer Naomi Adiv argues that the debate has deeper spatial—and racial—implications.
In the last few weeks, there has been much noise followed by much quiet

- Debates / public space, racism, United States, police, race, Texas, swimming pool, brutality, police violence

Identity checks and the law

Nathalie Ferré & translated by Oliver Waine — 2013-04-24T10:04:47Z

In France, the issue of identity checks is at the heart of the thorny debate on how to ensure better relations between the police and the public. Against a backdrop of discussions on whether to issue “ID check receipts”, reintroduce uniform numbers or establish a new code of ethics, Nathalie Ferré here provides an overview of the current legal framework.
The existence of proper legislation regarding identity checks in France is relatively recent. Until the 1980s, the national police acted on

- Debates / public space, democracy, police, policing, public order, law, identity checks