Metropolitics

Unleashing Finance Capitalism in the City: An Interview with Isaac Rose, Author of The Rentier City

Jonathan Silver & Isaac Rose — 2025-06-24T05:00:00Z

Jonathan Silver interviews author and tenant organizer Isaac Rose about his book on housing financialization in Manchester, The Rentier City. They discuss the motivations for writing the book, how theory informs practice, and the influences that guided Rose as he wrote.
Isaac Rose, a tenant-union organizer in Manchester, recently launched a new book with Repeater, The Rentier City: Manchester and the Making of the Neoliberal Metropolis. In it, Rose unravels the causes of today's intensifying

- Interviews / housing, financialization, tenants, Manchester, United Kingdom, community organizing, gentrification, England, housing justice

Sheffield Music Factory: The Legacy of Red Tape Studios

Sam Holden — 2025-01-07T12:00:24Z

Opening in 1986, in defiance of government cuts, Red Tape Studios was the first municipal recording studio in the UK. Sam Holden demonstrates how the studio brought together the city council, third sector, and community in a time of ideological individualism, drawing lessons for the renewed, contemporary interest of municipal socialism in the UK.
Opening in 1986, Red Tape Studios was the first municipal recording studio in the UK (Wichelow 2023). Named in a council paper as the Sheffield

- Essays / music, arts, arts district, arts-centered development, municipal socialism, deindustrialization, Sheffield, England, United Kingdom

On a Road to Nowhere? Military Urbanism and the Architecture of Segregation

Tim Cunningham — 2024-05-03T05:00:00Z

Comparing the experiences of Belfast, Northern Ireland, with the United States, Tim Cunningham shows how physical barriers, especially roads, can precipitate the dismembering of targeted communities from the wider city ecosystem, in turn accentuating patterns of spatial inequality and deprivation.
By the late 1960s, Belfast was experiencing many of the secular challenges that afflicted industrial cities across western Europe and the US at that time (Bryan 2012). Economic crises precipitated

- Essays / Belfast, Northern Ireland, Ireland, United Kingdom, United States, infrastructure, segregation, urban planning, urbanism, military urbanism, socio-spatial inequalities, barriers

Fifteen-Minute Prisons? A Reflection on the Far-Right Backlash Against Sustainable Development in Britain

Garrett L. Grainger — 2023-10-04T09:46:01Z

In an era of increasing political polarization, right-wing activists are targeting sustainable planning initiatives. Analyzing online media coverage and posts on X (formerly Twitter), Garrett L. Grainger explores why activists are contesting “15‑minute cities” in Oxfordshire and how resistance to them reaches across the globe and affects local planning efforts.
Nearly 2,000 far-right activists protested Oxfordshire County Council's “15‑minute city” plan in February 2023. That demonstration

- From the Field / United Kingdom, 15-minute city, far right, urban planning, sustainable urban planning, sustainable development

Have Low-Income Households Been Failed by the Sale of Social Housing?

2023-01-06T06:00:00Z

Since 2018, the selling-off of social housing in France, as in other countries in Europe, has accelerated. What are the social effects of such measures? Matthieu Gimat, Manon Le Bon-Vuylsteke and Bruno Marot examine the lessons that France can learn from policies implemented in Germany, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom.
In 2018, the approval in France of the so-called “ELAN law”, aimed at reforming property legislation, revived debates on the sale of social housing. While social

- From the Field / privatization, Germany, social housing, housing, United Kingdom, Netherlands

Inciting Hopes for the Future: Civic Activism in London, Mumbai, and Paris Amid the Covid‑19 Crisis

2021-06-08T05:00:00Z

Ethnographic research in London, Mumbai, and Paris during Covid‑19 lockdowns reveals how civic associations filled the void left by state withdrawal and offered visions of hope for socially excluded populations.
Our current global “human, economic and social crisis” (UN 2020) was driven by a deadly virus and deepened by governments' dedication to market-oriented solutions and to disempowering people deemed to be obstacles to those solutions. The neoliberal state's initial reactions to the

- From the Field / associations, lockdown, Covid-19, coronavirus, activism, civic organizing, civic activism, London, Paris, Mumbai, pandemic, India, United Kingdom

Culture and the Nighttime Economy: A Conversation with London's Night Czar and Culture-at-Risk Officer

Amin Ghaziani — 2019-11-12T06:00:00Z

Amin Ghaziani describes the high closure rate of LGBTQ nighttime venues in London, and the city's recognition of these venues' intertwined economic and cultural significance.
From 2006 to 2016, the number of LGBTQ bars, pubs, and nightclubs in London declined by 58%, falling from 125 venues to 53. Figure 1 shows the spatial distribution of these closures. The impact was most acute in central London.
An audit by the Greater London Authority (GLA) found that 44% of all nightclubs, 35% of all

- From the Field / LGBTQ+, homosexuality, night, London, United Kingdom, England, culture, nighttime economy, nightlife

Solidarity Economics and Rights to the Contested City in Belfast

Brendan Murtagh — 2018-12-19T06:00:00Z

Is Lefebvre's right to the city capable of extending the abstract meaning of formal “rights” to practical applications? With this question in mind, Brendan Murtagh scrutinizes a self-organization project in a neighborhood on the periphery of post-conflict Belfast in Northern Ireland.
---- Series: 50 ans après : actualités du droit à la ville d'Henri Lefebvre The wave of Occupy protests that followed the financial crisis in 2008 reinvigorated populist claims to the city, specific campaigns

- Essays / United Kingdom, autogestion, Lefebvre, solidarity, right to the city, Belfast, women, periphery, Ireland, Northern Ireland, self-organization, contested city, social economy, surplus, peace

Inclusive Place-Based Leadership: Lesson-Drawing from Urban Governance Innovations in Bristol, UK

Robin Hambleton — 2018-10-09T05:00:00Z

Across the world, progressive city leaders are working to limit the damaging impact of decisions made by “placeless” leaders, meaning powerful interests that are unconcerned about the consequences of their decisions for particular places and communities. Robin Hambleton outlines a new way of thinking about place-based leadership and reports on the steps being taken by Mayor Marvin Rees and other civic leaders in Bristol, UK, to test this model in practice.
---- Series: Progressive Mayors and

- From the Field / local government, governance, local governance, United Kingdom, progressive urban politics, civic innovation, progressive mayors, city leadership, power of place, collaborative governance, inclusion, Bristol, England

Regeneration and the Legacy of Thatcherism

Juliet Carpenter — 2014-10-15T04:55:00Z

What was Margaret Thatcher's legacy in terms of the way inner-city areas are regenerated in the UK? Juliet Carpenter shows that while the highly market-driven approach of 1980s “urban development corporations” was later officially abandoned in favour of more community-led action, certain elements of the Thatcherite philosophy survived under New Labour, resulting in the “state-led gentrification” of Britain's cities.
Much has been written about Margaret Thatcher's legacy since her death in

- Essays / urban renewal, inequalities, liberalism, deindustrialization, urban development, United Kingdom, territorial development, urban regeneration, redevelopment, Thatcher, centralism