Metropolitics

In Norway, Housing Schemes Designed with Children in Mind

Grégoire Tortosa & translated by Oliver Waine — 2024-11-22T06:00:00Z

How can cities take more of a “child's eye view”? Grégoire Tortosa shows how avant-garde housing developments in Oslo and Tromsø, in Norway, have been designed to encourage children to play freely.
From the 1920s onwards, the Modernist movement defined a new conception of the city. By proposing a “coherent set of reasoning principles recognized and used as a reference,” it set itself up as an urban paradigm (Héran 2015, p. 33), with functionalism, technicism, the rejection of all heritage,

- From the Field / cars, Norvège, urban planning, spatial planning, urban design, urban development, housing, housing estates, housing projects, children, play

Open-Air Auto Shops: Subsistence Jobs in Working-Class Neighborhoods

Collectif Rosa Bonheur & translated by Oliver Waine — 2019-10-25T04:00:00Z

The informal activities of street mechanics observed by Collectif Rosa Bonheur in northern France attest to a much larger subsistence economy at the margins of employment. According to this research collective, the spatial anchoring of these activities, on the borderline of informality, invites us to consider spaces that are often perceived as peripheral and relegated as “working-class centralities.”
In the vicinity of houses, in garages adjacent to dwellings, on sidewalks, in public squares

- From the Field / cars, poverty, precarity, Roubaix, Lille, Hauts-de-France, Northern France, France, working classes, working-class neighborhoods, informality, work, jobs, employment, Nord–Pas-de-Calais

The new banks of the Seine: all for the best, or just another Woody Allen set?

Mathieu Flonneau & translated by Oliver Waine — 2014-05-21T04:50:00Z

June 2013 saw the completion of a project to transform the riverside expressway on the Left Bank of the Seine in Paris into a pedestrian promenade, accompanied by a series of leisure and recreation features. Historian Mathieu Flonneau delivers a scathing critique of what he sees as a purely cosmetic measure for the prestigious city centre, decrying both its underlying ideology and its unintended consequences.
If the great film-maker Woody Allen were to shoot Midnight in Paris (2011) again,

- Debates / gentrification, public space, Paris, cars, redevelopment, pedestrian, Seine, riverbanks

Pedestrians, cars and the city

Cédric Feriel & translated by Oliver Waine — 2013-05-29T10:01:37Z

Pedestrianisation and the ability to get around the city on foot are key considerations in contemporary projects for public spaces – and yet the very first pedestrian zones date back to the 1960s, not just in Europe but also in the United States. Cédric Feriel re-examines this important legacy in the light of current thinking on the subject.
Since the early 2000s, pedestrians have regained their place at the heart of debates on urban development in Europe and the United States (Urbanisme

- From the Field / Europe, public space, United States, cars, downtown, city centre, pedestrian

From Vélib' to Autolib': private corporations' involvement in urban mobility policy

Maxime Huré & translated by Oliver Waine — 2012-04-25T06:35:58Z

In December 2011 – four years after the launch of Vélib' – Paris inaugurated Autolib', the largest system of self-service electric cars in the world. Leaving aside the debate on the economic and technical viability of Autolib', the development of self-service mobility services has brought with it the increased involvement of large private groups in the production of urban policy, contributing to the privatisation of public spaces and redefining the notion of public service.
With the

- Debates / mobility, transport, public–private partnership, urban public service, self-service, bicycles, cars, privatization, urban technical networks, urban services, Vélib', bicycle-sharing, active mobility, transport policy, cycling