Metropolitics

The Cities We're Losing—The Cities We Need

Ahmed Allahwala — 2026-03-17T06:00:00Z

Although there is no shortage of work on gentrification, it rarely takes as its object of inquiry those “ordinary” places—diners, corner stores—that are lost. Yet, in The Cities We Need, Gabrielle Bendiner-Viani shows the importance of understanding how their loss impacts not only how we understand neighborhoods, but how we understand ourselves.
The Cities We Need explores what we lose when the spaces that anchor life in urban communities disappear. In this beautiful book, visual artist and

- Reviews / gentrification, nostalgia, place, placemaking, displacement, Brooklyn, New York, Oakland, everyday spaces

Life, Loss, and Cooperative Housing in New York

Christian Anderson — 2025-03-11T06:00:00Z

What forms of urban living, sociality, and security are enabled by social housing? At once memoir and counter-history, Just City offers an evocative answer to this question based on experiences growing up in collective housing in 1970s New York.
At a moment when selective nostalgia is being channeled to potent political effect, Just City: Growing Up on the Upper West Side When Housing Was a Human Right offers a compelling counterpoint. The book is a memoir detailing the author's upbringing in

- Reviews / housing, right to housing, affordable housing, cooperative housing, public housing, social housing, sociality, urbanity, New York, Upper West Side, Manhattan

Multiplied Displacement Under Racial Capitalism: The “Migrant Crisis” in Berlin and New York City

René Kreichauf — 2025-01-31T10:17:52Z

Berlin and New York City, both self-proclaimed “migrant-friendly cities,” have long been destinations for internationally displaced migrants. Yet, as René Kreichauf explains, the façade of “migrant-friendly” belies racialized policies and practices that multiply displacement and dispossession. In New York, the inauguration of Donald Trump, and the mayor's fealty to him in the hopes of a pardon, portends an intensification of the violence that multiple displacement produces.
The 21st century

- Essays / migration, criminalization of migration, migration crisis, migrant workers, migrants, Berlin, New York, United States, Germany, asylum, displacement

The Banality of Innovation: Mythic Discourse and the Long Road to Shore Power in New York City

Iain McDavid — 2024-12-03T06:00:00Z

If the New York City Economic Development Corporation is committed to the city's “green transformation, ” then why is it dragging its feet to curb cruise-ship pollution at city ports? Iain McDavid explains how clean air doesn't align with EDC's primary concern of encouraging investment.
By allowing ships to plug into the electrical grid while at berth, shore power installations can drastically reduce carbon emissions and harmful pollutants produced by a vessel's auxiliary engines (CLIA 2024;

- Debates / cruise ships, pollution, air quality, Brooklyn, New York, United States, energy, environmental justice, environment, shore power

When Rising Expectations Meet Rising Reaction: New York's 2024 Housing Policy Fight and the Prospects for the Future

Oksana Mironova & Samuel Stein — 2024-09-10T05:00:00Z

How did New York housing policy fare with Democratic control of the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government? Oksana Mironova and Samuel Stein review the 2024 housing policy fight and the stakes going forward for the housing movement.
A few years ago, the New York tenant movement forced the state government to strengthen and expand its rent regulation system. This was the greatest expansion of renters' rights New York had seen in decades. In the years since, the movement has

- Debates / housing, real estate, real-estate industry, tenants, homelessness, New York, affordable housing, housing crisis, housing policy, housing justice, social housing

Reflecting on the New York Commune at 20 Years

Daphne Lundi — 2024-04-09T05:00:00Z

What happened in the decades after the Hunts Point Insurrection? M. E. O'Brien and Eman Abdelhadi use speculative oral history to share the stories of the everyday people involved in making New York City's abolitionist future.
In a journal entry from November 14, 1981, Octavia Butler coined the term “histofuturism” to describe her archival practice and how she created critical fabulations of the future: “Histofuturist is my invention. An historian who extrapolates from the Human past and

- Reviews / New York, commune, utopia, dystopia, fiction, science fiction, visionary fiction, New York Commune

Finding the People's City

Benjamin Holtzman — 2024-03-26T06:00:00Z

In A People's Guide to New York City, Carolina Bank Muñoz, Penny Lewis and Emily Tumpson Molina provide an engaging exploration into sites throughout the city. The authors expose complicated histories, of both iconic and lesser-known sites, that highlight change from below while also demonstrating how powerful institutions have shaped New York in the face of grassroots resistance.
There is no shortage of guidebooks to New York City. There are guides designed to assist visitors in exploring

- Reviews / New York, tourism, urban tourism, history, urban history, resistance, power play, protest, community

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

Walking and Knowing New York City

Michael B. Kahan — 2024-02-02T08:12:44Z

“What can we learn and what can we know about a city like New York by walking through it?” Reflecting on his experience of co‑leading an experiential learning course in New York City, Michael B. Kahan explores this question and suggests the answer lies beyond the act of walking itself.
In The New York Nobody Knows, the late sociologist William B. Helmreich described the neighborhoods and people of New York City he came to know by walking every block of the city's thousands of miles of

- From the Field / New York, walking

Regulating Basement Conversions in New York City

Ooha Uppalapati — 2023-07-14T05:00:00Z

Ooha Uppalapati examines the regulation of basement apartments in New York City and the implications of proposed laws for both homeowners and tenants.
On August 30, 2022, the Comptroller of New York City, Brad Lander, released a report titled Bringing Basement Apartments into the Light. The report, which lists recommendations for the provision of “basic rights, responsibilities, and protections of basement apartment residents and owners” (NYC Comptroller 2022) marked the one-year anniversary

- From the Field / housing, New York City housing policy, accessory dwelling units, housing policy, basements, New York