Metropolitics

Before Redlining and Beyond

Alex B. Hill — 2021-11-02T06:00:00Z

There is a larger story of spatial racism in cities before and beyond redlining. Spatial racism was not limited to a single set of maps, but is embedded within institutions. The long history of spatial racism must be teased out and examined as new data-driven practices generate inequitable opportunity in cities.
Over the past decade, “redlining” has received increasing attention in the popular press and across academic disciplines. Redlining, or the discriminatory practice of denying

- Essays / redlining, racism, spatial racism, neighborhood, residential segregation, segregation, housing, cartography, mapping

Reflections on Four Years of Housing-Justice Support Work with Mapping Action Collective

Sachi Arakawa & Tim Hitchins — 2021-04-13T05:00:00Z

Mapping Action Collective, based in Portland, Oregon, leverages mapping and data to support housing-justice organizing, using GIS to dismantle systems of oppression, and grounding its work in the needs of the communities and movements with which it works.
---- Series: Contemporary Housing Struggles: Crises, Activism, and Critical Research As the interwoven US crises of homelessness, evictions, displacement, and housing instability reach catastrophic levels, students, scholars, practitioners,

- From the Field / housing, housing justice, mapping, cartography, data, community organizing, Portland (Oregon), Oregon, United States, homelessness, evictions

The electoral effects of social divisions in French cities

Jean Rivière & translated by Oliver Waine — 2014-07-02T04:50:00Z

According to many commentators, France's major cities are bastions of support for the parliamentary left when it comes to election time. However, Jean Rivière's analysis of the situation – far from confirming these kinds of simplifications that contrast city-dwelling “bobos” on the one hand with “suburbanites” on the other – invites us to reconsider the electoral geography of French cities by examining them at polling-district level, revealing their socially composite nature.
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- From the Field / inequalities, vote, elections, mapping, cartography, neighborhood effects, metropolitan areas, urban geography

Are socio-spatial inequalities increasing in the Paris region?

2013-02-27T11:56:54Z

Although the Paris region remains the richest in France, the socio-spatial contrasts in this area are on the increase. A recent study into income disparities underlines the complex nature of changes in this regard since 1990: while the inner-ring suburbs have been marked by growing segregation and polarisation, the outer suburbs are less and less affected by poverty, which appears instead to be shifting beyond the regional boundaries.
Since the end of the 1990s, there has been a broad

- Essays / segregation, Paris region, social diversity, inequalities, mapping, cartography, Greater Paris, municipality

Mapping votes and social inequalities: the case of Paris and its inner suburbs

Jean Rivière & translated by Oliver Waine — 2012-06-27T13:39:13Z

Analysing local contexts can prove particularly enlightening when it comes to understanding electoral processes, whether in terms of party-political mobilisation or in terms of the choices voters make. In the inner Paris suburbs, as we shall see, voting patterns are very much structured by the geography of social inequalities.
Following any kind of ballot, electoral maps are sure to proliferate across the media, and the 2012 French presidential election was no exception – especially as

- Essays / Paris region, inequalities, Paris, vote, elections, mapping, cartography, Greater Paris, electoral geography

Maps and opinion polls

Joël Gombin & Jean Rivière & translated by Oliver Waine — 2012-06-06T08:34:00Z

Presidential elections – a crucial moment in the democratic life of France – generate all sorts of analyses that seek to interpret and decipher voting behaviour. Joël Gombin and Rivière highlight the limits of opinion polls and the risks of monocausal geographical analyses, instead advocating an innovative approach that is able to situate voters' choices within their territorial contexts.
As with previous ballots, the 2012 presidential election proved to be the perfect opportunity for public

- Essays / vote, elections, opinion polls, mapping, cartography, electoral geography