Metropolitics

Poverty as a Social Stigma

Axelle Brodiez-Dolino & translated by Oliver Waine — 2019-12-13T06:00:00Z

The distinction between the “deserving” and “undeserving” poor is deeply entrenched, and representations of poverty have long been burdened with their share of prejudices and stigmas. Historian Axelle Brodiez-Dolino brings into perspective the changing social boundaries, categories and policies that have constructed, deconstructed and sought to tackle poverty.
Society—whether Christian or secularized, monarchical or republican—has always been, and remains, the product of interaction among

- Essays / urban poor, poverty, precarity, vulnerability, assistance, welfare state, stigma

More Affordable Transit Fares

Alexis Perrotta — 2016-04-26T05:00:00Z

Low-income urban residents often struggle to afford transit fares. Seattle recently established half-fares for poor residents, and other cities are considering similar measures. Yet the policy spheres of welfare and transit are rarely coordinated in the US. Alexis Perrotta proposes a progressive fare policy that would offer an annual fare pass that riders could buy with their income-tax refunds.
The Community Service Society recently released a survey that highlights the problem of

- Debates / public transportation, inequalities, United States, transport, welfare state, mass transit, transport policy

The Intimate Politics of Public Housing's Demise

Dory Thrasher — 2016-04-12T05:00:00Z

Many ethnographies have documented the physical and institutional fragility of America's public housing. Writing in a different idiom, anthropologist Catherine Fennell opens a line of inquiry into how encounters with physical things—buildings and building systems—forge bonds of sympathy between and among housing residents, bureaucrats, and members of the broader public. Registering and interpreting these sympathetic encounters, Fennell's study of Chicago's Henry Horner Homes, the “last project

- Reviews / Chicago, social housing, public housing, welfare state, public-housing redevelopment

Professionalisation, gentrification and welfare reform: 20 years of socio-spatial change in London

Manuel Appert & Anaïs Collet & Chris Hamnett — 2013-06-19T04:55:00Z

The 2008 financial crisis called time on a long period of economic transformation in European cities that has seen their socio-spatial structures change radically. The conventional wisdom, in line with the works of Sassen, is that social inequalities have increased, but Chris Hamnett, interviewed by Metropolitics, takes a more finely shaded view, and invites us to take a closer look at the trajectories of ethnic minorities and the impacts of welfare reform.
Major cities across the world have

- Interviews / gentrification, ethnicity, housing, housing policy, inequalities, welfare state, urban regeneration, globalization, socio-spatial inequalities, polarization, displacement, metropolization, replacement, race, video, Featured

Social housing in Europe: the end of an era?

Noémie Houard & translated by Oliver Waine — 2012-09-26T04:55:00Z

Although there is no single European model for social housing, there are nevertheless a number of common trends and features in most countries in Europe: delegation to local government, a new focus on fragile populations, reductions in the proportion of social housing. In France, the welfare state is tending to break with its “universalist” vocation in order to target action on increasingly vulnerable populations.
Most works and studies concerning social housing in Europe stress the diversity

- Debates / Europe, decentralization, social diversity, social housing, welfare state, right to housing