Metropolitics

A Masterpiece in Peril: The Garden Suburb of La Butte-Rouge

Renaud Epstein & translated by Oliver Waine — 2026-02-24T06:00:00Z

La Butte-Rouge, built in the mid-20th century in Paris's southern suburbs, is the archetypal example of a French cité-jardin. In a recent work retracing its history, Élise Guillerm highlights the urban and architectural qualities of this eco-neighborhood before its time, whose very existence is now threatened by an urban renewal project.
Analysis of urban policies, and particularly urban renewal policies, dispels the idea that historical knowledge can prevent the repetition of past mistakes.

- Reviews / urban planning, cité-jardin, HLM, urban heritage, heritage, Châtenay-Malabry, Hauts-de-Seine, Île-de-France, social housing, sustainable development, garden city, garden suburb, France, Paris region, Paris, history, urban history, environment, urban renewal, landscape

Agrarian Fantasy, Settler Colonial Property, and the Making of Industrial Johannesburg

Renugan Raidoo — 2026-01-20T06:00:00Z

Some of the gated estates in and around Johannesburg and Pretoria sell residents a settler colonial fantasy of a bucolic idyll away from the urban condition. But Renugan Raidoo examines the important role agricultural surplus played in mining industrialization, which tells a much more complex story of urban–rural relations.
---- Series: Provincializing the “Real-Estate Turn” “A piece of the past has found its' [sic] way to the future” in all-white majuscule is the first thing one sees on the

- Essays / Africa, South Africa, Global South, Johannesburg, Pretoria, gated communities, rural, colonial urban planning, agriculture, industry, history, apartheid, real-estate turn, real estate

Dakar, Portrait of a Capital City

Armelle Choplin — 2025-09-12T05:00:00Z

Dakar, métamorphoses d'une capitale, by architects Carole Diop and Xavier Ricou, takes readers on a journey through the history of the Senegalese capital, from pre‑colonial Lebu villages to contemporary urban laboratory.
In their book Dakar, métamorphoses d'une capitale, Senegalese architects Carole Diop and Xavier Ricou present a masterful exploration of Dakar. Through meticulous archival research and iconography, the authors explore the lesser-known history of the former West African

- Reviews / Dakar, housing, history, housing policy, heritage, Africa, culture, urban planning, urban growth, West Africa, Senegal

The Paris of Yesteryear: A Photographic Inventory

Pauline Rossi & translated by Oliver Waine — 2024-05-14T05:00:00Z

The Commission du Vieux Paris has kept meticulous records of urban transformations, with its own perception of what constitutes heritage. Since 2022, some 11,000 geolocated photographs from its collection have been made available online, enabling a virtual historic visit of urban renewal projects.
In Paris, a municipal committee called the Commission du Vieux Paris (Old Paris Commission) was created in 1897 to advise the prefecture (covering the former Seine département), and later the city

- From the Field / Paris, history, photography, heritage, urban history, urban heritage

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

Feminist Non-Mixity: For Women or Against Men?

Alban Jacquemart & translated by Oliver Waine — 2023-10-10T05:00:00Z

For women, the choice to gather together serves a variety of objectives within feminist mobilizations. Looking back at the history and significance of these militant practices helps to counteract preconceptions associated with non-mixity.
“It is wrong to claim that non-mixity does not fundamentally impregnate the vision of the world and society of those who turn to this notion, and that it cannot encourage the temptation of withdrawal into a given community. How can we believe that there is

- Essays / feminism, women, history, activism, non-mixity

The Black Middle Class, or the Harsh Reality of the American Dream

Sylvie Tissot & translated by Oliver Waine — 2023-01-24T06:00:00Z

The suburbs of the United States, once the epicenter of racial segregation, are now home to more African Americans than ever. Drawing on her investigation of the New York suburbs, Orly Clergé demonstrates the considerable heterogeneity and fragility of the Black middle classes in a society structured by racism.
One particularly evocative type of place sums up all the stereotypes of African Americans: Black ghettos. Orly Clergé's book The New Noir seeks to challenge the way Black people in the

- Reviews / United States, suburbs, middle classes, history, racism

Underground Berlin: Where Infrastructure Meets Politics

Clarence Hatton-Proulx & translated by Oliver Waine — 2022-12-02T06:00:00Z

Water, electricity, gas: in Remaking Berlin, Timothy Moss presents a history of Berlin's infrastructure networks from 1920 to 2020, and shows how their operation has varied with successive political regimes.
For anyone interested in the history of cities, the case of Berlin is particularly rich. In less than a century, the German capital lived through a succession of different political regimes: the Weimar Republic, Nazi rule, the division of the city between two concomitant republics (one

- Reviews / Berlin, infrastructure, Germany, energy, history, networks, urban technical networks, utilities

Plague and Urban Policy in Bombay, 1896–1914

Vanessa Caru & translated by Oliver Waine — 2022-11-18T06:00:00Z

What consequences can an epidemic have on a city? Vanessa Caru describes the ways in which a plague epidemic in Bombay at the turn of the 20th century changed the British colonial authorities' attitudes, the urban policies they implemented, and ultimately even the very morphology of the city.
On September 18, 1896, the first case of bubonic plague, in all likelihood spread by rats on board a boat from Hong Kong, was detected in Bombay (today Mumbai). As the first Indian city to be infected,

- From the Field / colonial urban planning, Mumbai, India, Bombay, history, urban policy, epidemic

The Emergence of Ecological Thinking in the City

Charles-François Mathis & translated by Oliver Waine — 2022-09-27T05:00:00Z

What place does ecological thinking have in the field of urban planning? In describing the use of vegetation in cities since the 19th century, Charles-François Mathis examines the historical evolution of planning choices and the foundations of a new “ecological urbanism.”
Wherever I may go today, if the opportunity arises, if I have an hour to spare in an unknown city, a complacent drift takes me along the streets, towards these placid chlorophyllous enclaves encircled nowadays by the

- Essays / landscape, nature, gardens, ecology, parks, urban development, urban planning, environment, history