Metropolitics

“The Apartment You Can Own with Pride”: Federally Insured Black Housing Cooperatives, 1950–1955

Nicholas Shatan — 2025-11-25T06:00:00Z

Postwar Black cooperatives insured by the federal government trouble the binary of public and private in housing development.
---- Series: Provincializing the “Real-Estate Turn” In October 1950, civil-rights leader Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune spoke when the cornerstone was laid for Parkway Gardens, perhaps the first apartment development cooperatively owned by African Americans in Chicago (Chicago Defender 1950). Built next to the “L” rapid-transit station at 63rd St and South Park Avenue on the

- Essays / race, segregation, residential segregation, housing, cooperative housing, Federal Housing Administration, United States, Black neighborhoods, real estate

The Uruguayan Housing Cooperatives: The Miracle of the “Commons” | Las cooperativas de vivienda uruguayas. El milagro de los “comunes”

Benjamín Nahoum — 2025-04-08T05:00:00Z

Benjamín Nahoum presents the case of the Uruguayan cooperative movement that started in the 1960s. Through the years, the movement has shifted—as have other South American housing movements—but the principles of mutual aid and self-management have remained clear, and it has become one of the primary housing tenures in Uruguay.
---- Series: Horizons in the Housing Struggle ▼ Pulse aquí para leer en español ▼
Fifteen years ago, the Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences, which annually awards the

- From the Field / Uruguay, South America, Latin America, Global South, housing, affordable housing, cooperative housing, commons, alternative housing, cooperation

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

What Does a Just Housing Plan Look Like? NYC and National Housing Movements Show the Way

Oksana Mironova & Sylvia Morse — 2019-10-22T05:00:00Z

How could we develop a housing plan that is not rooted in capitalism? Oksana Mironova and Sylvia Morse describe how local and federal initiatives could provide the seeds for a more just housing landscape.
The United States does not have a cohesive national housing plan, relying instead on a host of market-based solutions that are planned and implemented locally and predicated on continuous growth, including tax incentives and zoning changes. This system fails to meet the needs of extremely

- Debates / affordable housing, cooperative housing, housing justice, housing, New York, United States

Participation and housing policies: a century-old phenomenon

Marie-Hélène Bacqué & Claire Carriou & translated by Oliver Waine — 2012-10-24T04:55:00Z

The recent renewed interest in participatory housing experiments is, in fact, linked to a much longer history that can be traced back to the late 19th century, when the first public policies in France to encourage the construction of low-cost housing were introduced. Metropolitics looks at how this multifaceted history has laid the foundations for today's projects.
---- Dossier: Mutual Housing In France, since the late 1980s and the last realisations in a set of participatory housing

- Debates / participation, housing, alternative housing, cooperative housing, self-build, experimentation

The Vertical Village: the long road travelled by a Lyon housing cooperative

Marie-Pierre Marchand & translated by Oliver Waine — 2012-10-10T04:55:00Z

The “Village Vertical” development that has taken shape in a mixed-development zone in Villeurbanne, near Lyon, is today one of the most prominent experiments in the alternative housing sector. Here, Marie-Pierre Marchand – who has monitored the development's progress as part of a research project – describes how this cooperative came into being, along with the values that it embodies.
---- Series: Mutual Housing Following significant media coverage, the Village Vertical (in English,

- From the Field / construction, participation, housing, sustainable development, alternative housing, Lyon, cooperative housing, Villeurbanne, verticality