Metropolitics

What Is Worth Asking About Our Cities?

Naomi Adiv & Anant Maringanti & Harikrishnan Sasikumar — 2026-03-03T06:00:00Z

What is the state of urban theory from the Global South and how can local research simultaneously advance scholarly research and be a vehicle for advocacy? Dr. Naomi Adiv and Dr. Hari Sasikumar explore these questions in their conversation with Anant Maringanti.
A central guiding idea of our work at Metropolitics is to share the knowledge, concepts and practices that academic and activist scholars generate in contemporary cities. In addition to making scholarship public, the journal is

- Interviews / Global South, India, urbanism, Southern urbanism, Hyderabad

Useful Transgressions: Informality, Power, and Urban Life in Ciudad del Este, Paraguay

Ryan Thomas Devlin — 2026-02-17T06:00:00Z

Urban informality has been theorized as a process operating at the edges and margins under capitalist urbanization. Yet Outlaw Capital argues that the gray spaces of informality are essential to the vitality of cities, leveraged for different ends by elites and the poor alike.
On the Paraguay side of the Paraná River in Ciudad del Este, smugglers load up small boats with things like electronics and cigarettes bound for the opposite shore and eventually for consumers in Brazil, bypassing

- Reviews / informality, Latin America, South America, Global South, Paraguay, Ciudad del Este, neoliberalism, capitalism, urbanism, urbanization, gray spaces, informal urbanism, urban governance

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

On the Land Question in India: The Case of Sriperumbudur Industrial Region in Peri-Urban Chennai

V. Gajendran — 2025-12-23T06:00:00Z

Amidst intense demand for land, farmers near Chennai, India face dispossession by neglect.
---- Series: Provincializing the “Real-Estate Turn” My essay begins with a puzzle. The past two decades have been called the decades of intense land conflicts in India. There has been an outpouring of media and academic scholarship on agrarian landowners resisting and protesting the acquisition of their land for urban and infrastructure projects. In this context of land dispossession and opposition to

- Essays / India, Global South, land, land use, agriculture, farming, real estate, real-estate turn, periurban, Chennai

Planning in the Age of Political Populism: Kolkata's Tram Debate

Tathagata Chatterji — 2025-06-10T05:00:00Z

Using the case of Kolkata's tram system, Tathagata Chatterji shows how two distinct political strategies—populism and clientelism—operate in a symbiotic relationship to circumvent formal planning processes in India's third-largest city.
Political populism and clientelism are two distinct political strategies with significant conceptual overlaps. From a theoretical standpoint, political populism is associated with charismatic leaders who mobilise mass support through ideological and rhetorical

- Essays / India, Global South, Asia, Kolkata, mass transit, rapid transit, transport, transport policy, public transportation, tram, clientelism, populism, streetcar, light rail, tramway

Integration or Chainsaw: Some Reflections on the Policies of Cruelty in Milei's Argentina Based on the ReNaBaP Case | Integración o motosierra: Reflexiones sobre las políticas de crueldad en la Argentina de Milei a partir del caso ReNaBaP

Facundo A. Corti — 2025-05-20T05:00:00Z

Policy efforts in Argentina to reduce housing inequality have been met with Milei's chainsaw. Facundo A. Corti shows how the state has made the fight for housing equality a one-sided struggle.
---- Series: Horizons in the Housing Struggle ▼ Pulse aquí para leer en español ▼
The National Registry of Popular Neighborhoods (Registro Nacional de Barrios Populares, or ReNaBaP) was created in 2017 through Decree 358, which institutionalized a registry initiated the previous year by civil society

- From the Field / Argentina, Latin America, South America, Global South, housing, housing policy, informal housing, informal settlements, urban integration, Javier Milei, public policy, working-class neighborhoods

Argentina: The Rental Issue in the Milei Era | Argentina: la problemática del alquiler en la era Milei

Nicolás A. Trivi — 2025-04-29T05:00:00Z

In Argentina, the reforms promoted by the libertarian government represent an offensive of capital on labor. Nicolás Trivi shows that the rental market is one of its battlefields.
---- Series: Horizons in the Housing Struggle ▼ Pulse aquí para leer en español ▼
On the night of December 20, 2023, President Javier Milei spoke on a nationally obligatory all-channel media event (the “cadena nacional”) to announce the proclamation of a Necessity and Urgency Decree (DNU in Spanish). The

- From the Field / Argentina, Latin America, South America, Global South, real estate, tenants, rent, rental, rental housing, Javier Milei

Massive Evictions and Housing Crisis in Chile

Santiago Castillo Braithwaite — 2025-04-15T05:00:00Z

In the midst of a deep housing crisis, more than 100,000 families in Chile are currently living in informal settlements. Santiago Castillo examines the rise of land occupations following a 2019 social uprising and the recent state responses that, far from providing solutions, have only deepened the conflict.
---- Series: Horizons in the Housing Struggle Starting in October 2019, amid the most intense protests since the end of Pinochet's dictatorship in Chile, a wave of urban land occupations

- From the Field / Latin America, South America, Global South, housing, housing crisis, evictions, land, Chile

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

Using Cross-Class Politics to Challenge Urban Housing Inequality in Islamabad, Pakistan

Hafsah Siddiqui — 2025-04-01T05:00:00Z

When redevelopment schemes target a city's poor for removal to provide opportunities for the privileged, how can poor residents assert a right to their home? With Islamabad as a case study, Hafsah Siddiqui shows how cross-class politics can be the basis for collaborative efforts for the poor to maintain a right to the city.
---- Series: Horizons in the Housing Struggle Islamabad is touted as Pakistan's loveliest city, with lush greenery and clean public spaces. The slogan “Islamabad the

- Essays / Global South, Asia, Pakistan, Islamabad, housing, right to housing, informal housing, urban services, social class, mobilization, urban inequality