Metropolitics

The Postponed Tokyo 2020 Games: From Planning Conflicts to Covid

Raphaël Languillon-Aussel & translated by Oliver Waine — 2022-09-09T05:00:00Z

One of the many consequences of the Covid‑19 pandemic was the postponement of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, held in summer 2021; however, the health crisis was not the only issue to adversely affect the Games. Here, Raphaël Languillon-Aussel looks behind the scenes of Tokyo 2020 and examines the multiple conflicts and stakes that beset the Games.
On March 24, 2020, the Japanese central government announced its decision to postpone by one year the Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games that were

- From the Field / coronavirus, development, Tokyo, Japan, Covid-19, Olympic Games

Cities in the Age of Financialization

2021-06-18T05:00:00Z

Over the past four decades, the financialization of capitalism has transformed economies, societies, and urban space. This series of articles examines the growing involvement of financial actors, instruments, and rationales in the production of the urban built environment; the role of public authorities in this process; and their social, political, and spatial consequences.
---- ▼ Jump to the list of articles in this series ▼ Since the global financial crisis of 2007–2008, the financial

- Series / finance, housing, financialization, real estate, urban project, urban development, development, urban planning

Planning Metropolitan Australia

Margot Abord de Chatillon — 2019-04-09T05:00:00Z

In Planning Metropolitan Australia, Stephen Hamnett and Robert Freestone shed welcome light on the way Australia's rapidly growing metropolitan areas have developed over the last two decades, and the planning issues that have accompanied this growth. Margot Abord de Chatillon reviews this important work, which provides an invaluable, if sometimes disjointed, overview of the state of Australian cities.
A publication central to understanding the evolution of metropolitan Australia
Planning

- Reviews / Australia, urban planning, metropolitan areas, development, urban sprawl

The Risk of “Foodwashing” in Calls for Innovative Urban Projects

Paula Macé Le Ficher & translated by Oliver Waine — 2019-02-22T06:00:00Z

Paula Macé Le Ficher analyzes the ways in which farming and food issues have been integrated into calls for innovative projects organized in Greater Paris, and highlights the potential these programs have for fostering new developments in the field of urban agriculture—while remaining realistic about extent to which they might transform the urban food system in the Paris region.
Since the start of the 2010s, food has emerged as an essential theme for urban projects. This rising prominence

- From the Field / food, Greater Paris, development, urban project, urban agriculture, foodwashing, calls for projects, farming, agriculture

Shanghai's West Bund Cultural Corridor Exemplifies the Opportunities and Risks of State-Driven Cultural Development

Siqi Tu — 2018-05-08T05:00:00Z

The West Bund Cultural Corridor in Shanghai is the latest entrant in a global competition to attract investment by combining cultural institutions with real-estate megaprojects. But arrangements between the corridor's private art museums and institutions of the local and national state remain ambiguous, raising questions about economic elitism and artistic freedom.
China's contemporary art scene is on the rise, as is the number of private museums in China, most notably in Shanghai. The Long

- From the Field / culture, urban development, China, development, neoliberalism, arts, global cities, Shanghai, cultural district, arts district, arts-centered development, cultural corridor

New York's Soul for Sale: Raising the Rent on Lunch Counters and Counterculture

Benjamin Terrall — 2018-02-13T06:00:00Z

Vanishing New York is Jeremiah Moss's loving chronicle of the neighborhoods, characters, bars, and corner institutions that have disappeared in the accelerated gentrification of the last two decades. There is room to debate what we should be fighting to create, but Moss captures the New York he is fighting to preserve.
When Jeremiah Moss moved to Manhattan from rural New England in the early 1990s at the age of 22, he felt that he had already missed the greatest days of the city's existence –

- Reviews / gentrification, New York, development, displacement, right to the city, nostalgia, Bloomberg, Giuliani, counterculture

The Cost of Good Intentions: Planning Gridlock in San Francisco

David Prowler — 2018-01-30T06:00:00Z

The culture of protest that marked development and planning in San Francisco during the 1970s and 1980s was a response to the trauma of urban renewal. But this culture has left an ambiguous legacy for the present, argues author David Prowler.
In San Francisco, diffusion of decision-making and a restrictive and bureaucratic planning culture have impeded the planning of the city and focused resources on procedural battles that fail to manage its recent growth boom. Indeed, gridlock is the goal

- Debates / urban planning, urban renewal, urban development, development, San Francisco, downtown development, neighborhood preservation, planning politics

The Boys of Sarajevo's War Tunnel

Luka Lucić — 2016-01-12T06:00:00Z

What are the impacts of war upon young people's psychological development? Research with young men who survived Sarajevo's siege sheds new light on how young people draw upon their social and spatial environment to make sense of violent experiences.
“… The next moment I was walking in a narrow passage reeking of urine and sweat. The tunnel was about five feet high, so I had to hunch down or I would hit my head. Dirt and water dripped on us, and we slogged through ankle-deep mud. I was

- From the Field / conflict, adolescents, development, teenagers, youth, affordances, war, siege, Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina

The Tokyo skyline, or the hidden order behind opportunistic construction

Raphaël Languillon-Aussel & translated by Oliver Waine — 2015-11-13T06:00:00Z

Behind the apparent disorder, Tokyo's current skyline in fact complies with complex rules. While the first towers in Tokyo appeared in the late 1960s, the “verticalization” of the city has in reality taken place over two distinct periods: the 1980s – the era of the construction of the global city – and the 2000s – Tokyo's renaissance. Since the 2000s, the skyline has tended to respect certain spatial codes, specific to the Japanese context, against a backdrop of dynamic tension between the

- Essays / architecture, culture, skyline, towers, development, Tokyo, Japan, space, verticality

The “Dozois Plan”: lessons learned from urban-renewal policies and the history of urban planning in Montreal

Frédéric Mercure-Jolette & translated by Oliver Waine — 2015-10-23T05:00:00Z

Urban-renewal policies justify their actions by decrying neighbourhoods earmarked for demolition. Frédéric Mercure-Jolette seeks to demonstrate this via the little-studied example of the massive operations affecting downtown Montreal in the 1960s. His article also highlights the inextricable links between urban renewal and the paradoxical institutionalization of professional urban planning.
The Projet de rénovation d'une zone d'habitat défectueux et de construction d'habitation à loyer

- Essays / housing, urban planning, housing projects, urban policy, urban renewal, Montreal, slum, profession, development, Canada, salubrity, public action