Metropolitics

The Burning of the Bronx: Reconstructing a Decade of Abandonment, Arson, and Reform

Benjamin Holtzman — 2026-05-26T05:00:00Z

Between 1970 and 1981, the Bronx lost one out of every five units of housing to abandonment and arson. But why did the Bronx burn? Bench Ansfield reconstructs this largely forgotten period in the borough's history and its relevance to enduring struggles for housing, racial, and economic justice.
Bronx landlord Carmine Lanni knew that even amid New York City's 1970s fiscal crisis you could still make money off of the poor. Lanni began purchasing cheap, low-income buildings and collecting rent

- Reviews / housing, Bronx, New York, United States, displacement, FIRE (finance, insurance and real estate), fires, arson

The Cities We're Losing—The Cities We Need

Ahmed Allahwala — 2026-03-17T06:00:00Z

Although there is no shortage of work on gentrification, it rarely takes as its object of inquiry those “ordinary” places—diners, corner stores—that are lost. Yet, in The Cities We Need, Gabrielle Bendiner-Viani shows the importance of understanding how their loss impacts not only how we understand neighborhoods, but how we understand ourselves.
The Cities We Need explores what we lose when the spaces that anchor life in urban communities disappear. In this beautiful book, visual artist and

- Reviews / gentrification, nostalgia, place, placemaking, displacement, Brooklyn, New York, Oakland, everyday spaces

The Fight for Community Ownership in Los Angeles Chinatown via the LA Chinatown CLT

Amy Zhou — 2025-07-08T05:00:00Z

Community land trusts are one strategy to stem displacement due to real-estate speculation in Chinatowns across North America. Yet, as Amy Zhou demonstrates through her work with the LA Chinatown Community Land Trust, these efforts must address multiple challenges to realize the potential of community ownership.
Over the past few years, the community land trust (CLT) movement has held a significant amount of attention across North America, and particularly in a number of Chinatowns, including

- From the Field / community land trusts, Chinatown, displacement, real estate, property ownership, United States, community organizing, Los Angeles

Multiplied Displacement Under Racial Capitalism: The “Migrant Crisis” in Berlin and New York City

René Kreichauf — 2025-01-31T10:17:52Z

Berlin and New York City, both self-proclaimed “migrant-friendly cities,” have long been destinations for internationally displaced migrants. Yet, as René Kreichauf explains, the façade of “migrant-friendly” belies racialized policies and practices that multiply displacement and dispossession. In New York, the inauguration of Donald Trump, and the mayor's fealty to him in the hopes of a pardon, portends an intensification of the violence that multiple displacement produces.
The 21st century

- Essays / migration, criminalization of migration, migration crisis, migrant workers, migrants, Berlin, New York, United States, Germany, asylum, displacement

The Brazilian Experience of Financialization Through Urban Redevelopment: The Case of “Urban Operations”

Laisa Eleonora Marostica Stroher — 2020-12-01T06:00:00Z

Laisa Stroher examines the history of large-scale urban regeneration projects in Brazil and shows how a policy instrument initially designed to respond to a lack of public funding has morphed into a tool that has helped transform urban land into a financial asset, leading ultimately to the displacement of populations without delivering on the initial social promises.
---- Series: Cities in the Age of Financialization Large-scale urban development projects and their contradictions feature

- From the Field / financialization, urban regeneration, urban development, Urban Operations (Brazil), Brazil, São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, redevelopment, urban planning, real estate, Latin America, South America, displacement

When Measurement Matters: Displacement, Gentrification, Residential Mobility

H. Jacob Carlson — 2020-04-14T05:00:00Z

Scholarly studies of displacement resulting from gentrification are inconsistent in what they measure, and omit mechanisms of displacement.
Gentrification is a concern in communities across the country. As previously low-income neighborhoods see an influx of more affluent households, they are accompanied by rising rents, changing demographics, and a reshaping of the economic and cultural landscape. The preexisting residents see these changes in their community and worry that they and their

- Essays / gentrification, displacement, New York, residential mobility, housing, replacement

Displacement, Demobilization, and Democracy: Current Eviction and Historic Dispossession in Richmond, Virginia

Kathryn Howell & Benjamin F. Teresa — 2020-02-04T06:00:00Z

High eviction rates in Black Richmond neighborhoods must be understood in the context of a long history of political and physical displacement that has suppressed activism in these neighborhoods.
In April 2018, the Princeton Eviction Lab released a nearly nationwide dataset of eviction filings and judgments between 2000 and 2016. From this work, a New York Times article identified Richmond, Virginia, as having the second-highest eviction rate of large cities in the United States. Five of the

- From the Field / Black neighborhoods, Black politics, democracy, displacement, race, race and space, United States, Richmond, Virginia, evictions

Understanding the Causes of Eviction-Based Urban Displacement: Bringing Critical Urban Theory Back In

J. Revel Sims — 2019-09-24T05:00:00Z

Close analysis of eviction patterns in Dane County, Wisconsin, between 2000 and 2016 suggests that tenant poverty is not the sole driver of displacement, and that we must consider the importance of other structural factors.
Recent scholarship on eviction places the phenomenon within the context of increasing social and economic precariousness and the lack of affordable housing. This work exposes the importance of what was deemed a “hidden housing problem” within the social sciences (Hartman

- From the Field / displacement, critical urban theory, gentrification, evictions

Whose Bronx?: Decade of Fire Looks Back at a Complicated History of Neighborhood Abandonment and the Rise of Community Control in the South Bronx

Aly Hassell — 2019-07-02T05:05:00Z

Decade of Fire, a new documentary film by lifelong South Bronx resident and first-time filmmaker Vivian Vázquez Irizarry and co‑director Gretchen Hildebran, revisits the South Bronx of the 1970s, when a series of unchecked fires destroyed block after block of the neighborhood, displacing hundreds of thousands of residents.
Decade of Fire investigates the root causes of the fires and attempts to set the record straight about the complex confluence of events that let such flagrant neglect

- Reviews / New York, Bronx, housing, displacement, gentrification, fires, arson, United States

The Cost of Affordability: Inclusionary Zoning and Displacement in East New York

James Shelton — 2018-03-20T06:00:00Z

What are the impacts of New York City's Mandatory Inclusionary Housing program upon low-income communities of color? James Shelton offers new insights in a consideration of the recent East New York rezoning.
Population growth and a steady increase in housing costs since the mid‑1990s has led to a crisis of housing affordability and access in New York City. To address this, Mayor Bill de Blasio's administration has embarked on an ambitious campaign to generate 300,000 units of affordable

- From the Field / housing, housing policy, inequalities, New York, affordable housing, displacement, housing crisis, de Blasio administration, zoning, inclusionary zoning, East New York