Metropolitics

Beneath the Surface of Chinese Cities: Abandoned Places and Contemporary Ruins

Judith Audin & translated by Oliver Waine — 2018-09-28T05:00:00Z

Urban ruins represent a marginal subject of research within the field of Chinese studies, and yet are a precious reminder of the country's rapid urban development. By approaching these abandoned spaces through urban exploration, Judith Audin makes an original contribution to the analysis of the Chinese city.
Demolition, a violent but banal process in the Chinese urban landscape of the last 40 years, has produced the most common form of contemporary ruins in China (Meyer 2008). These

- From the Field / China, demolition, ethnography, photography, medium-sized cities, ruin porn, Shanghai, urban exploration, abandoned places, ruins, Asia, Beijing

Shrinking to Survive? Demolition and Energy Transition in Small-Town France

Yoan Miot & Max Rousseau & translated by Oliver Waine — 2017-10-18T05:00:00Z

Faced with a process of advanced decline, public and private actors in the town of Vitry-le-François, in eastern France, have developed an original strategy built around the acceptance of their town's demographic decline. This strategy, focused on energy transition, shows that contexts of urban shrinkage can foster the emergence of alternatives to conventional business-redevelopment policies.
---- Series: Shrinking Cities Although urban shrinkage is still generally tackled through

- From the Field / deindustrialization, demolition, medium-sized cities, shrinking cities, urban decline, smart decline, smart shrinkage, Champagne-Ardenne, Grand Est, Vitry-le-François, urban shrinkage, degrowth, shrinkage, energy transition, Champagne, Eastern France

Slumdog Non-Millionaires

Rémi de Bercegol & Shankare Gowda — 2014-05-14T04:50:00Z

In India, the dominant theme of megacities and their development has concealed the significance of small and medium-sized towns. Though numerous, these towns have benefited only marginally from reforms introduced since the 1990s and need to be better taken into consideration if they are to escape poverty.
The poverty of the Indian megalopolises' urban slums was depicted in the film Slumdog Millionaire (2008). The situation in these huge cities, such as Mumbai (Patel and Masselos 2003), Delhi

- From the Field / decentralization, territorial development, poverty, medium-sized cities, India