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

Ride-Hailing Away from Democracy: Building Uber's Political Playbook in Washington, DC

Lauren Ames Fischer — 2026-05-12T05:00:00Z

In the past decade, platforms such as Uber and Lyft have changed how people navigate urban space. Disputing DC illuminates Uber's efforts to influence how we navigate democratic space by reforming the contours of city power to serve the needs of smart cities and the gig economy.
What are the limits of city power, in the age of smart cities and sharing economies? What are the emerging processes of regulation? How are municipal powers being reconfigured, and by whom? Disrupting DC: The Rise of

- Reviews / platformization, democracy, Washington, DC, United States, smart city, transport, Uber, public transportation

France's Housing Projects Recounted Through Postcards

Florine Ballif & translated by Oliver Waine — 2026-04-21T05:00:00Z

The selection of postcards presented by Renaud Epstein in his book On est bien arrivés (“We've arrived safely”) invites us to look at France's large postwar social housing projects and their inhabitants from a different, more sensitive perspective, far removed from the usual stereotypes.
This original book sheds light on a forgotten—even ignored—object: postcards showcasing France's postwar social housing projects, or “grands ensembles”. In this book, political scientist Renaud Epstein

- Reviews / architecture, banlieue, grands ensembles, heritage, urban heritage, public housing, suburbs, social housing, urban planning, urbanism, photography, memory

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

A Masterpiece in Peril: The Garden Suburb of La Butte-Rouge

Renaud Epstein & translated by Oliver Waine — 2026-02-24T06:00:00Z

La Butte-Rouge, built in the mid-20th century in Paris's southern suburbs, is the archetypal example of a French cité-jardin. In a recent work retracing its history, Élise Guillerm highlights the urban and architectural qualities of this eco-neighborhood before its time, whose very existence is now threatened by an urban renewal project.
Analysis of urban policies, and particularly urban renewal policies, dispels the idea that historical knowledge can prevent the repetition of past mistakes.

- Reviews / urban planning, cité-jardin, HLM, urban heritage, heritage, Châtenay-Malabry, Hauts-de-Seine, Île-de-France, social housing, sustainable development, garden city, garden suburb, France, Paris region, Paris, history, urban history, environment, urban renewal, landscape

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

Dakar, Portrait of a Capital City

Armelle Choplin — 2025-09-12T05:00:00Z

Dakar, métamorphoses d'une capitale, by architects Carole Diop and Xavier Ricou, takes readers on a journey through the history of the Senegalese capital, from pre‑colonial Lebu villages to contemporary urban laboratory.
In their book Dakar, métamorphoses d'une capitale, Senegalese architects Carole Diop and Xavier Ricou present a masterful exploration of Dakar. Through meticulous archival research and iconography, the authors explore the lesser-known history of the former West African

- Reviews / Dakar, housing, history, housing policy, heritage, Africa, culture, urban planning, urban growth, West Africa, Senegal

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

Reflecting on the New York Commune at 20 Years

Daphne Lundi — 2024-04-09T05:00:00Z

What happened in the decades after the Hunts Point Insurrection? M. E. O'Brien and Eman Abdelhadi use speculative oral history to share the stories of the everyday people involved in making New York City's abolitionist future.
In a journal entry from November 14, 1981, Octavia Butler coined the term “histofuturism” to describe her archival practice and how she created critical fabulations of the future: “Histofuturist is my invention. An historian who extrapolates from the Human past and

- Reviews / New York, commune, utopia, dystopia, fiction, science fiction, visionary fiction, New York Commune

Finding the People's City

Benjamin Holtzman — 2024-03-26T06:00:00Z

In A People's Guide to New York City, Carolina Bank Muñoz, Penny Lewis and Emily Tumpson Molina provide an engaging exploration into sites throughout the city. The authors expose complicated histories, of both iconic and lesser-known sites, that highlight change from below while also demonstrating how powerful institutions have shaped New York in the face of grassroots resistance.
There is no shortage of guidebooks to New York City. There are guides designed to assist visitors in exploring

- Reviews / New York, tourism, urban tourism, history, urban history, resistance, power play, protest, community