Metropolitics

Settler Colonialism, Black Radicalism, and the Urban Political

Theresa Enright — 2026-06-30T05:00:00Z

Ruptures in the Afterlife of the Apartheid City by Yousuf Al‑Bulushi examines the persistence of segregation, precarity, and anti-Black violence in post-Apartheid South Africa. It also analyzes a prominent social movement, the Durban-based Abahlali baseMjondolo, and its members' struggle for housing, dignity, and basic survival.
Ruptures in the Afterlife of the Apartheid City explores “the strategies of global movements confronting racial capitalism” (p. 7). Theorizing this relationship from

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Rethinking Capitalism, the State, and Black Politics from the Global South

Camilla A. Hawthorne — 2026-06-30T05:00:00Z

Ruptures in the Afterlife of the Apartheid City by Yousuf Al‑Bulushi examines the persistence of segregation, precarity, and anti-Black violence in post-Apartheid South Africa. It also analyzes a prominent social movement, the Durban-based Abahlali baseMjondolo, and its members' struggle for housing, dignity, and basic survival.
Thinking with geographically situated concepts
Yousuf Al‑Bulushi's Ruptures in the Afterlife of the Apartheid City (2024) is a richly textured ethnography that can

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Thinking with Abahlali: The Local State, Solidarity, and Research

Yousuf Al-Bulushi — 2026-06-30T05:00:00Z

Ruptures in the Afterlife of the Apartheid City by Yousuf Al‑Bulushi examines the persistence of segregation, precarity, and anti-Black violence in post-Apartheid South Africa. It also analyzes a prominent social movement, the Durban-based Abahlali baseMjondolo, and its members' struggle for housing, dignity, and basic survival.
Author response by Yousuf Al‑Bulushi
The (local) state and movements
Everything in South Africa comes back to the land question. The largest landowner in Durban

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Urban Racial Regimes, Development, and the Black Radical Tradition in South Africa

Alex Loftus — 2026-06-30T05:00:00Z

Ruptures in the Afterlife of the Apartheid City by Yousuf Al‑Bulushi examines the persistence of segregation, precarity, and anti-Black violence in post-Apartheid South Africa. It also analyzes a prominent social movement, the Durban-based Abahlali baseMjondolo, and its members' struggle for housing, dignity, and basic survival.
At the heart of Ruptures in the Afterlife of the Apartheid City is Yousuf Al‑Bulushi's claim that “any attempt to grapple with the conditions of urban politics,

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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. Disrupting 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