Metropolitics

Post-Covid Mobilities: A Greener World for Tomorrow?

2026-01-13T06:00:00Z

Against the backdrop of the growing climate emergency, Covid-19 radically altered the way mobility is organized. But have the adaptations observed during the pandemic proved to be sustainable? In this series of articles, Metropolitics and the Mobile Lives Forum have joined forces to investigate our changing mobility habits.
---- ▼ Jump to the list of articles in this series ▼ Over the past 20 years, public policies have set ambitious targets to reduce carbon emissions related to mobility,

- Series / Covid-19, public policy, mobility, practices, ecological transition, climate change, lifestyles

Provincializing the “Real‑Estate Turn”

Sai Balakrishnan & Llerena Guiu Searle — 2025-11-07T06:00:00Z

The papers in this collection “think against” the concept of real estate, starting with—and generating—grounded questions about particular places.
---- ▼ Jump to the list of articles in this series ▼ Standing in front of Trump Tower's gold and bronze facade in Lower Parel Mumbai (formerly Bombay), real estate may seem an inevitably global phenomenon. This sleek, American-style building—part of a gated complex with pools, gyms, gardens, and other upscale amenities—has come up in a district

- Series / Johannesburg, Pretoria, Chennai, Mumbai, United States, India, Southeast Asia, Asia, Africa, real-estate turn, real estate, South Africa

Horizons in the Housing Struggle

Jaime Jover & Kristen Hackett — 2025-02-14T06:00:00Z

We are living through a polycrisis, a multidimensional, interlinked series of capitalism's structural problems emerging worldwide. Unfolding genocides, wars and armed conflicts, Western democratic models in crisis and fascism on the rise, labor struggles increasing, climate change and related disasters growing, and the looming environmental collapse… The list is long and illustrates the ongoing and irresoluble conflict between capital and life. Even though it might not have attracted much

- Series / housing, right to housing, affordable housing, housing crisis, housing policy, housing justice, public housing, rental housing, social housing

Black Power and Black Self-Determination in a New Time and New Spaces

Akira Drake Rodriguez & James DeFilippis — 2023-10-31T06:00:00Z

Black Power organizing in cities in the United States and around the world has a long history. This special series of articles focuses on efforts for Black political and economic power in the contemporary period, while drawing upon the efforts of those who have come before.
---- ▼ Jump to the list of articles in this series ▼ There is a long history of Black Power organizing in cities in the United States and around the world. While the language of Black Power is sometimes limited to a

- Series / Movement for Black Lives, Black politics, Black Power

Urban Wastes, Present and Future

Lily Baum Pollans — 2022-04-29T05:00:00Z

Lily Pollans guest-edits this series for Metropolitics that focuses on the various ways in which waste is part of the urban environment—how waste produces urban space, the local management of waste, its environmental impacts, and the forms of social justice it gives rise to.
---- ▼ Jump to the list of articles in this series ▼ All cities are made, one way or another, from waste. Some cities, like the coastal cities of the northeastern United States, are literally constructed on land conjured

- Series / waste, waste management, space, production of the city, environment

New York Dossier: The Food Industry Faces the Covid‑19 Pandemic

Sharon Zukin — 2021-09-14T05:00:00Z

Metropolitics is pleased to present the second dossier coordinated by faculty and students in the PhD program in sociology at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY), which explore New York City–specific issues. This dossier, comprising four articles, examines New York City's food industry in the face of the Covid‑19 pandemic. Sharon Zukin introduces the series, with articles by Thomas R. Chung, Nga Than, and Ivana Mellers to follow.
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- Series / food, food culture, Covid-19, coronavirus, food industry, New York, United States

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

Contemporary Housing Struggles: Crises, Activism, and Critical Research

Joshua Akers — 2021-03-12T07:00:00Z

In this series, Metropolitics focuses on the intersection of organizing, technology, politics, and policy in urban rental housing struggles. It seeks to place the increasing salience of contemporary housing struggles in the context of the transformation of urban housing markets following the financial crisis and the additional precarity induced by Covid‑19.
---- ▼ Jump to the list of articles ▼ The US federal eviction moratorium will expire at the end of March. The original moratorium, issued

- Series / housing, activism, community organizing, Covid-19, crisis, financial crisis, housing crisis, coronavirus

New York Tech Dossier: The Dark Side of New York's Tech Economy

Sharon Zukin — 2020-01-07T07:00:00Z

Metropolitics is pleased to present the first of a series of dossiers coordinated by faculty and students in the PhD program in sociology at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. These dossiers explore New York City-specific issues. The first dossier, comprising three articles, examines New York's tech economy; others will follow. The first article in this dossier, by Sharon Zukin, will be followed by articles by Joanna Dressel and Max Papadantonakis.
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- Series

Progressive Mayors and Urban Social Movements

Akira Drake Rodriguez & James DeFilippis & John Mollenkopf — 2018-09-11T05:00:00Z

The challenges of implementing progressive urban agendas are both structural and political in nature. This series explores these long-standing tensions within the contemporary contexts of growing metropolitan inequality, increasingly fractured political and cultural divides, and social movements in response to these changes.
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Creating an urban governing coalition that vigorously pursues public policies that reduce inequalities in income

- Series