Metropolitics - Metropolitics

Reviews

Useful Transgressions: Informality, Power, and Urban Life in Ciudad del Este, Paraguay

Ryan Thomas Devlin - 17 February 2026

Urban informality has been theorized as a process operating at the edges and margins under capitalist urbanization....

From the Field

The Making of City Digital Twins: The Case of Dassault Systèmes

Oskar Steiner - 3 February 2026

With their origins in manufacturing and heavy industry, “digital twins” are increasingly being applied to urban...

Essays

Agrarian Fantasy, Settler Colonial Property, and the Making of Industrial Johannesburg

Renugan Raidoo - 20 January 2026

Some of the gated estates in and around Johannesburg and Pretoria sell residents a settler colonial fantasy of a...

Essays

On the Land Question in India: The Case of Sriperumbudur Industrial Region in Peri-Urban Chennai

V. Gajendran - 23 December 2025

Amidst intense demand for land, farmers near Chennai, India face dispossession by neglect. ---- Series:...

Essays

Unexpected Outcomes: Land Ceilings, Rent Control, and the Rise of Real Estate in Bombay

Nikhil Rao - 9 December 2025

Paradoxically, Mumbai’s neoliberal real-estate system has its origins in progressive legislation. ---- Series:...

Essays

Urban Public Transit: A Choice Between Two Models

Arnaud Passalacqua & Philippe Poinsot & translated by Oliver Waine - 2 December 2025

Public transportation has a decisive role to play in any meaningful ecological transition. And yet key players in the...

Essays

“The Apartment You Can Own with Pride”: Federally Insured Black Housing Cooperatives, 1950–1955

Nicholas Shatan - 25 November 2025

Postwar Black cooperatives insured by the federal government trouble the binary of public and private in housing...

Essays

Urban Theory and the Cold War: Reflections on the Political Economy of Urban Land and Real-Estate Development in Southeast Asia

Gavin Shatkin - 7 November 2025

The Cold War’s repressive politics of land and law still underpin the region’s contemporary struggles over land...

From the Field

An Unexpected Victory in the Fight to Save Philadelphia Chinatown

Andrew Lee - 14 October 2025

Grassroots efforts to counter gentrification-inducing megaprojects often fail as elected officials negotiate various...

From the Field

Producing Affordable Housing in West Africa: How States Respond to Demand and Local Realities

Mathilde Mouton & translated by Oliver Waine - 10 October 2025

Based on her consulting work in West Africa, Mathilde Mouton highlights the limitations of state-led social housing...

From the Field

The Emergence of Transnational Queer Organizing Across a Hardening US–Canada Border

Elizabeth Hessek - 30 September 2025

LGTBQ+ refugees in the United States not only face the violence of the nation’s immigration policy but are also...

Essays

Visible Minorities, Visible Risk: Toronto’s Unequal Eviction Burden

Prentiss Dantzler & Khalil Martin & Abigail Meza - 16 September 2025

In Toronto, who gets evicted isn’t random—it follows the city’s racial and economic divides. Canada’s data practices...

Reviews

Dakar, Portrait of a Capital City

Armelle Choplin - 12 September 2025

Dakar, métamorphoses d’une capitale, by architects Carole Diop and Xavier Ricou, takes readers on a journey through...

Metropolitics

Summer/Fall Reading 2025

The Editorial Board - 1 August 2025

The Editorial Board will be posting new articles again from early September. In the meantime, members of the...

Debates

Defunding Social Services

Brenden Beck - 15 July 2025

Cities around the United States are bracing for federal funding cuts to social services. Yet, as Brenden Beck...

From the Field

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

Amy Zhou - 8 July 2025

Community land trusts are one strategy to stem displacement due to real-estate speculation in Chinatowns across North...

Interviews

Unleashing Finance Capitalism in the City: An Interview with Isaac Rose, Author of The Rentier City

Jonathan Silver & Isaac Rose - 24 June 2025

Jonathan Silver interviews author and tenant organizer Isaac Rose about his book on housing financialization in...

Essays

Settling on the Financial Periphery: Alternative Housing Practices in Hegang, China

Yimeng Yang - 17 June 2025

Can valuing a home for its use value constitute a form of resistance to housing financialization? Considering the...

Essays

Planning in the Age of Political Populism: Kolkata’s Tram Debate

Tathagata Chatterji - 10 June 2025

Using the case of Kolkata’s tram system, Tathagata Chatterji shows how two distinct political strategies—populism and...

From the Field

Istanbul as a Showcase of AKP’s Electoral Techno-Nationalism

Yohanan Benhaïm & translated by Oliver Waine - 3 June 2025

In Turkey, President Tayyip Erdoğan was re-elected for a third term in May 2023. Yohanan Benhaïm looks back on the...

From the Field

Integration or Chainsaw: Some Reflections on the Policies of Cruelty in Milei’s Argentina Based on the ReNaBaP Case | Integración o motosierra: Reflexiones sobre las políticas de crueldad en la Argentina de Milei a partir del caso ReNaBaP

Facundo A. Corti - 20 May 2025

Policy efforts in Argentina to reduce housing inequality have been met with Milei’s chainsaw. Facundo A. Corti shows...

Debates

The Myth of Urban Exodus from Paris: Mobility in Times of Health Crisis

Nadine Cattan & Olivier Telle & Céline Vacchiani-Marcuzzo & Joséphin Béraud & Ludovic Chalonge & translated by Oliver Waine - 2 May 2025

The rushed departures of city dwellers to the countryside ahead of the first Covid‑19 lockdown, in spring 2020,...

From the Field

Argentina: The Rental Issue in the Milei Era | Argentina: la problemática del alquiler en la era Milei

Nicolás A. Trivi - 29 April 2025

In Argentina, the reforms promoted by the libertarian government represent an offensive of capital on labor. Nicolás...

From the Field

Massive Evictions and Housing Crisis in Chile

Santiago Castillo Braithwaite - 15 April 2025

In the midst of a deep housing crisis, more than 100,000 families in Chile are currently living in informal...

From the Field

The Uruguayan Housing Cooperatives: The Miracle of the “Commons” | Las cooperativas de vivienda uruguayas. El milagro de los “comunes”

Benjamín Nahoum - 8 April 2025

Benjamín Nahoum presents the case of the Uruguayan cooperative movement that started in the 1960s. Through the years,...

Essays

Using Cross-Class Politics to Challenge Urban Housing Inequality in Islamabad, Pakistan

Hafsah Siddiqui - 1 April 2025

When redevelopment schemes target a city’s poor for removal to provide opportunities for the privileged, how can poor...

From the Field

Geolocation Among Teenage Peers: Between Play, Control, and Gendered Vulnerability

Yann Bruna & translated by Oliver Waine - 28 March 2025

Geolocation practices among teenagers are ambivalent, combining aspects of both play and surveillance. Yann Bruna...

From the Field

Large-Scale Farming in the Face of Competing Land Uses in Abidjan District, Côte d’Ivoire

Adjoba Marthe Koffi-Didia & translated by Oliver Waine - 21 March 2025

To the west of Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire’s largest city, large farming operations—owned by multinational companies...

From the Field

A Crisis of Habitation in LA’s Last Remaining Wetland

Deike Peters & Sam Lutzker - 18 March 2025

As housing crises become increasingly entangled with environmental crises, the question of just outcomes requires...

Reviews

Life, Loss, and Cooperative Housing in New York

Christian Anderson - 11 March 2025

What forms of urban living, sociality, and security are enabled by social housing? At once memoir and...

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