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

“Build Canada Homes” Will Fail Without Confronting Anti-Black Racism

Prentiss Dantzler — 2026-04-28T05:00:00Z

Canada's new housing agency risks repeating the same injustices that produced today's uneven housing crisis unless it embeds anti-racist frameworks in its development plans.
When the federal government launched Build Canada Homes (BCH) in the fall of 2025, it promised a bold solution to the housing shortage: build faster, build smarter, and finally close the supply gap. The urgency is clear. According to the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, Canada must double new housing starts from

- Essays / housing, affordable housing, housing policy, racism, Canada, North America, housing crisis, inequalities

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

An Interview with Marc Serra Solé: Barcelona's Citizens Forge Solidarities Through the State

Celina Su — 2026-04-07T05:00:00Z

How might progressive city administrations build the power they need for real policy wins? Celina Su gives us a preview of her book Budget Justice: On Building Grassroots Politics and Solidarities, where she interviews Marc Serra Solé, of Barcelona en Comú, about their experiment with “new municipalism,” the centrality of participatory democracy in shaping and forwarding their robust affordability agenda, what happened when they shifted from building a social movement to governing inside City

- Interviews

CALL FOR PAPERS | Governing Repair: The Role of Cities and States in Reparations Policy

2026-03-24T06:00:00Z

The Editorial Board is issuing a call for papers for a forthcoming special series in Metropolitics titled “Governing Repair: The Role of Cities and States in Reparations Policy” and edited by Prentiss A. Dantzler, Rashad Williams, and Akira Drake Rodriguez. We welcome abstract submissions through June 1, 2026.
It's been over a decade since Ta‑Nehisi Coates published “The Case for Reparations” in The Atlantic. In his article, Coates (2014) vividly recounts the harsh realities of housing

- Infos/Contact / Focus, call for papers

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

What Is Worth Asking About Our Cities?

Naomi Adiv & Anant Maringanti & Harikrishnan Sasikumar — 2026-03-03T06:00:00Z

What is the state of urban theory from the Global South and how can local research simultaneously advance scholarly research and be a vehicle for advocacy? Dr. Naomi Adiv and Dr. Hari Sasikumar explore these questions in their conversation with Anant Maringanti.
A central guiding idea of our work at Metropolitics is to share the knowledge, concepts and practices that academic and activist scholars generate in contemporary cities. In addition to making scholarship public, the journal is

- Interviews / Global South, India, urbanism, Southern urbanism, Hyderabad

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