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Metropolitics

Summer Reading 2021

The Editorial Board - 20 July 2021

The Editorial Board is now on summer break and will be posting new articles again from Tuesday, September 7, 2021. We’ve curated a selection of pieces published over the 2020/2021 academic year for summer reading.

Essays

Teacher Unionism and the Bargain for the Common Good

Claire Cahen - 6 July 2021
Rank-and-file teachers across the United States challenge their unions to embrace social democratic ideals, and...
Essays

We Have Been Here Before: Crisis, Response, and the Stasis of Urban Policy

Robert W. Lake - 29 June 2021
The disruptions produced by the global pandemic have spawned predictions of sweeping change that are unlikely to...
Focus
Series

Cities in the Age of Financialization

Martine Drozdz & Antoine Guironnet & Ludovic Halbert & translated by James Christopher Mizes & Oliver Waine - 18 June
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...
Essays

A Global Right-to-Housing Movement Versus Financialization

Jaime Jover - 23 June 2021
Financialization enables a wealthy transnational class to accumulate capital through land, enhances inequalities...
From the Field

Inciting Hopes for the Future: Civic Activism in London, Mumbai, and Paris Amid the Covid‑19 Crisis

Öznur Yardımcı & Josué Gimel & Khushboo Srivastava & Jitendra Borday - 8 June 2021
Ethnographic research in London, Mumbai, and Paris during Covid‑19 lockdowns reveals how civic associations filled...
Essays

What Is Land?

Sai Balakrishnan & Mattijs van Maasakkers - 1 June 2021
Market-oriented land-use instruments presume that is possible to delink development or pollution rights from a...
From the Field

Policing Social Housing in Paris: The Role of GPIS

Virginie Malochet & translated by Oliver Waine - 28 May 2021
Social landlords in France recently obtained the right to organize surveillance and security operations themselves...
From the Field

Covid‑19 in China: A Civil Society in the Making

Beiyi Hu - 18 May 2021
Beiyi Hu examines responses to Covid‑19 in China, focusing on civil-society efforts at the social, political, and...
Reviews

A Social Portrait of the Subprime Crisis

Camille François & translated by Oliver Waine - 14 May 2021
What have been the social and urban consequences of the subprime mortgage crisis, and what lessons can be learned...
Reviews

The Ancestors of Pandemic Pets and Vector Animals

Lisa Jean Moore - 11 May 2021
How has the place—and role—of animals in the city evolved over the last two centuries, and what bearing have these...
Reviews

Queens, New York: A Global Microcosm

Susie J. Tanenbaum - 4 May 2021
Susie J. Tanenbaum reviews Immigrant Crossroads: Globalization, Incorporation, and Placemaking in Queens, New York,...
From the Field

Holding Their Own: Gilets Jaunes’ Occupation of Public Space

Antoine Bernard de Raymond & Sylvain Bordiec & translated by Oliver Waine - 30 April 2021
The Gilets Jaunes (“Yellow Vests”) movement that emerged in France in the fall of 2018 was striking by dint of both...
View all articles

Series

Cities in the Age of Financialization
Contemporary Housing Struggles: Crises, Activism, and Critical Research
New York Tech Dossier: The Dark Side of New York’s Tech Economy
Progressive Mayors and Urban Social Movements
Land Rights in the Urban Global South
Climate Change and Social Change
Shrinking Cities
The Resurgence of Towers in European Cities
Children in the City

Featured

Debates

Covid-19, War, and Working-Class Neighborhoods

Pierre Gilbert & translated by Oliver Waine - 5 June 2020
The residents of France’s working-class neighborhoods, accused of exacerbating the coronavirus pandemic through...
Essays

Sentinel Territories: A New Concept for Looking at Environmental Change

David Blanchon & Frédéric Keck & François-Michel Le Tourneau & Stéphane Tonnelat & Adriana Zuniga-Teran - 8 May 2020
In this essay, the authors develop the concept of “sentinel territories,” or environments where humans can perceive...
From the Field

Who Cleans Paris? Garbage Collectors in Their Own Words

Coline Ferrant & Marie Mourad & translated by Oliver Waine - 21 June 2019
Who are Paris’s garbage collectors? Coline Ferrant and Marie Mourad highlight the diverse working conditions covered...
From the Field

Moving Inside City Limits: The Urban Mobility of Undocumented Youth

Stephen P. Ruszczyk - 4 June 2019
The urban context and public transportation shape how undocumented youths move within cities. In a comparison of...
Interviews

Teaching Art and the History of Tattoos at Rikers Island: An Interview with Tamara...

Lisa Jean Moore - 22 January 2019
An interview with Tamara Santibanez, who teaches art and the cultural and social history of tattoos to youth...
From the Field

Snowbirds’ Gift Economy in the Arizona Desert

David Frati - 7 November 2017
Each year, 200,000 retired people spend the winter in and around the small town of Quartzsite, Arizona, in the...

Other resources online

Suburban living the worst for carbon emissions – new research

The Conversation
Work, education, entertainment, or simply better connectivity all draw people to cities. By the end of this...

When New Lifestyles Disrupt Daily Mobility in England

Mobile Lives Forum
Thanks to new “remote” practices enabled by the development of teleworking and online shopping, we can perform our...

Autonomous Vehicles: What Role Can They Play in the Mobility...

Mobile Lives Forum
At a time when companies and governments are focusing all their energy on innovation, autonomous vehicles seem to...

Call for Papers | Southern Diaries: Mobilities Research in the...

Mobile Lives Forum
“Southern Diaries” is a space on the Mobile Lives Forum website that promotes mobilities research in the Global...

“Manuel de sociologie des mobilités géographiques”, by Leslie...

Mobile Lives Forum
While mobility in all its forms has been the subject of an increasing amount of research over the past 20 years,...

History of the Concept of Mobility

Mobile Lives Forum
Defining mobility is especially important because the term is highly polysemous. When geographers use the term...

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Journal supported by the Institut des Sciences Humaines et Sociales (Institute of Human and Social Sciences) of the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS)

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