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From the Field

The Spectacle of Reuse: Recirculating Urban Salvage at Pittsburgh’s Construction Junction

Susan M. Ross - 16 May 2022

Susan M. Ross examines a building-materials reuse center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, arguing that it is an important space for encouraging the reuse of materials, revealing material flows that are usually hidden, and promoting local social good.

From the Field

The Professionalization of Migrant Assistance in Tunisia

Camille Cassarini & translated by Oliver Waine - 15 April 2022
In Tunisia, the management of sub-Sahran migration has in recent years become a new sector of employment. Camille...
Terrains

“Welcomed with Closed Arms”: The Everyday Abandonment of Asylum Seekers in Marseille

Béatrice Mésini & Assaf Dahdah & translated by Oliver Waine - 1 April 2022
Asylum policies in France are torn between welcoming and dissuasive measures, and appear ambivalent. Béatrice Mesini...
Focus
Series

Urban Wastes, Present and Future

Lily Baum Pollans - 16 May
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, local management of waste, its environmental impacts, and forms of social justice it gives rise to. ▼ Jump to the list of articles in this series ▼...
From the Field

The Politics of Urban Heritage-Making in the Yongqingfang Redevelopment Project in Guangzhou, China

Yimeng Yang - 29 March 2022
Yimeng Yang uses the case of a redevelopment project in Guangzhou, China, to interrogate heritage-led urban...
Terrains

The Everyday Realities of Marriage Migration

Laura Odasso & translated by Oliver Waine - 18 March 2022
If unions between nationals from Global North countries and foreigners are frequent, their marriages are often met...
Terrains

A “Migration Crisis”? The Myths and Realities of France’s Immigration Figures

Camille Gourdeau & translated by Oliver Waine - 11 March 2022
Is France experiencing a “migration crisis”? Based on a statistical analysis of immigration figures, Camille Gourdeau...
From the Field

The Promises and Realities of Data-Driven Community Development

Austin Harrison - 22 February 2022
Tennessee nonprofit Innovate Memphis has spent nearly a decade designing the Memphis Property Hub, a public data...
From the Field

Refugee Encampment on Europe’s Borders

Marie Bassi & translated by Oliver Waine - 4 February 2022
Much media attention on the issue of migration is focused on attempts to cross the Mediterranean Sea and the often...
Reviews

Reconsidering Wasteways from Boston to Seattle

Lisa Jean Moore - 1 February 2022
Throughout the Covid‑19 pandemic, with disposable masks and endless testing, garbage proliferates. It is extremely...
Reviews

(Re)Constructing Inequality: Community Development in Public and Private

Claire Dunning - 14 December 2021
Claire Dunning reviews Jeremy R. Levine’s new book, Constructing Community, an ethnographic study of community...
Interviews

Migration and Inequalities: The Importance of Social Class

Garance Clément & Claire Gellereau & Hélène Steinmetz & Anne-Catherine Wagner & translated by Oliver Waine - 19 November 2021
Since the 1990s, Anne-Catherine Wagner’s research has focused on migrants from the most affluent classes in society....
From the Field

Double Jeopardy for Single-Parent Families: When Housing Conditions and Lockdown Collide

Laure Crepin & Fanny Bugeja-Bloch & translated by Oliver Waine - 5 November 2021
Single-parent families are among those households most affected by economic precarity and the current health...
View all articles

Series

Urban Wastes, Present and Future
New York Dossier: The Food Industry Faces the Covid‑19 Pandemic
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

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

Cycles of Violence: Analysing Media Discourse in the Newspaper...

Mobile Lives Forum
How are cyclist and pedestrian deaths depicted in newspaper reports, and how do these reports help shape...

Lahti: The First Carbon-Rationing Experiment Applied to Local...

Mobile Lives Forum
The city of Lahti in Finland was the first to experiment with a carbon-trading scheme among its inhabitants to...

Is Rationing Carbon for Travel a Fair, Efficient, and Realistic...

Mobile Lives Forum
In the wake of the pandemic, a carbon tax at Europe’s borders is now on the agenda, but a domestic version for...

Reducing Carbon-Emitting Travel: A Factor of Social Cohesion and...

Mobile Lives Forum
As part of France’s Mission on the Future of the Economic Model of Public Transportation, commissioned by the French...

Strasbourg, An Example of a Cycling City

Mobile Lives Forum
Strasbourg is the leading city for cycling in France and a constant source of inspiration for all French cities...

The Trinity of Walking, Cycling and Public Transportation Must Be...

Mobile Lives Forum
While emissions from the transportation sector remain at a very high level, all hopes are currently pinned on the...

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Centre national de recherche scientifique
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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