Skip to main content

Metropolitics

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 planning and governance. As Oskar Steiner demonstrates, while the private firms that develop these tools often market them as a way to “let the city speak,” in practice they mostly serve as a vehicle to amplify and legitimize those companies’ own voices.

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...
Series

Post-Covid Mobilities: A Greener World for Tomorrow?

Thomas Évariste & Jean-Baptiste Frétigny & Anne Fuzier & Christophe Gay & Maxime Huré & Thomas Pfirsch - 13 January 2026
Against the backdrop of the growing climate emergency, Covid-19 radically altered the way mobility is organized. But...
Focus
Series

Provincializing the “Real‑Estate Turn”

Sai Balakrishnan & Llerena Guiu Searle - 7 November 2025
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...
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...
View all articles

Series

Post-Covid Mobilities: A Greener World for Tomorrow?
Provincializing the “Real‑Estate Turn”
Horizons in the Housing Struggle
Black Power and Black Self-Determination in a New Time and New Spaces
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

Featured

From the Field

Covid-19 Transformed New York’s Destination Food Markets

Ivana Mellers - 5 October 2021
Ivana Mellers analyzes how New York’s destination markets—key spaces of economic and social interactions—coped during...
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 New...
Reviews

Filming Ethnic Diversity in New York

Stéphane Tonnelat & translated by Christina Mitrakos - 21 October 2016
Frederick Wiseman’s fortieth documentary film, In Jackson Heights (2015), returns to an urban theme explored in...
From the Field

Looking Inward, Across the Border

Harel Shapira - 19 April 2016
In the constellation of anti-immigrant politics in the United States, groups like the Minutemen, civilians who patrol...
Essays

The Political Aesthetics of Drag

Shaka McGlotten - 13 October 2015
Drag, or the diverse art form and culture of performance that typically plays with gender and sex, is an integral...
Debates

Disarm the Police

Gregory Smithsimon - 29 September 2015
In the current political debates about discriminatory policing, there has been a lack of serious discussion of...

Other resources online

‘Exclusively for the elite’: why Mumbai’s new motorway is a symbol...

The Guardian
With 64% of the city’s residents relying on buses and trains so overloaded that up to 10 passengers die a day, anger...

In Somerset, I found glorious proof that the UK can build great...

The Guardian
It was life-affirming to meet the residents of Rainbow Way in Minehead. But so much still stands in the way of...

Say what you like about "Sadiq Khan’s no-go hellscape" – Britain’s...

The Guardian
To right-wing populists who try to portray the world in simple terms, places of fluidity and freedom will always be...

“Our hallway’s big enough to play football in!” The council housing...

The Guardian
Boasting two-sink kitchens, Tower Court in north London is tailored for the Haredi Jewish community – but its...

Saudi Arabia: How is Mobility Being Transformed in the Oil Kingdom?

Mobile Lives Forum
04 April 2025, by Aniss Mouad Mezoued The launch of the Riyadh metro in late November 2024 once again highlighted...

Transport for Suburbia: Beyond the Automobile Age (Paul Mees)

Mobile Lives Forum
27 March 2025, by Javier Caletrío Can suburbia avoid car dependence? Can low-density areas enjoy first-rate public...

Newsletter

Subscribe to the newsletter

Subscribe

Submit a paper

Contact the editors

Submit a paper
Centre national de recherche scientifique (CNRS)
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)

Partners