urban services

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

Sale of the Century: Chicago’s Infrastructure Deals and the Privatization State

Philip Ashton & Marc Doussard & Rachel Weber - 24 November 2020

Since 2004, the City of Chicago has been engaged in a new wave of infrastructure privatizations, selling concessions...

From the Field

Unlikely Inter-Class Cooperation in Urbanizing Rural Colombia

Sebastián F. Villamizar Santamaría - 25 February 2020

Sebastián F. Villamizar Santamaría examines a case of rural gentrification outside of Bogotá, Colombia, and shows how...

Debates

Private Infrastructure and Urban Government: How Vélib’ Veered Off Course in Paris

Maxime Huré & translated by Oliver Waine - 17 May 2019

When the city of Paris entrusted its decade-old bike-share service, Vélib’, to a new provider in January 2018,...

Essays

Electricity in War-Torn Aleppo: A New Form of Urban Management

Youssef Diab & Abboud Hajjar & translated by Oliver Waine - 23 November 2018

In Syria, electricity is one of the sectors most adversely affected by the war. New means of electricity production,...

From the Field

Rio de Janeiro: An (Inequitably) Connected City?

Francesca Pilo’ & translated by Oliver Waine - 21 September 2018

The tangled webs of electrical wires, a symbol of the favelas, are also the sign of an electricity service that...

From the Field

Shrinking Networks, Growing Solidarities? How to Design a New Social and Territorial Contract

Daniel Florentin - 27 September 2017

Utilities operators in a number of European cities, faced with significant reductions in consumption levels across...

Reviews

Cities transformed by hygienism: 100 years of local innovation

Sabine Barles & translated by Oliver Waine - 27 March 2015

Hygiene is a “battle”, and the “hygienist revolution” of the 19th and early 20th centuries transformed our urban...

Debates

Will local-government reform in London involve or abandon its citizens?

Martine Drozdz & translated by Oliver Waine - 3 July 2013

While the current financial crisis has compromised local authorities’ ability to deliver municipal services, the...

Reviews

Free public transport: from social experiment to political alternative?

Maxime Huré & translated by Oliver Waine - 20 March 2013

In a work combining storytelling and reflection, a local councillor and a philosopher analyse the policy of free...

Debates

From Vélib’ to Autolib’: private corporations’ involvement in urban mobility policy

Maxime Huré & translated by Oliver Waine - 25 April 2012

In December 2011 – four years after the launch of Vélib’ – Paris inaugurated Autolib’, the largest system of...

Debates

Water, sanitation, energy, waste: the dawn of the network-free city?

Sylvain Petitet & translated by Oliver Waine - 18 April 2012

Negative externalities, changes in society and technological innovation all call into question the industrial model...

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

Sale of the Century: Chicago’s Infrastructure Deals and the Privatization State

Unlikely Inter-Class Cooperation in Urbanizing Rural Colombia

Private Infrastructure and Urban Government: How Vélib’ Veered Off Course in Paris

Electricity in War-Torn Aleppo: A New Form of Urban Management

Rio de Janeiro: An (Inequitably) Connected City?

Shrinking Networks, Growing Solidarities? How to Design a New Social and Territorial Contract

Cities transformed by hygienism: 100 years of local innovation

Will local-government reform in London involve or abandon its citizens?

Free public transport: from social experiment to political alternative?

From Vélib’ to Autolib’: private corporations’ involvement in urban mobility policy

Water, sanitation, energy, waste: the dawn of the network-free city?

Series

Featured

Covid-19 Transformed New York’s Destination Food Markets

Moving Inside City Limits: The Urban Mobility of Undocumented Youth

Filming Ethnic Diversity in New York

Looking Inward, Across the Border

The Political Aesthetics of Drag

Disarm the Police

Other resources online

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

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

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

Geopolitics and Electric Vehicles: The Rise of Climate Protectionism

One Way to Fight Rising Food Prices: Public Grocery Stores

The Quiet Power of Car-Free Neighborhoods

Partners