city

This article presents a portrait of the city of Wuhan, which has been at the center of the news since the appearance of Covid-19, and discusses the experience of lockdown as recounted by its ordinary inhabitants, mixing suffering, despair, indignation and spirit of solidarity.

Uber, Waze, Airbnb… The algorithms that control these platforms are based on an optimisation of the service provided to the user rather than any collective, political or moral norms. The accusations against these algorithms expose the way technical architectures implicitly govern our lives.

Multinationals are not the only actors in the globalised world. Globalisation is also apparent in less visible forms of exchange that take place in spaces usually held as marginal. Armelle Choplin and Olivier Pliez focus our attention on this trade in minor mode.

Public policies often encourage gentrification in the name of social mix, among other arguments. In urban research, however, this type of discourse is the subject of intense criticism.

The question of rising inequalities in the United States is widely discussed, but what reality do they entail? Taking the example of San Francisco, this article casts a new light on the way to measure urban inequalities and to understand them.

To live in New Orleans after Katrina is to witness the sweeping incursion of neoliberal policy in the guise of redevelopment and “resilience.” Crisis has worked as a lever for gentrification and intensified segregation. A closer look at the city’s development is instructive, for it might very well be the model for urban policies in places as different as New York, Cleveland or Detroit.

Much confusion has arisen in recent urban policy discussions in France about the importance of “empowerment”. To reduce this confusion, and to see more clearly the relevance of American experience to France, Julien Talpin points out the basic difference between community development and community organizing, and explores the latter in a field study in Los Angeles. The difference between the two can be subtle, but familiarity with it is nevertheless indispensable for designing and putting into place participation by neighbourhood residents.

Recent social movements in Brazil, characterized by diffuse claims and a diversity of actors, should not be solely interpreted as reactions to the overwhelming cost of organizing the 2014 World Cup. This article emphasizes the elitist nature and the inefficiency of recent urban policy.

What if social mix was not always the best way to promote equality and social justice? Éric Charmes argues in favour of a pragmatic approach to diversity, and is not afraid of challenging some of our most deep-seated ideas about education, housing or urban policy. But how can we live together if public spaces are being increasingly restricted? Let the debate begin.

Elijah Anderson focuses on the black ghetto as a major source of racial stereotypes and discrimination, and explains how it operates within the framework of changing race relations.

During the first decade of the 2000s, urban policy in France and Great Britain was granted unprecedented budgetary and political support, exceeding, at last, the token sums it had previously received. At present, it is possible to compare the results of the policies pursued in both countries.

Is there not a contradiction between the aims of sustainable urban development, which inflates the cost of housing, and the requirements of fairness in access to housing? Analysing the situation in France and comparing it to neighbouring European countries, Vincent Renard provides answers to this question.

During the Christmas season, Books and Ideas offers a selection of reviews and essays that tackle the subject of cities and the issues they raise as complex centers of urban life: how could we live better in them? How to reduce the inequalities they create? Can they become more sustainable? The following texts cast a new light on all of these questions.

The notion of a creative class has been used to shape public policies promoting urban growth by building infrastructures and developing amenities that are likely to attract the ”creative workers”. And yet this hypothesis does not hold up, as the results of a European study show. Developing education and infrastructures that can serve the population as a whole may be a much more productive strategy.

Gated communities are usually portrayed as ghettos in which the rich choose to seclude themselves out of fear of others and an exacerbated desire for security. According to Eric Charmes, this assessment ought to be more nuanced: many of the criticisms directed at gated communities are ill founded.

The attention given today to the armed uprising in Syria must not conceal the fact that there also exists a peaceful revolutionary dynamic, which is deeply rooted in society. The new generations, mainly urban and more educated than their parents, are at the forefront of a movement of political contestation that is trying to occupy public space through various means.

Focusing on the two cases of megaregions and global cities, sociologist Saskia Sassen explores how a more equitable distribution of benefits can be reached at the level of great urban conurbations. She calls for new analytical tools to envisage self-sufficiency without exclusion, stimulation without destruction and globalization without annihilation of diversity.

In their discussion of crime and the best ways to curb it, French politicians have relied on a crude opposition between “the culture of results” and neighborhood policing, a doctrine whose American origins they seem to ignore: for sociologist Fabien Jobard, more than creating a new force, reforming the police implies better coordinating between central and local authorities.

Throughout the 1970s, New York’s alternative spaces appeared through the spontaneous initiatives of avant-garde artists whose wish was to emancipate art from the institutional and commercial pressures of the art world. The use of decaying urban spaces was thus one of the main characteristics of these spaces. Most of them have disappeared, others have been assimilated by the commercial or institutional art systems.