One year ago last month, part of a Delhi slum was demolished; the demolition received almost no public attention. As politicians across India are speaking to the urban poor, asking for their votes and promising them secure housing, it is important to recall these events and the official attitude t
As Cities in Conflict goes on hiatus, I take a look back at the past fourteen months of publishing articles, film, photo-essays, mappings and infographics on the series, and comment on where urbanism is today: stuck between logics of saviourism and withdrawal.
While debates on sexual violence in India focus on the city, the experiences of women expunged to the city's fraught, anonymous margins are all too often excluded. Content warning: this article contains description of rape and sexual violence.
The proliferation of 'smart' solutions to a deluge of political and economic problems in today's cities may well serve to reinforce urban inequality at a time when new radical alternatives are in desperate need.
For more than six months, a small group of young, homeless mothers have been battling for decent and secure social housing for everyone. The mothers highlight an emerging problem facing thousands across the country: it's getting very hard to find a place to live. Today the women will hand in their
Rather than fighting over what gentrification is and what it's not, attention needs to paid to the actual experiences of urban change affecting communities across the world.
Are private cities the miracle cure for Honduras' surging violent crime, state violence and institutional disarray?
The Gezi park protests of June 2013 drew the attention of the world to a very urban conflict in Turkey's most populous city. Less covered, were the various micro-conflicts behind the scenes which led to eruption at Gezi.
In the face of rapid urban expansion and environmental degradation, the people of Usme, a periurban town of Bogotá, have mobilised to protect the local environment and strengthen community autonomy over the neighbourhood.
Watch: A short film exploring Mumbai's urban renewal as seen from Byculla, a multicultural inner-city neighbourhood symbolically and physically bypassed by road infastructure projects in Mumbai's race for global city status (13 mins).
Rather than submit to the noxious dynamics of Spain’s colossal underground economy, the migrant workers of Mount Zion built an informal city in the backdrop of 'brand' Barcelona. On the 24th July the community was forcibly evicted and a humanitarian crisis was born.
While the recent protests in São Paulo are made up of a cross-section of Paulite society 'waking up' to social injustice, it is young people from the urban periphery, those which have 'never slept' who dominate the demonstrations, demanding access, freedom and a new kind of urban living.
