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The right to the city

July-August 2019, Issue 520

Cities can be equal parts seductive and threatening. Seductive in their promises to the individual of being part of something bigger; of upward mobility; of available sanctums of human creativity and culture; of a menu for varied appetites and a space for everyone (especially sexual minorities). Threatening in their usually elevated criminality; their dispersal of community; their naked expressions of rat race and money power as the baselines for survival; their lack of space for everyone (especially those on lower incomes).

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Included in this issue

Protecting the ‘lungs of West Africa’

Palm-oil corporations are threatening the rich rainforests Liberians depend on. Veronique Mistiaen hears from environmental...

Is pacifism appropriate for today’s world?

Can pacifism work as a strategy against violence and injustice? Tim Gee and Rahila Gupta tussle it out.

Time is money

Lack of punctuality in India is sometimes given a ‘spiritual’ spin by Western observers, but underneath this comic veneer is a...

Queer cities

The city can provide cover and anonymity to those who seek it, explains David Nnanna Ikpo.

Check your passport privilege

Nanjala Nyabola explains the weighty, 'anti-citizen' African bureaucracies that have their origins in the colonial period.

Shoot first, ask questions later

In Rio de Janeiro, even bystanders are falling victim to brutal policing tactics, reports Leonardo Sakamoto.

What if... we worked less?

Aidan Harper makes the case for a new politics of time.

Letter from Dhaka: The bangle seller

Despite having bought colourful bangles for over a decade, Parsa Sanjana Sajid wonders who makes them and at what cost.

Peterloo - witnesses to a massacre

The gruesome Peterloo massacre, which took place in Manchester in 1819, is retold in graphic form by Polyp.

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