Aims and Scope

Metropolitan areas are the places of economic, political and social processes which transform their functioning and re-structure their organisation. The globalisation of the economy, political decentralisation, processes of sub-continental integration (European Union, NAFTA, etc.), the deregulation and privatisation of public services, the old and new forms of social segregation, territorial dynamics, social and cultural, ethnical and religious differentiations, are indeed processes which are modifying the basis on which modern societies have been built and shaped.

What is at stake in Metropolitan areas has to do with the social, political and economic organisation of our societies, our relation with nature, with citizenship. As such they are crossed by the same contradictions, the same questioning about the future of today’s societies, notably their capacity for political guidance and management.

To study Metropolitan areas means to put into question  and to analyse the structuring trends which are leading us to question the social, economic and political mechanisms which have been at the basis of “our life in common”. As such, Metropolitan areas have become the places where modernity is being transformed, where institutions are being criticised, where collective identity, hegemonic representation of roles, positions, functions of metropolitan players are being contested and challenged.

At the same time, this de-constructive process is forcing us to innovate, to imagine new social bindings, new forms of solidarity, new relations between the various spaces and scales of the city, new mechanisms to co-ordinate public policies. This double de-construction/re-construction process is at the core of the theoretical and empirical debate of the Journal, Métropoles.

Métropoles is an on-line review which publishes 3 issues per year. It wants to be at the cross-roads of scientific research of most social sciences concerned with the urban and metropolitan fact. Métropoles is not a one-discipline journal but a thematic one. It aims at the presentation of the most significant and original research to the international academic audience, research produced by traditional disciplines such as geography, sociology, political science or economics but also by disciplines which have approached the urban question more recently such as Law or History. It obviously welcomes with great interest works produced in the field of urban studies and planning.

Métropoles is a journal which favors original articles and scientific products with an international dimension and/or a strong comparative focus because it aims at becoming a place of debate on the future of urban society which can only take place through the analysis of transversal and transnational topics.

Articles published in Métropoles will be in French and English. However, the journal accepts genuine articles written in the most important European languages (French, German, Italian, Spanish). Once submitted and approved by the editorial committee, the final version must be translated into either French or English at the authors’cost.