This special issue, for the tenth anniversary of the journal Métropoles, takes a look back at urban studies in France. It also opens new research perspectives and suggests promising fieldwork for those interested in urban and metropolitan phenomena.

In the new "Translating and Introducing" issue, the introduction discusses the choice made by the editorial team to translate “What is modernoly?”. These translations have induced further discussions about geographies and languages of translation, operating epistemologies, as well as scales and modes of comparative analysis, within East Asia.

This issue of Tracés approaches land as a conceptual object, as a power issue, and as the site of many agencies and political possibilities. Ten contributions (translation, note, dialogue and original papers) from several disciplines shed light on a different side of the comeback of land, reinstating land as a major contemporary concern.

This volume traces the construction between 1848 and 1948 of a republican political and literary language both local and national at the same time, the confrontation with foreign republican models and counter models; the Italian republican discourses under the monarchy and fascism.