Radical municipal politics in Latin America since the 1990s
Gianpaolo Baiocchi offers a historical overview of what he terms Radical Cities in Latin America and draws out some lessons from the past 30 years. Comparing these experiences to municipal politics in Europe and elsewhere, he highlights the distinctive features and charts the ups and…
Cities of dignity: Urban transformations around the world
One of the main challenges that strategies for social-ecological transformation are facing today is the fact that a majority of the world population lives in cities, which can be considered structurally unsustainable spaces. It is thus crucial to discuss how cities can be transformed from…
Radical cities in Latin America: Past and present
Even before Hugo Chávez and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva rose to national power and kicked off discussions of a Pink Tide, scholars and activists celebrated the municipal alternative in Latin America, where Porto Alegre’s participatory budgeting and El Alto’s cooperatives set the horizon of…
Rebel cities, 1: “Marielle Franco presente!”
First of a series of articles on new municipalism, this piece focuses on the trajectory and work of Marielle Franco, a Brazilian feminist activist known for her defence of human rights and her struggle against the many threats posed to them in Rio de Janeiro….
Pacifying the neighborhood
Until relatively recently, the status quo in the cities of the Global South vacillated between neglect and persecution of the poor. In the past decade, however, we have seen a paradigm shift in urban policy, and cities in Brazil, Colombia and elsewhere are pioneering new…