What municipalism and #FearlessCities could mean for New Zealand
Municipalism is evolving strongly in Spain and across Europe, as shown by the examples portrayed during the Fearless Cities encounter in Barcelona. While there is a need for democratic reform in New Zealand, the possibility of embracing municipalism as a tool for change would require…
Cities against the wall
The article analyses whether and how, two years into the first mandate, Spain’s Cities of Change jump from the streets to the institutions has helped advance the demands of the social movements from which these candidacies derived their legitimacy. Photo: Ann H
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…
The new municipal movements
The municipalist movement in the US today is like a seedling. It is small and delicate, fresh and brimming with potential. Although we often look for leftist leadership in big cities like New York City or Chicago, these new municipal leaders are rooted in relatively…
Bakur rising: democratic autonomy in Kurdistan
In recent years, following the collapse of the peace process between the Turkish state and the Kurdish freedom movement, the struggle for autonomy in the towns and cities of northern Kurdistan, or Bakur, has undergone a significant shift from a non-violent re-organization of social and…
From citizen platforms to Fearless Cities: Europe’s new municipalism
The growing momentum of local democratic initiatives seizing institutional power at a city level has great potential to address national and transnational political problems. In 2017 Barcelona hosted the Fearless Cities Summit, an international gathering which took important first steps in linking the new experiments…
Radical municipalism: The future we deserve
For many years the left has struggled with the question of how to bring our ideas, of equality, economic justice and human rights, to fruition. Murray Bookchin’s political trajectory is instructive for the argument that Debbie Bookchin makes in this article: that municipalism isn’t just…
Municipalism and the feminization of politics
The new municipalist agenda is proving its capacity to provide effective responses to the demands for greater democracy at the local level. Furthermore, there is another, complementary argument for municipalism: it has the potential to feminize politics in a way that political action at the…
Radical municipalism: Demanding the future
‘Municipal politics’ may raise new types of demands crucial in organising powerful social movements and improving material conditions, while orienting us towards new understandings of what is possible. Photo: Toni Cuenca