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The “Preston Model” and the modern politics municipal socialism
12th June 2018The local elections in 2018 showed some advances in the modification of the once-called ‘the oldest and toughest plutocracy in the world’, but the mixed results underscored the difficulty of mobilisation around a stale and sterile managerialist model of local government, as embodied in all...
From productive to kind cities: new urban planning that wants to change the world
23rd March 2020More than half the world’s population is currently living in cities, a proportion set to reach 70 per cent by the year 2050, more than enough reason to redesign our streets to fit everyone’s needs. The idea is to create streets that make all the...
Indigenous technologies “could change the way we design cities” says environmentalist Julia Watson
11th February 2020Indigenous communities are pioneers of technologies that offer solutions to climate change, according to designer and environmentalist Julia Watson. In her new book Watson argues that tribal communities, seen by many as primitive, are highly advanced when it comes to creating systems in symbiosis with...
New municipalism reloaded?
5th April 2019A presentation on the origins of municipalism and the currencies that formed the movement. Photo: Michael L.
Northern Uproar
27th October 2020For some activists on the Labour left, municipal politics may now offer a constructive outlet and an opportunity to play a useful political role by using town halls as a base for action and agitation, linking up with trade unions, tenants’ unions, social movements and...
Spain’s electoral rebellion: welcome to the post-party political era, part I
16th July 2015Madrid, Barcelona and other major Spanish cities are now governed by independent citizen fronts called “confluences.” Ahora Madrid, Barcelona en Comú, Zaragoza en Común and La Marea Atlántica (A Coruña) are confluences weaved together by the M15-Indignados social ecosystem. Other political parties, like Podemos and...
Showcase cities, agora cities. A vision of Barcelona built on solidarity
31st March 2020A globalised city like Barcelona can choose to either continue on its current path towards becoming a “showcase city” – one that is eager to please tourists and investors, or rebuild the city, basing it on the idea of an “agora” city – focussed on...
A democratic devolution underway in Barcelona: Barcelona en Comú
1st May 2015This paper seeks to outline the changes that enabled the citizen platform Barcelona en Comú (Catalan for “Barcelona in Common”) to win the elections in Barcelona in 2015, a victory that signaled a rupture in the status quo of Spanish politics. Although the citizen platform...
What makes an empty building in Naples a “common good”?
25th April 2017Naples was the first Italian city to establish a “Department of the Commons” and the first to change the municipal statute by inserting the “commons” as one of the interests to be protected and recognised as a fundamental right. This italian city is just one...
Barcelona launches 10-year plan to reclaim city streets from cars
11th November 2020Barcelona has launched an ambitious 10-year plan to reclaim the city’s streets from cars and cut down pollution with the creation of green spaces and public squares. The new plan seeks to augment the city’s chronic lack of public space and address its equally chronic...
Radical politics in an era of advanced capitalism
28th August 2011Defying all the theoretical predictions of the 1930s, capitalism has transformed itself from an economy surrounded by many precapitalist social and political formations into a society that itself has become “economized”. Is there a public realm that can become an arena for the interplay of...
Tenants’ unions: building dual power in the neighborhood
22nd December 2019For centuries, workers have organized themselves in order to collectively resist the oppressive and exploitative forces of capital. From the early 1900s to the current day, the most common form of worker organizing has been the labor union. With the rise of urbanization, over half...