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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...
#RavalVsBlackstone. The right to the city versus the finance-real estate-tourism complex
25th June 2020Barcelona has become one of the key targets – and victims – of the global tourism and property industry, spurred by financial firms such as Blackstone. But inhabitants and social movements are fighting back. Photo: Daniel Von Appen
How cities are leading the fight against climate change
27th September 2019City governments were an important source of environmental protection in the United States from the 1800s until well into the 1900s. However, since Congress passed a series of landmark environmental statutes in the 1970s, scholars have primarily equated environmental law with federal law. NYU Law...
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...
How COVID-19 will change the design of our cities
16th April 2020Over the years, our urban places have become denser – as they should. We need greater density to make transit efficient and promote the walkable and bikeable communities that we need to achieve our sustainability goals. But what our current crisis is teaching us is what...
Tenants of five Minneapolis buildings now own their homes. Here’s how they did it
15th July 2020A group of five famílies, fed up with the state of their houses, the repairs not being done thought they should be their own landlords. This group, dubbed the Corcoran Five, not only have been a major part of winning a landmark $18.5 million class-action...
Let’s talk about democracy. Real democracy
22nd December 2019Democracy may look like a street protest where anyone leads a chant. It may look like a union meeting voting to strike. It may look like a lengthy speech by an elder explaining the founding values of the community. It may be an “assembly of...
Why the municipal movement must be internationalist
21st December 2016The new municipalism incarnated by experiences like Barcelona en Comú has become a model of political transformation. A new hypothesis seeks to put the international context in the centre of municipal debates and municipalism in the centre of global debates. The conclusion reached is that...
New municipalism in London
1st March 2019London is a crucial site in the struggle for better local politics, because it is a city in which many people have been let down by the failures of traditional economic development. The traditional models are struggling to deliver social and economic outcomes that meet...
Switching off Spain’s electricity oligopoly. Three proposals to dismantle the corporate power of Spain’s electricity companies
25th June 2020In Spain, as in other countries, the electricity sector remains dominated by a handful of large companies, powerful enough to impose their interests and hinder the energy transition. Movements against energy poverty and green cooperatives show a path towards greater energy democracy, but a third...
Beyond the local trap: New municipalism and the rise of the Fearless Cities
25th February 2019Rather than essentialising cities as inherently progressive or democratic, the municipal is instead becoming framed as a “strategic front” for developing a transformative politics of scale. Given this critical awareness, this nascent movement demonstrates how local loyalties can be mobilised as part of a progressive...
Another municipal security policy is possible: The case of Barcelona
23rd November 2020In this interview Lucía Morale, advisor to the security department of Barcelona city council, about the specific features of the Catalan capital, explains why it is essential to build security policies that are both intersectional and global. She also tells us how, in the context...