Essential workers and their families have increasingly been forced out as Airbnb-style holiday rentals have taken over a third of Lisbon’s city centre properties, pushing up rental prices, hollowing out communities and threatening its unique character. Now the city wants to bring the people who...

The emergence of the new municipalist agenda coincides with the decline of labor unions. Unless they are incorporated, the working class will not be fully present in the definition and implementation of a new, radical political agenda. In order to become the essential part of...

For many people in Santiago de Chile, October 18, 2019 marked the beginning of a new reality, one which required adapting to the emerging culture of rebellion. In a time when even the most peaceful of marches are broken up with tear gas and water...

In 2015, the first Fearless Cities conference, hosted by Barcelona en Comú, became the starting point of a global municipalist movements that brings together a wide array of experiences with one thing in common: their will to promote the radicalization of democracy, and to do...

A radical change is taking place. Cities around Europe – through platforms, movements and international networks – are creating paths for citizens to participate in and influence politics directly. Joan Subirats, one of the founders of Barcelona’s municipalist platform Barcelona en Comú, discusses how cities...

From the fourth to the seventh of December activists from all over the world are getting together in Amsterdam to kick-start the local municipalist movement. The event is a 4-day festival with speeches, debates, workshops, Q & A sessions and neighbourhood assemblies. Commons Network has...

Universal healthcare, a green economy, affordable and sustainable housing, and much more: for many people, the Green New Deal sounds too good to be true at a time when trust in politicians has been eroded by too many empty promises. Aaron Vansintjan argues that the...

Even as revolutionary new technologies appear—with the potential to free our lives from drudgery and connect us to one another in ways we had never imagined possible—our undemocratic economy has deployed them as tools of disruption. Dreams of a post-scarcity technological future darken into one...

In the past decade there has been a rise of new politics that have stemmed from different political backgrounds and contexts, and although they sometimes differ significantly, each was a manifestation of the “specter of emancipation” that was haunting the world. However, this emancipatory push...

With the shutdown of businesses, schools and countless other institutions, millions of people are facing loss of income, housing and access to basic survival resources, including food. The need for self-organized infrastructures of mutual aid, care and resilience could not be clearer. In the coming...

After the first Fearless Cities summit that took place in Barcelona in 2017, we look back at the relevance, the challenges and  achievements that the municipalist movement is facing. As the author writes in this document, ‘behind these practices of muncipalism, a genuine refounding of...

Laura Flanders reports from Amsterdam at The Future is Public, a conference that brings together hundreds of organizers, scholars, and government officials who are working to democratize their municipal and national economies.   Photo: rompalli harish