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...

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...

The anti-advertising movement Résistance à l’Agression Publicitaire (Resistance to Advertising Aggression, or RAP) groups are across France, up from five in 2016. They work autonomously with tactics including pressuring politicians like the mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, who paused plans for new digital advertising boards...

New focus of protest has clearly emerged in France in these past years—bringing together Nuit Debout and the Gilets Jaunes, hospital and health care workers, pensioners and trade unionists, climate justice activists, Black Lives Matter activists. This locus has the attention of Macron, and of...

An interview with Dobrica Veselnovic, co-founder of Ne Da(vi)mo Beograd during the Our Common City conference held in Budapest (February 22 & 23, 2019). Part one:     Part two:

We can chart a new path forward by grounding that vision in the lessons learned from past struggles and an understanding of how hierarchy is the shared root of oppression. But this can all feel a bit intangible without clear examples. To get an idea of what...

Airbnb hosts, as they are known, are wringing their hands over the collapse of the travel industry and their loss of income, and many city authorities are rubbing theirs at the prospect of thousands of holiday lets returning to the traditional rental market. The Airbnb...

Barcelona is planning a major expansion of low-traffic zones, giving priority to pedestrians and cyclists to reduce pollution and provide green spaces. The work is part of a 10-year plan focusing on the central Eixample district of the Catalan capital, Mayor Ada Colau has announced....

Social ecology, as understood by Murray Bookchin and others, can offer a response to the challenges of climate change. The author describes the philosophy of social ecology and also its political strategy in order to reflect about its ability to overcome the limits of local...

Barcelona is deploying a new weapon in its quest to increase the city’s available rental housing: the power to force the sale of empty properties. The city’s housing department wrote to a number companies that collectively own 194 empty apartments, warning that if they haven’t...

A country or a society in crisis is not a “time of opportunities“ as we often hear when stock markets are translated into real life. Crises are thrilling times of resistance, but also desperate moments of destruction. The term PIGS started to be used more...

Many social movements have created municipalist platforms, run for municipal elections, were elected and are now trying to change the game of traditional representative democracy from the municipality. This paper primarily intends to capture the tensions and paradoxes generated by the adoption by these movements...