Many on the left have laid the blame for defeat at the door of Brexit. It’s imperative that we also examine why Brexit became such a central issue and why the left was incapable of addressing it. This failure to address Brexit in part stems...

The outcome of the municipal elections held on 10 June 2018  held in Mesina marked the end of Renato Accoriniti’s stretch in office and shut the City Council’s door on his three connected party lists, including Cambiamo Messina dal Basso (CMdB) – Messina’s new municipalist...

In 2015, a wave of social movements lifted left-wing mayors to power in Spain. Their experience in office shows the importance of linking institutional power to bottom-up mobilization. Fearless Cities, a recent book produced by BenComú activists, has sought to draw wider lessons from these...

In 2015, a new cycle of struggles for democratic governance unfolded at the level of the city. One such municipal movement and platform is Barcelona en Comú. Pioneering new ways and words for approaching the city as common(s), Barcelona en Comú opens possibilities for a...

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

Elected officials and environmental activists mobilised in Grenoble in the 1980s and 1990s to prove that corruption was involved in many deals, and set up an alternative, municipal entity to take back and run the water utility. Remunicipalisation took place in 2001, and opened the...

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

Given “new municipalist’s” aspirations towards the transformation of the municipal state, how might state theory inform research and practice on new municipalism going forward? This is the question with which Bertie Russell concludes his paper which focuses on municipalist initiative Barcelona En Comú’s endeavours towards...

Housing in London is a miserable experience for many, and it is most miserable of all for private renters. But London Renters’ Union has arrived! The article explains how the union works to transform individual difficulties into a collective struggle, which are the strategies, how...

On Sunday the 28th of June, voters across France went to the polls to decide the municipal governments of 4.820 communes, including all of the country’s largest cities. Looking beneath the surface, all these victories were undergirded by widely differing political constellations. Despite a few...

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...

Hilary Wainwright talks to Jo Littler. Hilary Wainwright discusses municipalism and its relationship to feminism, past and present. She discusses how the women’s liberation movement and in particular its creation of collective childcare produced a form of prefigurative politics which also opened up the possibilities...