Yavor Tarinski is an independent researcher and activist whose publications and talks center on the possibilities of direct democracy and commoning practices as an alternative to the current social imaginary. In this interview with Eve Olney he discusses some of the ideas regarding where direct...

The paper examines the successes, limitations and possibilities of citizen platforms after their first months in power in cities across Spain. Photo: Pixabay

What is New Municipalism? Matthew Thompson, author of the article What’s so new about new municipalism? published in February 2020, walks us through the evolution of the concept of new municipalism starting from its origins, passing through international municipalism as a way of the sharing...

Four years after the first wave of municipalist governments in Spain, many of the so-called cities of change have failed to renew the results obtained in the elections that placed them in power. While the Catalan independence movement has radically changed the political landscape, thus...

In spite of the tools that there are available nowadays to plan the city, critical imagination of cities is especially weeks. The author describes and contrasts what he calls “the closed system” of architecture and society that he connects to Le Corbusier with “the open...

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...

For over 50 years, one of the largest open air landfills in Europe has been poisoning the soil and air of Belgrade suburbs. French water and waste management giant Suez has signed a major contract with the leaders of the Serbian capital to build a...

The coronavirus pandemic has already changed many aspects of life. How we travel, how we work and how we live. Experts warn it may even change how some of our cities will look and operate in the future. Photo: Zoltan Tasi    

Concerned by the transition their cities out of the crisis caused by COVID-19 looking for a social and solidarity way out, the mayors of Amsterdam, Milan, Barcelona and Paris speak out and share their considerations with the European institutions. Photo: Jp Valery

The importance of care and collective services and its often poorly treated workers has been visible to all during the confinement periods. The virus has often struck harder in poorer neighbourhoods, where living conditions in cramped apartments did not allow for social distancing, and where...

Brandon King, Founding Member of Cooperation Jackson, shares his experiences helping conceive and build strategies and social structures that reveal that we can put our shoulders to the wheel and build a truly just and sustainable future. Photo: Elizabeth Lies

How can we make our organisations more democratic? How can we make our work and activism more inclusive in practice? How can we, as activists, practitioners, educators, citizens, members of movements and organisations ensure that we implement feminist values at work and in our everyday...