If we want to create a democratic culture that invites people in, though, we can’t restrict our thinking only to big-P “Politics” as represented by elections, Westminster, and political parties. Participatory and collaborative decision making happens in all sorts of settings and places.We need a...

Strongly affected by deindustrialisation, and more recently by austerity policies imposed on councils following the financial crisis, Preston, in the north of England, has chosen to no longer depend on external investors for its “development” and radically reorient its public procurement to favour local economic...

Many people throughout the United States have been inspired by the gains of the social movements in Jackson over the past decade. And many have been extremely confused and disappointed by the apparent “internal” strife that has erupted within and between factions of the progressive...

The recently published Global Urban Competitiveness Report argues that advanced cities have driven the world’s progress and even led to changes in the world’s development patterns since the first industrial revolution of the 18th century. The article contents a competitive ranking of 1,006 of the...

So far, children have featured in the pandemic discussion mostly in relation to the reopening of schools. Now that we know that public spaces can be rapidly transformed by collective action, we can start giving streets back to children. The author of this article puts...

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...

To fight the water privatization that is taking place in Jakarta, the organization Amrta Institute for Water Literacy is helping make water accessible to all the inhabitants of Jakarta. The  organization Amrta Institute for Water Literacy was shortlisted for the Transformative Cities People’s Choice Award...

For a long weekend in September, 29 2019 organizations dedicated to participatory democracy and the solidarity economy gathered in Detroit for Symbiosis, a “Congress of Municipal Movements.” Despite working on similar projects, it was the first time that many participants had the opportunity to meet...

The international debate on the commons has a long history but only in recent years has it started gearing towards the definition of Urban Commons and what their role is in shaping our society, especially at the wake of the economic crisis. This debate developed...

In Rojava, after the authority of the regime of President Bashar al-Assad collapsed at the start of the Syrian revolution in 2011, the Kurds took advantage of the vacuum to set up a new form of self-government, which is being built from the ground up....

Libertarian municipalism promotes the use of direct face-to-face assemblies in order to “steal” the practice of politics back from the professional politicians and place it back in the hands of citizens. Describing the state as “a completely alien formation”, Bookchin presents libertarian municipalism as “democratic...

The local struggle to protect the Rio Blanco ecological reserve epitomizes the resistance against the destructive impact of decades of neoliberal development. Photo: Néstor Morales