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...

Municipalism is evolving strongly in Spain and across Europe, as shown by the examples portrayed during the Fearless Cities encounter in Barcelona. While there is a need for democratic reform in New Zealand, the possibility of embracing municipalism as a tool for change would require...

The new municipalist agenda is shaping up worldwide. The requirement for successful municipalist experiences to exceed the local level and enter the regional or national agenda might jeopardize their existence, since it challenges the very bases of their conception. The notion of growth by “scaling...

Cities account for nearly 70% of greenhouse gas emissions and many of them are experiencing more instances of extreme weather, heat, droughts and flooding due to climate change. Climate change negatively affects poor communities, women, people with disabilities, indigenous groups and other marginalized populations the most....

Nearly four billion meals are dished out every year in France’s school cafeterias and childcare kitchens. Catering companies such as Sodexo currently dominate this market, but, more often than not, the meals have little nutritional value and the companies fail to factor in environmental concerns....

Madrid, Barcelona and other major Spanish cities are now governed by independent citizen fronts called “confluences.” Ahora Madrid, Barcelona en Comú, Zaragoza en Común and La Marea Atlántica (A Coruña) are confluences weaved together by the M15-Indignados social ecosystem. Other political parties, like Podemos and...

An interview with Florian Schmidt, District councilor for building, planning and facility management in Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg, Berlin at the Our Common City conference in Budapest (February 22 & 23, 2019). Part one: Part two: Part three: Photo: bady qb

Is the left today “woke,” i.e. is it self-consciously learning from the limits of the path it has been on to design a new systemic architecture based on alternative, networked institutions to challenge the status quo? New institutions are needed because in the past farms,...

While Scotland has blazed a new trail, much of England seems to have stuck to politics as usual. In fact, under the media radar, a growing number of self-styled independents are trying to kick out the big parties and take over the parts of government...

W.E.B Du Bois wrote these famous words in Black Reconstruction, linking America’s promise of democracy to the horrendous conditions for Black people in the South. Sadly, the State of Mississippi has long been a bellwether in this regard, from slavery and lynchings to Jim Crow,...

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...

Even as anti-authoritarian, anti-racist movements all over the world are working to take power where they live, self-described localist movements have also won elections with racist, and frankly fascist, platforms. New right movements like the Lega Nord have even adopted the more typically leftist, anti-authoritarian...