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Public-Common partnerships: Building new circuits of collective ownership
28th June 2019Public-Common Partnerships offer an alternative institutional design to achieve social transformation. The PCP model exceeds the market/state binary while involving co-ownership between state authorities and Commoners Associations, alongside co-combined governance with a third association of project specific relevant parties such as trade unions and relevant...

Austerity urbanism or pragmatic municipalism? Local government responses to fiscal stress in New York State
18th April 2019As local governments respond to fiscal stress after the global financial crisis, some scholars warn about an austerity urbanism response wherein local governments cut and privatize services, while others see a pragmatic municipalism response that seeks to protect public services by sharing services, applying for...

History, civilization, and progress: outline for a criticism of modern relativism
15th February 1994Murray Bookchin reviews aspects of the history of the US and abroad in recent decades leading of up to the 90’s from a political lens; the academy and a subculture of self-styled postmodernist intellectuals have nourished an entirely new ensemble of cultural conventions that stem...

Leaving water privatisation behind. Paris, Grenoble and the advent of the water remunicipalisation movement in France
25th June 2020How did France, a pioneer of water privatisation, become a hotbed for remunicipalisation? Cities like Paris and Grenoble not only ended the domination of corporate heavyweights like Veolia and Suez over the sector, but also played a key role in inventing a new generation of...

Organizing beyond organizations: Good news stories from Spain and Taiwan
4th June 2018Social movements in Spain and Taiwan are experiencing new developments in organizing strategy and digital technology that are helping them overcome the fundamental limitations of traditional organizations. Photo: Dainis Graveris

Meet Cargonomia, the eco-friendly cooperative championing degrowth in Budapest
1st October 2019Cargonomia connects sustainable food production with the promotion of low-carbon transport solutions and advocacy for bicycle use. Every year, it organizes about 50 workshops for academics, children or the general public on topics ranging from sustainability and up-cycling to local food production, degrowth and the...

Public housing and the right to the city
26th October 2020John Boughton’s book Municipal Dreams offers a robust and clearheaded rejoinder to academic and activist work that pivots around the slippery, less tangible notion of the right to the city. Drawing from the unequivocal celebration of the confident, progressive “spirit of ’45”—which delivered vast amounts...

In the wake of Sunday’s “green wave”
1st June 2020On 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...

The open city
1st November 2016In 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...

How can a civic movement set the agenda in city hall?
31st July 2019An interview with Rui Franco – Deputy City Councilor of Lisbon at the Our Common City conference in Budapest (February 22 & 23, 2019). Part one: Part two: Part three: Photo: Luisa Azevedo

Electoral road to socialism
22nd December 2019Democratic socialists rely heavily on electoral strategies to bring about socialism, but elections make a poor venue for radical working-class struggles. Can electoral politics shift us from capitalism to socialism? Photo: Pixabay

Looking beyond electoralism: Radical municipalism in the UK?
26th February 2020Many 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...