Cooperation Jackson is only five years old, but the vision behind it is older. The original founders began to strategize to build a community of cooperatives in 2001, while many still lived in disparate parts of the country. Eventually, they chose to launch their participatory...

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...

The Bronx Cooperative Development Initiative, a network of various Bronx community groups, has four main components underway; the Innovation Factory, to develop new production and innovation capacity with digital manufacturing technology. The BronXchange, to get major local institutions such as Fordham University and Montefiore Medical...

Anti-austerity protesters across Southern Europe — many who had never been involved with politics before — have decided to try and turn their protests into a democratic alternative to the status quo. Photo: Clem Onojeghuo

Cyber security, data sovereignty, digital participation and digital services, complex topics that cannot be solved overnight. But the new government of Amsterdam is committed to dealing with these challenges. In contrast to the idea of the smart city, the aim is to develop new policies...

The global movements of 2011 reconfigured urban space as a new interface of collective action and policy creation. The new political narrative of cities is serving to counteract prevailing neoliberal narratives.More than a phrase, “the Cities of the Commons vs. global neoliberalism” could be understood...

Over recent years there’s been a surge in European cities that, via public tendering, are using their spending power far more pro-actively and strategically to promote social justice and environmental goals. Leading this trend are city governments that define themselves as municipalist and are committed...

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,...

What lessons can we draw from the experience of the first “rebel cities” of Spain in terms of confrontation with corporations and established powers? And how, beyond conquering government at municipal level, can we build strategies for effective and enduring change, with social movements and...

Unions controlled by the rank-and-file can serve as a dual power bridgehead towards the democratization of cities, states and capital. Photo: Pixabay

With nationalist parties resurgent throughout Europe, more and more European nationals are vesting their political hopes in national governments. But for those new migrants without increasingly-coveted EU citizenship, the institutions most likely to come to their aid are not nation states, but local and city...

After apartheid, Cape Town remained a city of islands: social, cultural and economic divisions are the rule. This has long undermined city-wide collective organizing and solidarity. The severe COVID19 lockdown and the goverment response aggravated the situation for many inhabitants. But an unprecedented community-led response...