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

An interview with Bernardo Gutierrez, responsible for the Innovation Laboratories of MediaLab Prado de Madrid at the Our Common City conference held in Budapest (February 22 & 23, 2019). Part one:   Part two:   Photo: Joel Filipe

The City of Tshwane, home to South Africa’s government and foreign diplomats, has been rocked by political turmoil for nearly a year. Coalition arrangements were first made after the 2016 municipal elections which finally collapsed earlier this year. This jockeying for power by the parties...

Over the years, our urban places have become denser – as they should. We need greater density to make transit efficient and promote the walkable and bikeable communities that we need to achieve our sustainability goals. But what our current crisis is teaching us is what...

Universal healthcare, a green economy, affordable and sustainable housing, and much more: for many people, the Green New Deal sounds too good to be true at a time when trust in politicians has been eroded by too many empty promises. This is why locally organised, democratic movements are not just crucial to...

In September 2013, 51% of the electorate voted to “re-municipalise” the local electricity and district heating networks, as proposed by grassroots initiative “Our Hamburg Our Grid”. And while the energy debate has only played a minor role in this year’s election campaign, it has increased...

Writer Hettie O’Brien analyses Hannah Arendt’s model of council democracy, and how Barcelona en Comú are transforming the way democracy works. According to O’Brien, if Arendt had been alive today, she may have looked to Barcelona’s government and Europe’s fearless cities movement for examples of...

An Extinction Rebellion Handbook, recently released by Penguin, is a collection of 32 short essays that aims of pushing the message – and the confidence to take action – even further. An accessible text appropriate for introducing the average reader to both the scale of...

In June 2020, after a drawn-out process punctuated by the peak of the health crisis, Green lists excelled in France’s municipal elections. They are now at the head of the executive in some of France’s largest cities, including Marseille, Lyon, Bordeaux, Strasbourg, and Tours. In...

Local elections in May 2015 represented a major shift in the political history of Barcelona (Spain). The Barcelona en Comú candidacy, born in January 2015 under the impetus of a set of progressive social and political organizations, became the first municipal political force in the...

The book examines what value, if any, the state has for the pursuit of progressive politics; and how it might need to be reimagined and remade to deliver transformative change. Photo: Peter Döpper

Discussions about creating an alternative city have tended to focus on grassroots movements, community organising and Jane Jacobs-style passion for creating liveable cities. These are all essential parts of the process, but one avenue of change has remained curiously outside of the discussion – taking...