In this interview Lucía Morale, advisor to the security department of Barcelona city council, about the specific features of the Catalan capital, explains why it is essential to build security policies that are both intersectional and global. She also tells us how, in the context...

To analyse and understand the ways in which it is possible for a decentralised and polycentric movement such as Barcelona en Comù to be voted at institutional level, D-CENT partners IN3 15M Data Analysis Group and Barcelona Media conducted the recently published research ‘When a...

In this podcast there’s a discussion of the work of Murray Bookchin, relating it to the experiences and debates around municipalism and wider left political practices and theory. The guests focus the discussion on the recent edited collection of Bookchin’s work: The Next Revolution: Popular...

An 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

An interview with David Bravo (Barcelona en Comú) at the Our Common City conference in Budapest (February 22 & 23, 2019). Part one:   Part two:

This piece is an Interview with Camille, spokesperson for the Citizens’ Assembly of Commercy. This platform is an example what democracy can look like when it is not headed by an elite, a demonstration of how self-determined education among the people is capable of bringing...

While today’s crises require action on a big scale, fighting for local democracy is the best chance to address them. Given that capitalism works at scale, radical municipalism requires collaboration at higher level to be successful. Gatherings as the Fearless Cities Summit in New York...

Public procurement is one of the areas where it is possible to achieve progress in making transnational corporations accountable, particularly with a view to making public policies consistent and coherent. In Europe, since the last revision of the EU directives on public procurement, there have...

One of the main goals of the “municipalities of change”, elected in 2015 in Spain, was to tackle the debt problem. Drawing on the experience of civil society, they sought to develop approaches such as “citizen audits”, but found themselves facing the power of finance....

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...

Barcelona is deploying a new weapon in its quest to increase the city’s available rental housing: the power to force the sale of empty properties. The city’s housing department wrote to a number companies that collectively own 194 empty apartments, warning that if they haven’t...

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...