Faced with skyrocketing rents and powerful real estate empires, the citizens of Berlin are fighting back. They have forced the city’s authorities to take up the issue by freezing rents and protecting apartment blocks from speculators. A referendum campaign is under way that would go...

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

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 old model of secure livelihood through wages is collapsing at the same time that new technology is destroying the material basis for dependence on corporations and the state. This is to a large extent a transition to a post-capitalist society centered on the commons....

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...

People around the world are rallying to fight privatisation and to bring services back under public control. In tandem with the failure of private corporations to provide affordable and good-quality services – such as health, water, education, energy and transportation – support for remunicipalisation is...

In a little-noticed procedural manoeuvre, in October 2020 the commission was forced to withdraw a so-called ‘Services Notification Procedure’ – which would have given it advance veto power over new laws by regional and local governments, and could have further limited local democratic initiatives in...

The Covid-19 crisis has made clear the disastrous effects of years of austerity, social security cuts, and public service privatisation. But it has also demonstrated that public services and the people who operate them are truly the foundation of healthy and resilient societies. As privatisation...

Climate change is the most pressing issue of our time. Examining social ecology provides the missing link in understanding the radicalization of the environmental movement historically and in constructing a dual power climate strategy for the future. Photo: Public Domain Pictures

Researchers looked at the implementation of guaranteed income in a neighbourhood in Barcelona and found out that it didn’t help people find work, but it made them happier. Against what some critics of basic income say, the money didn’t stop people from looking for a...

With amazing creativity in the toughest of times, in 2018 in the UK, they were seeing the first shoots of the renaissance of local government for the many, not the few—the rebirth of municipal socialisme. With the objective to seize every opportunity to develop and...

Left-wing populism and the feminization of politics are at the core of the debates among activists of the European left. The intellectual basis of while left-wing populism make it incompatible with the feminization of politics, since they reinforce patriarchy. Social transformation requires of a genuine...