This article identifies three new municipalisms – platform, autonomist, managed – whose characteristics, contradictions, interconnections and potentials are explored in terms of state-space restructuring, urban-capitalist crisis and cycles of contention. Photo: Sharon McCutcheo

This piece situates entrepreneurial municipalism as one strand in an assemblage of new municipalist interventions, between radical urban social movements and more neoliberal strategies such as financialised municipal entrepreneurialism. Exploring how local authorities are working with social enterprises to harness place-based assets in ways which...

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...

How 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...

The cities of Barcelona, Freetown, Mexico, London, Los Angeles and Tokyo have co-founded a network focused on gender equity, with mayors warning that the Covid-19 pandemic risks widening inequalities. Through ‘CHANGE’ (City Hub and Network for Gender Equity), the cities will share best practices, policies...

The anti-advertising movement Résistance à l’Agression Publicitaire (Resistance to Advertising Aggression, or RAP) groups are across France, up from five in 2016. They work autonomously with tactics including pressuring politicians like the mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, who paused plans for new digital advertising boards...

In this episode of “City Stories” Alba del Campo, a Spanish journalist and activist fighting for more energy democracy. She has been an advisor to the local authority of Cadiz since 2015. A new local government elected in 2015 and re-elected in 2019. Since then,...

Selection of ROAR’s coverage over the past years of the Rojava Revolution, a struggle for autonomy in northern Syria initiated in July 2012. Photo: Miriam Espacio

Barcelona has become one of the key targets – and victims – of the global tourism and property industry, spurred by financial firms such as Blackstone. But inhabitants and social movements are fighting back. Photo: Daniel Von Appen

Rather than essentialising cities as inherently progressive or democratic, the municipal is instead becoming framed as a “strategic front” for developing a transformative politics of scale. Given this critical awareness, this nascent movement demonstrates how local loyalties can be mobilised as part of a progressive...

For many people in Santiago de Chile, October 18, 2019 marked the beginning of a new reality, one which required adapting to the emerging culture of rebellion. In a time when even the most peaceful of marches are broken up with tear gas and water...

If we want real change, should we draw up a sketch of a just society and then simply march towards it? We think it’s better to look around and find the seeds of a better future—perhaps dormant—in the present, and nurture them into a viable...