This CIDOB Report examines how 12 cities around the world have managed the COVID-19 crisis and provides lessons to help guide future urban action. These include learning to govern complex, uncertain scenarios by placing decentralisation, cooperation and resilience at the heart of public policies; rethinking...

Barcelona is planning a major expansion of low-traffic zones, giving priority to pedestrians and cyclists to reduce pollution and provide green spaces. The work is part of a 10-year plan focusing on the central Eixample district of the Catalan capital, Mayor Ada Colau has announced....

Since the beginning of the pandemic we have already witnessed dramatic increases in the mobility of people, goods and information while simultaneously confronting the realities of climate change and carbonisation. We are now seeing trends away from fossil fuel to cleaner electric propulsion, vehicles that...

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...

Focusing on urbanization as a key driver of environmental change in the 21st century, researchers have created a framework to understand and compare cities’ food systems and their effects on climate change, water use and land use. The research will allow planners to estimate the...

The first wave of municipalist governments in Spain was the result of the formation of confluences. The article analyzes their origin, their particularities and their common ground. It also addresses their potential for further transformation, both in Spain and beyond. Photo: Josh Sorenson

If there’s one lesson the COVID-19 pandemic has taught us, it is that local government plays a vital role in people’s lives – and elected local politicians are better placed to make decisions that affect the communities they serve than distant apparatuses with little understanding...

By building a “democracy from below,” the Zapatistas recognize the leadership of, and carry on a long tradition of resistance by Indigenous communities in Chiapas. Photo: Gareth Davies

Public-Common Partnerships offer an alternative institutional design to achieve social transformation. The PCP model exceeds the market/state binary while involving co-ownership between state authorities and Commoners Associations, alongside co-combined governance with a third association of project specific relevant parties such as trade unions and relevant...

Since the summer of 2019, Commons Network has been working with a team of civil servants and activists, supported by the municipality. The Fearless team uses the name ‘The 99 of Amsterdam’ for this new movement, referring to the 99 neighbourhoods of Amsterdam while also...

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...

In an extraordinary move, the Asheville City Council apologized for the North Carolina city’s historic role in slavery, discrimination and denial of basic liberties to Black residents and voted to provide reparations to them and their descendants. This resolution called on the city to create...