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The confederation as the commune of communes
22nd December 2019Confederalism as a revolutionary strategy provides us with the means to build and organize a radically democratic and egalitarian society at scale. To understand how the confederation can form a real threat to the ruling class, one needs first to understand the strategy of social...
Municipalist kick-off: top 10 things you absolutely cannot miss
3rd December 2019From the fourth to the seventh of December activists from all over the world are getting together in Amsterdam to kick-start the local municipalist movement. The event is a 4-day festival with speeches, debates, workshops, Q & A sessions and neighbourhood assemblies. Commons Network has...
Berlin, Madrid, Amsterdam fought Commission – and won
6th November 2020In 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...
European cities see life without crowds of tourists – And want to keep it that way
15th June 2020The coronavirus shutdown has had a devastating effect on European city’s economy like Amsterdam, Prague and Barcelona. Tourism is the lifeblood of many of these continent’s historic cities, many hope the pandemic will end up changing tourism for the better. According to Shaul Bassi, director...
Covid-19 crisis means England’s local authorities could go bust, warn mayors
11th June 2020Mayors in some of England’s biggest cities are warning that local authorities are at risk of going bust with potentially devastating consequences for communities unless the government takes immediate action. As the impact of the Covid-19 crisis hits local authorities, the mayors of London, Greater...
Re-grounding the city with Polanyi: From urban entrepreneurialism to entrepreneurial municipalism
9th January 2020This 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...
Connect the city: Rights, justice and the digital divide
30th November 2020Among the trends accelerated by the pandemic, digitalisation stands out for its pace of change. Large parts of education, work, and social services moved online in a matter of weeks. Though many people lack the connections, equipment, and skills to access what are often fundamental...
Cool people’s movements
24th September 2018As the effects of climate change start to become more obvious year after year, we are faced with a conundrum. Today, progressives need to address both climate change and its effects, like heat waves and flooding. What we need is a political movement that links...
Spanish municipal elections: What happened with the new municipalist projects?
4th June 2019The article analyses the results of the 2019 municipal elections in Spain in different cities. According to the author, in order to understand the situation it is useful to pay attention to what happened to “the three souls of the movement”: traditional “left” forces, grassroots...
Taking back Naples
20th August 2016In the absence of mass struggles, the radical left in Italy has declined as an electoral force across most of the country, even despite the PD’s abandonment of social democracy in favor of a US-style corporate liberalism. However, there is another side to the Italian...
Leaving water privatisation behind. Paris, Grenoble and the advent of the water remunicipalisation movement in France
25th June 2020How 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...
Residents on the front line in Berlin’s housing revolution
25th June 2020Faced 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...