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,...

An interview with Florian Schmidt, District councilor for building, planning and facility management in Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg, Berlin at the Our Common City conference in Budapest (February 22 & 23, 2019). Part one: Part two: Part three: Photo: bady qb

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...

Four years after the first wave of municipalist governments in Spain, many of the so-called cities of change have failed to renew the results obtained in the elections that placed them in power. While the Catalan independence movement has radically changed the political landscape, thus...

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...

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...

Britain today has a dysfunctional political system. Many politicians are making decisions to meet their own needs or those of their Party, not the needs of the people they serve. This guide is based on what is happening in Frome, Somerset where after years of...

The paper examines the successes, limitations and possibilities of citizen platforms after their first months in power in cities across Spain. Photo: Pixabay

In the US, a new coalition of progressive forces is shaping up to protest views and policies deployed by president Trump. The articulation of forces against Trump. The municipal level is becoming a space for social resistance and political innovation, hence providing an opportunity for...

The author presents ideas on an emerging mode of production based on information and digital data-what the critical theorist McKenzie Wark christens as ‘vectors’-which is arguably replacing capitalism. Vectors are lines of economic activity connecting producers and consumers extensively across space through intensive technologies of...

Madrid, Barcelona and other major Spanish cities are now governed by independent citizen fronts called “confluences.” Ahora Madrid, Barcelona en Comú, Zaragoza en Común and La Marea Atlántica (A Coruña) are confluences weaved together by the M15-Indignados social ecosystem. Other political parties, like Podemos and...

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