Why COVID-19 might not change our cities as much as we expect
COVID-19 impacts provide an opportunity for our cities to shift to new ways of urban living. But only if we couple this opportunity with technology and deliberate collective action will sustained and equitable change happen. What is imperative, therefore, is that governments similarly couple technology…
Barcelona’s latest affordable housing tool: Seize empty apartments
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 historic move, North Carolina city approves reparations for black residents
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…
Tenants of five Minneapolis buildings now own their homes. Here’s how they did it
A group of five famílies, fed up with the state of their houses, the repairs not being done thought they should be their own landlords. This group, dubbed the Corcoran Five, not only have been a major part of winning a landmark $18.5 million class-action…
Local responses to a global pandemic: Women mayors lead the way
Even before the novel coronavirus, COVID-19, was declared a pandemic, prominent women mayors in the United States enacted proactive and innovative policies to prevent local outbreaks and soften the social and economic repercussions. Several Black women mayors, in particular, have led the way in local…
Interview with Ethan Earle about the Gilets Jaunes and French democracy
New focus of protest has clearly emerged in France in these past years—bringing together Nuit Debout and the Gilets Jaunes, hospital and health care workers, pensioners and trade unionists, climate justice activists, Black Lives Matter activists. This locus has the attention of Macron, and of…
Feminist city: Claiming space in a man-made world
The book, Feminist City, exposes how our public spaces are not designed for female bodies. The urban streets often are a place of threats rather than community and gentrification has made the everyday lives of women even more difficult. The book dives deep into the…
Murray Bookchin, municipalism, popular democracy and left politics
In this podcast there’s a discussion of the work of Murray Bookchin, relating it to the experiences and debates around municipalism and wider left political practices and theory. The guests focus the discussion on the recent edited collection of Bookchin’s work: The Next Revolution: Popular…
After coronavirus, Lisbon is replacing some Airbnbs and turning holiday rentals into homes for key workers
Essential workers and their families have increasingly been forced out as Airbnb-style holiday rentals have taken over a third of Lisbon’s city centre properties, pushing up rental prices, hollowing out communities and threatening its unique character. Now the city wants to bring the people who…