Cities versus multinationals: who will win our post-COVID future?
The importance of care and collective services and its often poorly treated workers has been visible to all during the confinement periods. The virus has often struck harder in poorer neighbourhoods, where living conditions in cramped apartments did not allow for social distancing, and where…
Zapatistas: lessons in community self-organisation in Mexico
As we witness the limits of the imaginable being radically shifted, the Zapatista experience is more relevant than ever. Yet, despite the challenges, in 26 years of their struggle for autonomy, Zapatistas have built functioning social arrangements based on bottom-up democracy, cooperation and communal justice,…
From public refuse to private profits. Does Belgrade really need a costly, corporate-built incinerator?
For over 50 years, one of the largest open air landfills in Europe has been poisoning the soil and air of Belgrade suburbs. French water and waste management giant Suez has signed a major contract with the leaders of the Serbian capital to build a…
Residents on the front line in Berlin’s housing revolution
Faced 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…
Debt. The straightjacket on municipalism
One of the main goals of the “municipalities of change”, elected in 2015 in Spain, was to tackle the debt problem. Drawing on the experience of civil society, they sought to develop approaches such as “citizen audits”, but found themselves facing the power of finance….
Loos-en-Gohelle, from coal to renewables. Is there a future for a small town without resources?
A former coal mining town in the North of France, Loos-en-Gohelle shows how a town can free itself from fossil fuel dependence through democratic participation, beginning with the real needs of locals. Photo: Pawel Blazewicz
Good news from the Brink. The story of Horní Jiřetín, a small North Bohemian town that defied the coal industry
Horní Jiřetín, a small town in the Czech Republic, was set to be wiped off the map and replaced by a brown coal mine. The end of Communist rule and the privatisation of the coal company was not going to change the town’s fate. But…
Energy transition. A small German district shows the way
Although Germany has failed to meet its climate objectives, and energy companies are still clinging to coal, a small district North of Berlin is showing the way. Commitments made by both local authorities and citizens to renewable energy have paid off, with renewable energy sources…
Switching off Spain’s electricity oligopoly. Three proposals to dismantle the corporate power of Spain’s electricity companies
In Spain, as in other countries, the electricity sector remains dominated by a handful of large companies, powerful enough to impose their interests and hinder the energy transition. Movements against energy poverty and green cooperatives show a path towards greater energy democracy, but a third…