The lay of the land: Radical municipalism in the US and Canada
During the last five years, we have seen major social and political upheavals across the United States and Canada. Yet beneath the surface of tumultuous events, such as the George Floyd uprisings, Donald Trump’s presidency, or the COVID19 pandemic, a new tendency of grassroots organizing…
Report #6: Making the future: A shift toward a municipalist, peri-urban territorial order in Ciudad Futura, Argentina
The persistence of structural problems in urban and rural areas in Latin America (imbalances, fragmentation, environmental vulnerability) raises questions about the ways in which we interact with the land: what are the specific mechanisms that are deployed to organize multiple activities in a space? What…
Report #5: Fragile alliances: Municpalism and the commons in Amsterdam
In the contemporary context of Amsterdam’s largely depoliticised civil society, the task of building alliances with “a thousand feet in the street” is daunting. Although generations of activists and neighbourhood organisers have been practicing commoning and pursuing values of municipalism against the odds in Amsterdam’s…
Report #4: Municipal Logistics: Popular Infrastructures and Southern Urbanisms during the Pandemic
The sudden interruption of flows forced by the spread of Sars-Covid 2, prompted in Argentina a public debate regarding the processes and spaces involved in the production and distribution of things. Logistics became political and the sphere of politics was reconfigured into a set of…
Report #3: From municipal politics to municipalism. Resisting legal and political infrastructures in Lebanon.
In this report, the author looks at municipalist movements in Lebanon as a broader representation of municipalism in the Global South. After offering a historical background to the legal and political composition of the Lebanese state, she argues that municipalism in Lebanon must look outside…
Report #2: Against the tide. A review of the 2020 French municipal elections and the dynamics of participatory lists.
The last municipal elections in France were unprecedented: more than 400 participatory lists ran for office throughout the country. And they did this in two rounds, in the middle of a global pandemic. Many of them even won. But the real novelty is that strongly…
Report #1: In the city, at the border. Movement and grassroots initiatives during the pandemic.
This report offers an overview of the evolution of the relationship and conflicts between institutional and non-institutional actors during the Covid-19 pandemic. It aims to do so by examining a range of writing on how grounded, grassroots responses emerged at a local level, opposing the…