The Right to the City – Transnational Institute of Social Ecology

Book review of “Common Space: The City As Commons”

Written by Mehmet Penpecioglu for the International Development Planning Review, 2019 The urban commons is a growing field of both academic inquiry and social struggle. In this book, Stavos Stavrides approaches the urban commons with a comprehensive and coherent analytical framework that builds on its theoretical heritage. Key cases are presented from diverse sociopolitical geographies […]

May 14, 2019
Posted in Articles / Analyses
Tags: commons, The Right to the City

The Democratic Project of Milton Parc

Transcription of a TED talk delivered by Dimitrios Roussopoulos This is my neighborhood – Milton Parc – where we decided to take on a major speculator who bought, over a number of years, a six-block area in the downtown of the city. They wanted to expand the center of the city towards the north, to […]

May 5, 2019
Posted in Articles / Analyses
Tags: Dimitri Roussopoulos, The Right to the City

Radicalising democracy: How Hannah Arendt’s legacy endures in Barcelona

Written by Hettie O’Brien. Excerpt from Verso’s blog In 1963, having fled Germany for New York, political philosopher Hannah Arendt wrote that: “no one could be called either happy or free without participating, and having a share, in public power”. Had she been alive to witness Brexit, the ascendancy of Donald Trump, and the election […]

November 29, 2018
Posted in Articles / Analyses
Tags: Barcelona en Comú, Participatory Democracy, The Right to the City 3 Comments

Citizens’ Assemblies: Democracy that Works

Written by Marcin Gerwin. The following post is Chapter 1 of his new publication Citizen Assemblies: Guide to Democracy that Works. Imagine a group of people of different ages who meet in order to settle some matter important for a city, a country or for the European Union. This group was not selected through elections […]

November 28, 2018
Posted in Articles / Analyses
Tags: direct democracy, municipalism, The Right to the City

Municipalism in Spain: From Barcelona to Madrid, and Beyond

Written by Vicente Rubio-Pueyo. Originally published as a brochure by the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung The 2017 Catalan independence referendum has been called “undemocratic,” a “power grab,” and even a “coup d’état” in international media. No matter the specific terminology, the referendum as well as the dispute over its democratic legitimacy indicate that Spanish political culture […]

August 12, 2018
Posted in Articles / Analyses
Tags: municipalism, The Right to the City