Written by Stavros Stavrides. This concept-defining text first appeared in the anthology Uncovered: Nicosia International Airport (edited by Başak Şenova and Pavlina Paraskevaidou). Can public space be efficiently described as the space of public use? Should we ignore the role of those who guarantee or allow public use? And should we ignore also the effects […]
Read More Stavros Stavrides: Public Space as Commons
Written by Yavor Tarinski Housing is absolutely essential to human flourishing. Without stable shelter, it all falls apart. ~Matthew Desmond[1] The issue of housing is of fundamental importance that has a direct connection, among other basic rights, to democratic participation. Despite that (or because of it) it is being contested by capitalist forces worldwide. Capitalist […]
Read More Right to housing and its relation to democracy
Written by Theo Rouhette The proliferation of decayed factories, military installations, rural villages or transportation networks is often attributed to the force of creative destruction under capitalism, the endogenous process that ‘incessantly revolutionizes the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one’ (Schumpeter, 1942). Marxist thinkers focused on the […]
Read More The Social Ecology of Ruins
“Casa encantada: A Portrait of the Fight for Housing in Belo Horizonte” is a book that brings together illustrations by Renato Baruq and photographs by Cadu Passos, both from the Kasa Invisível squat in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. During 2022 and 2023, the two Brazilian artists and organizers documented almost 20 old abandoned houses in the […]
Read More Casa encantada: A Portrait of the Fight for Housing in Belo Horizonte (e-book)
Written by Yavor Tarinski [C]itizens today no longer even approximate the high and eminently human standard of citizenship that was established in the Hellenic world—a meaning that must be recovered, as well as the personal and social training, or paideia, for producing citizens. ~Murray Bookchin[1] Often, when people advocate for the reinvigoration of citizenship in […]
Read More From citizens of nations to citizens of cities
Written by Elisée Reclus in 1895 To look at our enormous cities, expanding day by day and almost hour by hour, engulfing year by year fresh colonies of immigrants, and running out their suckers, like giant octopuses, into the surrounding country, one feels a sort of shudder come over one, as if in presence of […]
Read More The Evolution of Cities
Written by Dimitri Roussopoulos When we think of cities, especially the basis upon which we can undertake building a movement for radical social change in cities, we have to research and think hard about the political economy of cities. In the global economy, both among the major multinational corporations and certain rich governments, we currently […]
Read More Take the City – Social Ecology in Practice
Written by Jordi Borja, Emeritus professor at the Open University of Catalonia. The present article was published in the book Advancing Urban Rights: Equality and Diversity in the City (2022). I. And the right to the city became real when it was reinvented by active citizenship The ideas First came the creator god of the […]
Read More The Right to the City: From the Streets to Globalisation
The following text is an excerpt from the book Municipalism in Practice: Progressive Housing Policies in Amsterdam, Barcelona, Berlin, and Vienna ( RLS-Cities: April 2022). Every year hundreds of thousands of people are evicted in Europe. National governments and courts systematically leave citizens unprotected against displacements fuelled by real estate interests. Cities like Amsterdam, Barcelona, […]
Read More Anti-Eviction Strategies as an Instrument of Municipalist Housing Policies
Capitalism is driving urban planning and architecture towards building ‘big and tall’, which is an approach that benefits the rich, while making city life worst for everyone else. Below are three videos that underline the inherent problems of capitalist urbanism’s doctrine. The first one deals with the general problem (and irrationality) of building ‘big […]
Read More The problem with capitalist urbanism’s ‘big and tall’ doctrine