Urban alternatives, to what degree? Parallelisms between Commons and Municipalism

Written by Iolanda Bianchi . Originally published in Spatial Justice and the Commons (Istanbul: Centre for Spatial Justice, 2019). Picture: Map reproduced from the European Municipalist Network (CC License BY-NC-SA 4.0 International) Over recent years, two concepts have been widely used in the urban studies vocabulary to generate and unify the multiform and variegated antagonistic […]

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Casa encantada: A Portrait of the Fight for Housing in Belo Horizonte (e-book)

  “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 […]

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The Right to the City: From the Streets to Globalisation

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 […]

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Anti-Eviction Strategies as an Instrument of Municipalist Housing Policies

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, […]

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Cities beyond bureaucracy: Exploring commons-based strategies

Urban researcher Nikos Vrantsis interviews Yavor Tarinski, author of Common Futures: Social Transformation and Political Ecology [co-authored with Alexandros Schismenos] (Black Rose Books, 2021), on the current bureaucratic state of cities and the democratic perspectives offered by autonomous urban movements.  Nikos Vrantsis: Day by day, state oppression turns into the new normal. Governmemts invested in […]

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Review: New collection proposes bold ideas on systemic urban change

Written by Peter G. Prontzos. Originally published on Canadian Dimension here   This collection, published last year by Black Rose Books, is based on the theme of a conference held in Greece in 2017—“The Right to the City and Social Ecology: Towards Ecological and Democratic Cities”—and organized by the Transnational Institute of Social Ecology (TRISE). […]

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Why the municipal movement must be internationalist

Article by Enric Bárcena, Xavi Ferrer, Laura Roth and TRISE member Kate Shea Baird, originally published in Spanish in Público.es on 21/12/16. The municipalist movements of the Spanish state can’t ignore the global crisis of neoliberalism. It’s up to us to stand up and defend our idea of bottom up, feminist and radically democratic change. […]

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“Fearless Cities” – a summit on the new municipalism, by Barcelona en Comú

  “Democracy was born at local level, and that’s where we can win it back.” Barcelona en Comú – the radical citizen platform currently running the city, invites to an international municipalist summit in June 9-11 called Fearless cities! The event will include debates and workshops on key policy areas and municipalist organizing. An excerpt from […]

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A critical perspective on social ecology and urban crises: learning about, with and from urban social movements in Rio de Janeiro.

Last Spring, TRISE member Federico Venturini completed his PhD in Human Geography at the University of Leeds.  Federico’s dissertation offers an in-depth study of radical urban social movements in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and explores the lessons of these movements through the lens of social ecology. Here’s the abstract: We are currently facing incredible challenges […]

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