social movements

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World Assembly of Inhabitants at Tunis WSF

27/03/2013 admin 0

From March 26th to 30th, in the frame of the Tunisian meeting of the World Social Forum, a World Assembly of Inhabitants (WAI) is taking place, organized by the International Alliance of Inhabitants, Habitat International Coalition and No-Vox networks. Here is the program of the WAI meeting; to prepare the WAI, the International Alliance of Inhabitants promoted the visual project Memories of inhabitants, compiling hundreds of interviews to activists for the right of housing in 4 continents. We add some reflections about the Forum itself, which was planned in time of generalized euphoria, but is now facing a much more complex reality: Altermundialism seeks new breath in Tunis, from the blog Tunisie Libre; WSF to blast austerity, Yasmine Ryan in Aljazeera; What I learned about feminism from a Moroccan men’s chorus, Maria Poblet in In these times; and One year after the revolution from Nawaat.…

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A photographic and critical “gentrificatour” in Madrid’s Malasaña neighborhood

01/03/2013 admin 0

On february 9th, 2013, Todo por la praxis (TXP), a group from Madrid, organized the first of its programmed critic and photographic walks focused in the process of gentrification which is happening in Madrid’s city centre, specifically in the historic neighborhoods of Malasaña y Chueca. An enterprise of real estate developers, in need for new investments in an era of financial cuts and economic contraction, with support from the City Council, promoted a “programmed gentrification” of the area, which has been renamed Triángulo Ballesta (TriBall). The new triBall brand inspires from NYC’s business zones like SoHo and Tribeca, in an attempt to replace and erase the identity of this popular area of the city. “Gentrificatour intends to generate an archive of pictures of posters, labels and luminous of the commercial and productive activities that existed in the neighborhood before their replacement. […] The intention is to build a time-capsule that will allow us to evaluate the effects of a process of gentrification, and, in this way, to make them more visible” we read in TXP’s website. Victoria Herranz, photographer and anthropologist from Madrid, part of the group, explains: “Does Malasaña exist? Maybe; or maybe it exists in a different way. […] The line that divides the rehabilitation of a neighborhood from its destruction is too thin. When a process of rehabilitation limits the options of the neighbors to the point in which families have to leave the neighborhood, maybe something is going wrong”.

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Shift Happens! Critical Mass at 20

20/09/2012 admin 0
Shift Happens! The Critical Mass is an “organised coincidence" of cyclists that periodically celebrate a collective bike ride in the streets; its purpose is to show to the society the great advantages that bicycles could provide to urban mobility. In the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the first Critical Mass in San Francisco, one of its pioneers, Chris Carlsson, together with other contributors, edited the book Shift Happens. Critical Mass at 20, a collection of experiences and essays from some of the over 300 cities of the world in which the event reached an autonomous life, after that first bicycle ride. This is the meaning of the expression critical mass - the number of participants needed for phenomenon to start moving and growing by itself. The Critical Mass does'nt ask, it builds, giving form to a livable city through its own praxis. The presentation of the book in Madrid - where every last thursday of the month a Bicicrítica is held through the center of the city, while ten more happen in other neighborhoods and municipalities (like Fuenlabrada, Tres Cantos, Alcalá de Henares, Moratalaz, Ciudad Lineal) - was the occasion for a radio debate in "Carne Cruda", RN3, for the participation of the book's editors in a bicicrítica (read here Carlsson's impressions) and for the presentation of another book of his "Nowtopia, How Pirate Programmers, Outlaw Bicyclist and Vacant-Lot Gardeners Are Inventing the Future Today", in Traficantes de Sueños bookshop (here the audio of the event). Shift Happens's chapter on Madrid is the summary of an ethnografic article on bicycle repair workshops inside the occupied social centers of Madrid, that can be downloaded entirely from the link below.
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Urban Typhoon: User-generated cities in Mumbai

07/08/2012 admin 0
Who is not frightened by the idea of the unstoppable growth of cities in Asia and in the former "third world", or by the perspective (apocalyptical, though critically framed) of moving towards a planet of slums? But in the places closer to this phenomenon - for example in the popular neighborhoods of Mumbai, India - the idea of slum has been criticized since many decades. These urban zones that don't even deserve being called neighborhoods, always presented towards the exterior as marked by lacks (of hygiene, of safety, of integration, of control, even of morality), under a deeper scrutiny reveal histories and dynamics complex and functional, that had been interpreted in various forms according to the different theories. Based in an office in Dharavi-Koliwada (the enormous neighborhood popularized by Slumdog millionaire), the two urban activists Matias ECHANOVE and Rahul SRIVASTAVA (from Urbz collective) show how a series of spontaneous social structures, internal to the so-called slums, cause a constant improvement and development, often obstructed by local authorities or by urban reform plans. In territories as thick and reticular as forests of mangroves, the only valid ways to development are those generated by their very users: homegrown, as the neighborhoods themselves.
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Recipes for interculturality from Bilbao

15/07/2012 admin 0
Arroces del Mundo, Munduko Arrozak, is a popular fiesta being held since 2004 in San Francisco neighborhood, Bilbao (Basque country) . This barrio, apart from the center for the estuary and the railway, is four times more populated than the rest of the city; it has always been stigmatized as a ghetto, related with prostitution, considered a marginal part of the city where the immigrant live, and recently is becoming to be partially gentrified. The fiesta is the result of a patient networking that the Coordinadora de Grupos de Bilbao la Vieja, San Fraencisco y Zabala had been doing for years: this organization was born to influence in the Renewal Plan designed by the City Council, and is made of groups and individuals who had already done projects of social communication in the neighborhood. The idea of the fiesta serves both to denounce the abandon of the neighborhood, and to aim at the construction of intercultural relationships through autonomy and self-organization: the organizers of the event stress that as many people are involved, as less conflicts and incidents ocurr - with the practice, this undermines the securitarian discourse used by the authorities to increase police presence in San Francisco neighborhood.
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Once we made news: the forgotten battles

21/06/2012 admin 0
It is been decades now that in Barcelona whole neighborhoods are demolished without the media even mentioning them any more. If someday these situations "made news", soon oblivion covers back their memory. A recent example was Can Tunis neighborhood, whose demolition was surrounded by silence in summer 2004; but in 1993, another neighborhood in the same Zona Franca district, the cases barates of Eduard Aunós fell leaving almost no trace in the city collective memory. The media were too busy celebrating the success of the Olympic Games, as well as years later they were covering the 2004 Universal Forum of Cultures. A group of former inhabitants of Eduard Aunós have found this old reportage: it reminds us a forgotten battle, astonishingly similar to the one now taking place around the demolition of anouther group of cases barates: Bon Pastor. Someday, this one too will be forgotten.
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International conference on anthropology of urban conflict: call for papers

17/05/2012 admin 0
From november 7th to 10th, 2012, in the faculty of geography and history of University of Barcelona, the first International Conference on Anthropology of Urban Conflict will be held, with the title: Desertions, countermovements and forced mobilities in the contemporary city. They had been organized by a series of research groups and individual scholars, and they aim to a critical exposition and reflection on urban phenomena associated to struggles and antagonist movements who take place in the city. In particular, they will focus on the agitations specifical to this moment of crisis, and on the modalities through which they are challenging the public order, the norms that mantain it and the authorities that defend it. A number of international lecturers have already confirmed their assistance: Monica Degen from London, Lia Yoka from Thessaloniki, José Fernandes from Porto, Stavros Stavrides from Athens, or Santiago Cirugeda from Sevilla. Some videos on the struggles in the city are also programmed, as well as a route of the rebel Barcelona. More info and details of the Call for papers on the conference webpage: http://espaiurba.org. For contact write to: conflictesurbans2012@gmail.com.
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Memory of Reclaimed Urban Space in New York

22/03/2012 admin 0
Lower East Side, the small, enigmatic and still resistant neighborhood in Manhattan, (NYC), still keeps the marks of a long history of squatting and counterculture, evidenced by many spaces such as housing projects, social centers and community gardens. The neighborhood is undergoing a strong gentirification process in which squatting has played a special role through recuperation of spaces and local social life. One of these spots provides accomodation for an interesting project of retrieval of the historical live heritage of the neighborhood. MORUS, or Museum of Reclaimed Urban Space, is a small but dynamic museum meant to present squatting and its influence on the neighborhood in an innovatory form, at the same time underlining its live traces. Its promoters intend to show how community and grassroot organizations in East Village helped to transform abandoned buildings and empty lots in spaces for a vibrant community as well as contagious for those who visit it from outside.
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Squatting in Europe

06/01/2012 admin 0
Squatting in Europe is a research network on the squatting movement in Europe. The origins of its members are very different: Brigthon, Madrid, Barcelona, Berlin, Copenhagen, Rotterdam, Roma, Catania, NewYork, Vermont, Amsterdam, Paris... so are their academic positions: some come from the universities, other are outside, some in between, and obviously shifting. From these diversities the members share a compromise and proximity with different expressions of the squatting movement, a practice of dialogue and reflection with the people who live these spaces, and an effort to publish works in free formats. Each meeting is held in a different city, always in squatted places, to share the debates with people living and using these spaces. Since 2009, the meetings have been in Madrid, Milan, London, Berlín, Amsterdam; the last one (december 2011) was in Copenhagen, in Bolsjefabrikken and Youth House. The results of the collective work and periodic meetings is obviously the enrichment of researches with the experience of the places visited, as well as the production of collective research from multiple perspectives.