Download or read book The Urban Politics of Squatters Movements written by Miguel A. Martínez López and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-11-27 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume sheds light on the development of squatting practices and movements in nine European cities (Madrid, Barcelona, Seville, Rome, Paris, Berlin, Copenhagen, Rotterdam and Brighton) by examining the numbers, variations and significant contexts in their life course. It reveals how and why squatting practices have shifted and to what extent they engender urban movements. The book measures the volume and changes in squatting over various decades, mostly by focusing on Squatted Social Centres but also including squatted housing. In addition, it systematically compares the cycles, socio-spatial structures and the political implications of squatting in selected cities. This collection highlights how squatters’ movements have persisted over more than four decades through different trajectories and circumstances, especially in relation to broader protest cycles and reveals how political opportunities and constraints influence the conflicts around the legalisation of squats. p>

Download or read book Squatters in the Capitalist City written by Miguel Martinez and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-08-30 with total page 343 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To date, there has been no comprehensive analysis of the disperse research on the squatters’ movement in Europe. In Squatters in the Capitalist City, Miguel A. Martínez López presents a critical review of the current research on squatting and of the historical development of the movements in European cities according to their major social, political and spatial dimensions. Comparing cities, contexts, and the achievements of the squatters’ movements, this book presents the view that squatting is not simply a set of isolated, illegal and marginal practices, but is a long-lasting urban and transnational movement with significant and broad implications. While intersecting with different housing struggles, squatters face various aspects of urban politics and enhance the content of the movements claiming for a ‘right to the city.’ Squatters in the Capitalist City seeks to understand both the socio-spatial and political conditions favourable to the emergence and development of squatting, and the nature of the interactions between squatters, authorities and property owners by discussing the trajectory, features and limitations of squatting as a potential radicalisation of urban democracy.

Download or read book The Autonomous City written by Alexander Vasudevan and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2023-01-03 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A radical history of squatting and the struggle for the right to remake the city The Autonomous City is the first popular history of squatting as practised in Europe and North America. Alex Vasudevan retraces the struggle for housing in Amsterdam, Berlin, Copenhagen, Detroit, Hamburg, London, Madrid, Milan, New York, and Vancouver. He looks at the organisation of alternative forms of housing—from Copenhagen’s Freetown Christiana to the squats of the Lower East Side—as well as the official response, including the recent criminalisation of squatting, the brutal eviction of squatters and their widespread vilification. Pictured as a way to reimagine and reclaim the city, squatting offers an alternative to housing insecurity, oppressive property speculation and the negative effects of urban regeneration. We must, more than ever, reanimate and remake the urban environment as a site of radical social transformation.

Download or read book The Squatters Movement in Europe written by Squatting Europe Kollective and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Squatters' Movement in Europe is the first definitive guide to squatting as an alternative to capitalism. It offers a unique insider's view on the movement - its ideals, actions and ways of life. At a time of growing crisis in Europe withhigh unemployment, dwindling social housing and declining living standards, squatting has become an increasingly popular option. The book is written by an activist-scholar collective, whose members have direct experience of squatting: many are stillsquatters today. There are contributions from the Netherlands, Spain, the USA, France, Italy, Germany, Switzerland and the UK. In an age of austerity and precarity this book shows what has been achieved by this resilient social movement, which holdslessons for policy-makers, activists and academics alike.

Download or read book City Is Ours written by Bart van der Steen and published by PM Press. This book was released on 2014-09-11 with total page 463 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Squatters and autonomous movements have been in the forefront of radical politics in Europe for nearly a half-century—from struggles against urban renewal and gentrification, to large-scale peace and environmental campaigns, to spearheading the antiausterity protests sweeping the continent. Through the compilation of the local movement histories of eight different cities—including Amsterdam, Berlin, and other famous centers of autonomous insurgence along with underdocumented cities such as Poznan and Athens—The City Is Ours paints a broad and complex picture of Europe’s squatting and autonomous movements. Each chapter focuses on one city and provides a clear chronological narrative and analysis accompanied by photographs and illustrations. The chapters focus on the most important events and developments in the history of these movements. Furthermore, they identify the specificities of the local movements and deal with issues such as the relation between politics and subculture, generational shifts, the role of confrontation and violence, and changes in political tactics. All chapters are written by politically-engaged authors who combine academic scrutiny with accessible writing. Readers with an interest in the history of the newest social movements will find plenty to mull over here. Contributors include Nazima Kadir, Gregor Kritidis, Claudio Cattaneo, Enrique Tudela, Alex Vasudevan, Needle Collective and the Bash Street Kids, René Karpantschof, Flemming Mikkelsen, Lucy Finchett-Maddock, Grzegorz Piotrowski, and Robert Foltin.

Download or read book Migration Squatting and Radical Autonomy written by Pierpaolo Mudu and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-07-01 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a unique contribution, exploring how the intersections among migrants and radical squatter’s movements have evolved over past decades. The complexity and importance of squatting practices are analyzed from a bottom-up perspective, to demonstrate how the spaces of squatting can be transformed by migrants. With contributions from scholars, scholar-activists, and activists, this book provides unique insights into how squatting has offered an alternative to dominant anti-immigrant policies, and the implications of squatting on the social acceptance of migrants. It illustrates the different mechanisms of protest followed in solidarity by migrant squatters and Social Center activists, when discrimination comes from above or below, and explores how can different spatialities be conceived and realized by radical practices. Contributions adopt a variety of perspectives, from critical human geography, social movement studies, political sociology, urban anthropology, autonomous Marxism, feminism, open localism, anarchism and post-structuralism, to analyze and contextualize migrants and squatters’ exclusion and social justice issues. This book is a timely and original contribution through its exploration of migrations, squatting and radical autonomy.

Download or read book Squatting in Europe written by Squatting Europe Kollective and published by . This book was released on 2012-10 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Squatting offers a radical but simple solution to the crises of housing, homelessness, and the lack of social space that mark contemporary society: occupying empty buildings and rebuilding lives and communities in the process. Squatting has a long and complex history, interwoven with the changing and contested nature of urban politics over the last forty years. Squatting can be an individual strategy for shelter or a collective experiment in communal living. Squatted and self-managed social centres have contributed to the renewal of urban struggles across Europe and intersect with larger political projects. However, not all squatters share the same goals, resources, backgrounds or desire for visibility. Squatting in Europe aims to move beyond the conventional understandings of squatting, investigating its history in Europe over the past four decades. Historical comparisons and analysis blend together in these inquiries into squatting in the Netherlands, Italy, Spain, France, Germany and England. In it members of SqEK (Squatting Europe Kollective) explore the diverse, radical, and often controversial nature of squatting as a form of militant research and self-managed knowledge production"--Publisher's description

Download or read book Ours to Lose written by Amy Starecheski and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2016-11-07 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “The fascinating and little-known tale of the Lower East Side squatters of the Eighties . . . a radical, European-inspired housing movement” (The Village Voice). Though New York’s Lower East Side today is home to high-end condos and hip restaurants, it was for decades an infamous site of blight, open-air drug dealing, and class conflict—an emblematic example of the tattered state of 1970s and ’80s Manhattan. Those decades of strife, however, also gave the Lower East Side something unusual: a radical movement that blended urban homesteading and European-style squatting in a way never before seen in the United States. Ours to Lose tells the oral history of that movement through a close look at a diverse group of Lower East Side squatters who occupied abandoned city-owned buildings in the 1980s, fought to keep them for decades, and eventually began a long, complicated process to turn their illegal occupancy into legal cooperative ownership. Amy Starecheski here not only tells a little-known New York story, she also shows how property shapes our sense of ourselves as social beings and explores the ethics of homeownership and debt in post-recession America. “There are many books about the Lower East Side and its recent transformation, yet none has included engagement or oral history with primary organizers in the way Starecheski has. Ours to Lose is a unique and substantive contribution to our understanding of a most distinct practice in the shaping of urban space.” —Metropolitiques “What is significant is that the author demonstrates how some New Yorkers addressed the housing crisis in an unconventional manner. Recommended.” —Choice

Download or read book Contested Cities and Urban Activism written by Ngai Ming Yip and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-10-13 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This edited volume advances our understanding of urban activism beyond the social movement theorization dominated by thesis of political opportunity structure and resource mobilization, as well as by research based on experience from the global north. Covering a diversity of urban actions from a broad range of countries in both hemispheres as well as the global north and global south, this unique collection notably focuses on non-institutionalised or localised urban actions that have the potential to bring about radical structural transformation of the urban system and also addresses actions in authoritarian regimes that are too sensitive to call themselves “movement”. It addresses localized issues cut off from international movements such as collective consumption issues, like clean water, basic shelter, actions against displacement or proper venues for street vendors, and argues that the integration of the actions in cities in the global south with the specificity of their local social and political environment is as pivotal as their connection with global movement networks or international NGOs. A key read for researchers and policy makers cutting across the fields of urban sociology, political science, public policy, geography, regional studies and housing studies, this text provides an interdisciplinary and international perspective on 21st century urban activism in the global north and south.

Download or read book Comparative Approaches to Informal Housing Around the Globe written by Udo Grashoff and published by UCL Press. This book was released on 2020-02-06 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Comparative Approaches to Informal Housing Around the Globe brings together historians, anthropologists, political scientists, sociologists, urban planners and political activists to break new ground in the globalisation of knowledge about informal housing. Providing both methodological reflections and practical examples, they compare informal settlements, unauthorised occupation of flats, illegal housing construction and political squatting in different regions of the world. Subjects covered include squatter settlements in Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, squatting activism in Brazil and Spain, right-wing squatting in Germany, planning laws and informality across countries in the Global North, and squatting in post-Second World War UK and Australia.

Download or read book Shadow Cities written by Robert Neuwirth and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-05-06 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In almost every country of the developing world, the most active builders are squatters, creating complex local economies with high rises, shopping strips, banks, and self-government. As they invent new social structures, Neuwirth argues, squatters are at the forefront of the worldwide movement to develop new visions of what constitutes property and community. Visit Robert Neuwirth's blog at: http://squatterci ty.blogspot.com

Download or read book Contentious Politics and the Welfare State written by Dominika Vergara Polanska and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book outlines the history of squatting in Sweden and analyses the conditions under which squatting has intensified and declined in the country between 1968 and 2017. With close attention to the relationship between civil society and the state in the Swedish context, and the manner in which this relationship, together with attendant political, media and movement-based discourses, shapes the possibilities that exist for collective action, the author draws on two key concepts - those of the narrative of consensusand discourse- to present an analysis of squatting as a form of contentious politics and the "successful" story of civil society development as decisive for its emergence and development in the country. A study of the way in which confrontational actors question both the property relations inherent in capitalism and the authority of the welfare state and its institutions, Contentious Politics and the Welfare Statewill appeal to social scientists with interests in urban studies, political sociology, squatting, social movements and the relationship between the welfare state and contentious social actors.

Download or read book The Autonomous Life written by Nazima Kadir and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is an ethnographic study of the internal dynamics of a subcultural squatting community that defines itself as a social movement.

Download or read book Metropolitan Preoccupations written by Alexander Vasudevan and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2015-10-12 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this, the first book-length study of the cultural and political geography of squatting in Berlin, Alexander Vasudevan links the everyday practices of squatters in the city to wider and enduring questions about the relationship between space, culture, and protest. Focuses on the everyday and makeshift practices of squatters in their attempt to exist beyond dominant power relations and redefine what it means to live in the city Offers a fresh critical perspective that builds on recent debates about the “right to the city” and the role of grassroots activism in the making of alternative urbanisms Examines the implications of urban squatting for how we think, research and inhabit the city as a site of radical social transformation Challenges existing scholarship on the New Left in Germany by developing a critical geographical reading of the anti-authoritarian revolt and the complex geographies of connection and solidarity that emerged in its wake Draws on extensive field work conducted in Berlin and elsewhere in Germany

Download or read book Squatting and the State written by Lorna Fox O'Mahony and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2022-08-25 with total page 497 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Squatting and the State offers a new theoretical and methodological approach for analyzing state response to squatting, homelessness, empty land, and housing. Embedded in local, national, and transnational contexts, and reaching beyond conventional property theories, this important work sets out a fresh analytical paradigm for understanding the deep, interlocking problems facing not just the traditional 'victims' of narratives about homelessness and squatting but also a variety of other participants in these conflicts. Against the backdrop of economic, social, and political crises, Squatting and the State offers readers important insights about the changing natures of property, investment, housing, communities, and the multi-level state, and describes the implications of these changes for how we think and talk about property in law.

Download or read book Nine tenths of the Law written by Hannah Dobbz and published by AK Press. This book was released on 2012-11-27 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Millions of foreclosed homes and abandoned buildings on one hand; millions of Americans desperate for decent shelter on the other. Hannah Dobbz makes the necessary addition of resources and needs in a book that is both a brilliant history of squatting in the USA and a template for the next stage of the Occupy movement.--Mike Davis, author of Planet of Slums and Buda's Wagon How does "property" fit into designs for an equitable society? Nine-tenths of the Law examines the history of squatting and property struggles in the United States, from colonialism to twentieth century urban squatting and the foreclosure crisis of the late 2000s, and how such resistance movements shape the law. Stories from our most hard-hit American cities show that property is truly in crisis: One in five homes in Buffalo, NY, are abandoned. Our national housing vacancy rate is 14 percent. If we gave a house to every homeless person in the United States two-thirds of that stock would remain empty. In May of 2011, one in every 103 homes in Nevada was in foreclosure. Nine-tenths of the Law expands our understanding of property law and highlights recent tactics like creative squatting ventures and the use of adverse possession to claim title to vacant homes. Hannah Dobbz unveils the tangled relationship Americans have always had in creating and sustaining healthy communities. Hannah Dobbz is a writer, editor, filmmaker, and former squatter. In 2007 she produced a film about squatters in the Bay Area called Shelter. The film has screened widely at universities, bookstores, and community spaces, including the 2009 Three Rivers Film Festival in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Download or read book The Patchwork City written by Marco Z. Garrido and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2019-08-05 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In contemporary Manila, slums and squatter settlements are peppered throughout the city, often pushing right up against the walled enclaves of the privileged, creating the complex geopolitical pattern of Marco Z. Garrido’s “patchwork city.” Garrido documents the fragmentation of Manila into a mélange of spaces defined by class, particularly slums and upper- and middle-class enclaves. He then looks beyond urban fragmentation to delineate its effects on class relations and politics, arguing that the proliferation of these slums and enclaves and their subsequent proximity have intensified class relations. For enclave residents, the proximity of slums is a source of insecurity, compelling them to impose spatial boundaries on slum residents. For slum residents, the regular imposition of these boundaries creates a pervasive sense of discrimination. Class boundaries then sharpen along the housing divide, and the urban poor and middle class emerge not as labor and capital but as squatters and “villagers,” Manila’s name for subdivision residents. Garrido further examines the politicization of this divide with the case of the populist president Joseph Estrada, finding the two sides drawn into contention over not just the right to the city, but the nature of democracy itself. The Patchwork City illuminates how segregation, class relations, and democracy are all intensely connected. It makes clear, ultimately, that class as a social structure is as indispensable to the study of Manila—and of many other cities of the Global South—as race is to the study of American cities.