Notes

[1] We use the term “activism” for convenience and for reasons of space. However, we believe that we should go beyond the divide between activists and the rest of the world, building a unifying/plural society working towards social change.

[2] More information about The City Repair Project available from http://www.cityrepair.org/

[3] UN-Habitat is based in Nairobi and addresses the impacts of human settlement. The agency executes the UN General Assembly agenda on human settlement and habitat adopted at the Habitat international conference. The first conference, Habitat I, took place in Vancouver in 1976 and the most recent, Habitat III, led to the adoption of the New Urban Agenda, in Quito in October 2016.

[4] According to UN World Cities Report 2016, inequalities increased in 75 per cent of cities between 1996 and 2016.

[5] Translation by the author. Originally: “le droit a la vie urbaine, a la centralite renovee, aux lieux de rencontres et d’echanges, aux rythmes de vie et emplois du temps permettant l’usage plein et entier de ces moments et lieux,” Henri Lefebvre, Le Droit a la ville Economica, 1967, p.133.

[6] Lefebvre wrote The Right to the City in 1967, 100 years after Capital.

[7] Translation by the author. Originally: “Comme il y a un siecle, la classe ouvriere rassemble les interets (depassant l’immediat et le superficiel), de la societe entiere et d’abord de tous ceux qui habitent.”

[8] See http://abahlali.org/.

[9] Lefebvre denounced the State and the companies that were grabbing the city. But we cannot say that he was an anarchist, as he believes that the urban revolution has to be based on an economic revolution (planning oriented towards the satisfaction of social needs) and political (democratic control of the state apparatus and self-organization) and also on a permanent cultural one where arts play a key role (Henri Lefebvre, Le Droit a la ville, Economica, 1967, p. 134).

[10] Interview with Henri Lefebvre, Urbanose, Office National du film du Canada, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kyLooKv6mU.

[11] Translation by the author. Originally: “...dans mais souvent contre la societe, par mais souvent contre la culture” (Henri Lefebvre, Le Droit a la ville, Economica, 1967, p.134).

[12] https://www.uclg.org/ United Cities and Local Government is the International Organization of Local Governments funded in 2001 and recognized by the UN. Its headquarters is in Barcelona.

[13] http://www.righttothecityplatform.org.br.

[14] Translation by the author. Originally: “Certes, la possibilite d’un effondrement ferme des avenirs qui nous sont chers, et c’est violent, mais il en ouvre une infinite d’autres, dont certains etonnamment rieurs. Tout l’enjeu est donc d’apprivoiser ces nouveaux avenirs, et de les rendre vivables” (in Comment toutpeut s’effondrer: Petit manuel de collapsologie a I’usage des generations presentes, Pablo Servigne, Raphael Stevens, Seuil, 2015).

[15] Notably Bookchin 1999; Lefebvre 1996; Harvey 2012.

[16] See, e.g., De Angelis 2017; Hardt and Negri 2009.

[17] See, e.g., Stavridis 2013.

[18] As per Holloway 2002.

[19] Notably, TEM in Volos, Syntagma Time Bank in Athens, Koino in Thessaloniki, Faircoin internationally, and a dozen more.

[20] A noteworthy case is Bios Coop in Thessaloniki (http://www.bioscoop.gr), which unites some 500 families in “taking food in their own hands.”

[21] In particular, Initiative 136 (http://www.136.gr/) promoted a citizen-funded bid in the public tender, with the aim of managing Thessaloniki’s water company through a socially controlled nonprofit cooperative that would integrate all water and sanitation users through 16 local chapters. The bid was controversially rejected by the tender authorities, but mobilization proved sufficient to freeze the tender process altogether.

[22] http://ourpride.gr/

[23] In this respect the work of Italian legal scholar Ugo Mattei is invaluable (e.g. Capra and Mattei 2015, Ch. 9; Mattei 2015).

[24] I would like to thank Janet Biehl for advising me on relevant Bookchin’s quotes.

[25] For reason of space, this work does not explore the debates on the origin of rights, individual legal rights and natural rights.

[26] For Bookchin, rights are a human construction and need to be based on objective assumptions. When based on freedom or self— consciousness, they would better be called “norms” or “ethical standards.” These are things that people would ultimately want to achieve (Bookchin, in Evanoff 2007).

[27] Although Bookchin seems to side with a natural conception of rights, he sidelined the debate on the origin of rights.

[28] An interesting exception is the work of Kropotkin that speaks extensively about the right to live, to have food and to resist. His slogan is emblematic: “What we proclaim is the Right to Well-Being: WellBeing for All!” (Kropotkin 2011: 14).

[29] The only exception is the work of Roussopoulos (2013; 2015; 2017a), who explores the use of the right to the city and its implementation, using the creation of charters as his main example. This implementation is for him a way to incrementally address the possibility of citizenship being affirmed. However, this approach cannot clearly define the connection between the affirmation of such rights and the social ecology project. Moreover, it is not able to respond to the aforementioned critiques of the use of charters by Mayer and Souza.

[30] While Bookchin carefully examines Neolithic society in the Ecology of Freedom and traces the development of hierarchical society in Sumer in contrast to the rest of Mesopotamian society, he does not link specifically the loss of freedom with the loss of freedom of women. See also Chapter 2, The Emergence of Hierarchy and Chapter 3, The Legacy of Domination. Similarly, the first chapter of Urbanization Without Cities focuses on early Mesopotamian cities and he remarks on Kurdistan by name.

[31] In Greece, austerity measures were imposed by a Troika comprised of the IMF, the ECT and the Eurogroup, the unelected assembly of EU Ministers of Finance.

[32] Originally in French (du Pan, 1793 p. 80): “A l’exemple de Saturne, la revolution devore ses enfants.”

[33] An abrupt change takes place if the solid is crystallized. Some solids— e.g. glass—are not crystallized and they turn into liquid gradually. These solids are called amorphous (see e.g. Complex Systems Group, 2015).

[34] I have developed this thesis earlier in Tammilehto (2010; 2012). A similar theory is presented in De Angelis (2007).

[35] Heywood, in his widely used textbook, defines “politics” as “the activity through which people make, preserve and amend the general rules under which they live” (Heywood, 2013 p. 2).

[36] As George Orwell writes in his novel Nineteen eighty-four. “‘Who controls the past,’ ran the Party slogan, ‘controls the future. who controls the present controls the past.’” (Orwell, 1955).

[37] The situationists hinted at revolutionary desires that are repressed but exist in the subconscious (Baumeister and Negator, 2005, pp. 38–40; Situationist International, 1963).

[38] In Spanish, Plataforma de Afectados por la Hipoteca (Platform of Mortgage-Affected).

[39] Another kind of urban squat, land used to build popular housing, although related to housing movements in Brazil, has virtually disappeared in Spain, and will not be examined in this text.

[40] As described in the UN report prepared by the Special Rapporteur in charge, Raquel Rolnik (2009), who addresses the right to adequate housing. This report analyzes the procedures of those responsible for the mega-events in Brazil, the IOC and FIFA.

[41] In Portuguese: “remogoes.”

[42] In this area, on the eve of the mega-sport events (2014—2017) many squats were evicted, although they were located in an “Area of Special Social Interest,” an urban area earmarked for popular dwellings (Bogado, 2017).

[43] Municipal Enterprise of Housing and Land.

[44] Institute of Housing of Madrid.

[45] Further information: http://afectadosporlahipoteca.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/GreenBook-PAH-21juny.pdf

[46] Management Society of Funds from bank restructuring processes.

[47] In Portuguese: Movimento Nacional de Luta pela Moradia.

[48] In Portuguese: Movimento dos Trabalhadores Sem Teto (MTST).