Reclaiming Cities
Yavor Tarinski

How cities can better address the concerns of their citizens through federations.

Reclaiming Cities is a global history of the city and the citizen that documents experiences with direct democratic governance and explores the theoretical groundwork that underpins such movements. The mutual interests of the state and multinational corporations routinely thwart any meaningful actions on a wide variety of issues of concern to citizens, such as climate change, labor policy, civil rights, gun control—issues better addressed by citizens concerned for the well-being of their communities. Yavor Tarinski argues that instead of relying on bureaucratic summits and centralized solutions, cities ought to band together in federations, beyond national boundaries, uniting citizens in struggles against ecological catastrophe and other existential crises.

Yavor Tarinski is an independent researcher, author, and activist. He is the author of several books, including Concepts for a Democratic and Ecological Society, and the editor of Enlightenment and Ecology: The Legacy of Murray Bookchin in the 21st Century.

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• I CITIES
• 1. Time to Reclaim the City
• 2. Exploring Commons-Based Strategies for Urban Regeneration
• 3. The City as Locus for Politics beyond Statecraft
• 4. Beyond Statecraft Anti-Imperialism
• 5. Municipalist Commoning and Factory Recuperation
• 6. Emancipated Neighborhoods within the Project of Direct Democracy
• 7. Federations of Cities: Castoriadis, Bookchin, AANES
• 8. The Temporalities of Climate Change: From Domination to Direct Democracy
  
• II CITIZENS Re-Embedding Citizenship in Revolutionary Politics
  
• 1. Citizenship as an Inseparable part of Revolutionary Politics
• 2. Citizens or Workers
• 3. The Spatial Dimensions of Citizenship versus Mob Rule
  
• 4. Overcoming Individualist Passivity: Freedom as Political Action
• 5. Identities, Space, Time, Emancipation
• 6. Sortition and the Public Assembly
• 7. Educational Approaches towards Democratic Citizenry
  
• 8. Time, Leisure, Work: Towards Radical Transformation of Everyday Life
  
• Bibliography
  

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