The autonomous city
Subtitle: a history of urban squatting
By: Alexander Vasudevan
Publisher: Verso
Published: 2017
Language: eng
Number of pages: 292
ISBN-13: 9781781687864; 9781781687857; 9781781687871; 9781781687888
Copyright date: 2017
Subjects: Urban; Sociology; SOCIAL SCIENCE; Political Advocacy; Political Process; General; POLITICAL SCIENCE; Public Policy; Squatter settlements; History
Description: "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"--
Notes: Includes bibliographical references.
Table of contents: title: Introduction; title: From shantytown to "Operation move-in" : squatter sovereignty in New York --; title: "Who are the squatters?" : London's hidden history --; title: Building a squatters' movement : the politics of preservation and provocation in Amsterdam and Copenhagen --; title: "The struggle over housing continues" : urban squatting and violent confrontation in Frankfurt and Hamburg --; title: Reassembling the city : makeshift urbanisms and the politics of squatting in Berlin --; title: Seizing the city : autonomous urbanisms and the social factory --; title: Mudflats living and the makeshift city : settler colonialism, artistic reinvention and the contradictions of squatting in Vancouver --; title: Reclaiming New York : squatting and the neoliberal city ---- Afterword.