reclaiming spaces: project

The Reclaiming Spaces project invites proposals and contributions for its first magazine, targeted at an international audience of urban activists, community organizers, campaigners, urban researchers, journalists, and progressive politicians. For further info on Reclaiming Spaces project visit www.reclaiming-spaces.org/project

Provisional title and focus of the first issue is:

“Housing the Crisis: local struggles in a world of crashes.”

The first issue of the Reclaiming Spaces Magazine will focus on the multitude of actions, struggles, and strategies of survival and solidarity, as well as on alternative plans and political demands in response to the effects of the economic and financial crisis on housing and local living conditions. By this, we aim to encourage a political debate among social movements on transnational strategies towards a more just economy and society.

Attention must be paid to the multi-dimensional character of the current “crisis”: we know that it emerges as economic, but it is also social, environmental, political and spatial. Built on the speculative global finance, this situation is not new and was largely propelled and modelled by neoliberal policies over the last few decades. Moreover, we should not forget the continuity between old and new struggles that have also emerged such as those resisting forced evictions, mega events and mega projects, gentrification, and other violations of rights. For this issue, we also welcome a limited number of other proposals for reports about most recent and urgent struggles for housing and land rights, for the defence of commons and for the socialization of public goods and services as well as for the “right to the city”.

QUESTIONS FOR ISSUE NO. 1

- What have been our/your experiences with the impact of the “crisis” on housing, infrastructure, land and cities? What is the actual situation in your country, city or region? - Are there new types of transnational corporations acting under new guises? Have they been weakened or are they just reorganizing their powers?

- How are States and local authorities changing their roles and policies? Are there any new political ordinances or laws related to the crisis? What does this mean for local social movements, labour unions, and other alliances?

- How have the conditions of struggles changed through new needs, challenges, and opportunities?

- How can this crisis be analysed with respect to progressive emancipative strategies and protections of rights?

- Which strategies and policies should and/or would social movements adopt? - Which are the existing and viable alternatives?

Contributions to this issue may also relate to the demands (including your critical review or further development) that had been published in November 2008:
“International housing rights alliances call for fundamental change of global financial architecture and financing habitat”
http://www.reclaiming-spaces.org/crisis/archives8

CONTRIBUTIONS AND FORMATS

We are accepting proposals for popular political and journalistic writings, such as features, reportages, personal stories/experiences, critical commentaries and statements, overviews, news, interviews, portraits, and scholarly work. We are also interested in visual submissions such as photo essays, comics, and maps.

Written submissions should be no longer 15.000 characters (or ca. 2000 words). Longer stories (anything above 2500 character/or 350 words) should be accompanied with illustrations. To map the phenomenon, we are also accepting a variety of short reports or summaries (400 to 600 words) of national or local conditions with regard to housing and crisis. We also have some space for urgent news, calls, and announcements.

PROCESS

Please send abstracts, article summaries, or short topic descriptions (including word count, and number of attached illustrations)

to: editors-crisis (at) reclaiming-spaces.org

by August 31st 2009.

Accepted contributions will be published under www.reclaiming-spaces.org/crisis.

The first issue will be published in Pdf format and eventually printed out pending funding.

This first issue of the reclaiming-spaces magazine is a collective experiment. Besides the content, it is of high priority to build a network of contributing authors linked with local movements.

Please feel free to ask for more details and get in dialogue with us.

The reclaiming spaces editing group of issue 01:

Laura Colini, Constance Carr, Knut Unger, Massimo A. Allamandola

editors-crisis (at) reclaiming-spaces.org

Posted on August 16th, 2009 under Magazine, issue 1: crisis •  Print This Post • RSS 2.0 feed • You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed