Towards a different city: Movements and Municipalism – the production of a new common(s) sense

Within the series “Towards a Different City”, on Wednesday, October 24th at 7pm at the Center for Cultural Decontamination a discussion will be held with Ana Mendes de Andes on the topic “Movements and Municipalism: the production of a new common(s) sense”.

Since 2014, the municipalism project has been trying to develop the tools for a more democratic, liveable, fearless, caring and collaborative live. However, the transformation of the so-called “cities of change” started much before the institutional assault that got into the government of dozens of cities, towns and small municipalities in Spain. Social movement and the production of urban commons have been at the core of a long process that has managed to articulate the re-appropriation of the public space in the 15M and the squares movement, the generation of new ideas and the many expressions of the resistance against austerity and the privatisation of life in our cities around a new common sense: that it’s possible to imagine new ways to be in common, and people have the power to make them happen.

Ana Méndez de Andés is an architect and urban planner who has been working over last ten years around the question of urban commons, production of public space and municipalism. She is a founding member of the Madrid-base collective Observatorio Metropolitano and of different collective projects such as car-tac, areaciega, and urbanaccion. Ana has been actively engaged in the organization of the citizen-led platform Ahora Madrid that got into the City Council of Madrid in 2015, where she has been a Strategic Planning Advisor. She is currently pursuing a PhD on Urban Commons and Municipalism at Sheffield University.