City Is Ours: Squatting and Autonomous Movements in Europe from the 1970s to the Present

by Bart van der Steen (Editor), Ask Katzeff (Editor), Leendert van Hoogenhuijze (Editor)

Squatters and autonomous movements have been in the forefront of radical politics in Europe for nearly a half-century—from struggles against urban renewal and gentrification, to large-scale peace and environmental campaigns, to spearheading the antiausterity protests sweeping the continent. Through the compilation of the local movement histories of eight different cities—including Amsterdam, Berlin, and other famous centers of autonomous insurgence along with underdocumented cities such as Poznan and Athens— The City Is Ours paints a broad and complex picture of Europe’s squatting and autonomous movements. Each chapter focuses on one city and provides a clear chronological narrative and analysis accompanied by photographs and illustrations. The chapters focus on the most important events and developments in the history of these movements. Furthermore, they identify the specificities of the local movements and deal with issues such as the relation between politics and subculture, generational shifts, the role of confrontation and violence, and changes in political tactics. All chapters are written by politically-engaged authors who combine academic scrutiny with accessible writing. Readers with an interest in the history of the newest social movements will find plenty to mull over here. Contributors include Nazima Kadir, Gregor Kritidis, Claudio Cattaneo, Enrique Tudela, Alex Vasudevan, Needle Collective and the Bash Street Kids, René Karpantschof, Flemming Mikkelsen, Lucy Finchett-Maddock, Grzegorz Piotrowski, and Robert Foltin.

Genres: History, Politics, Cities, Nonfiction

336 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 2014

Reviews

[Lisa Pontén · Rating 4 out of 5]

While some chapters are definitely better than others, and there are many valuable insights here, often I found the book is written in too much of a pragmatic descriptive manner. A more thorough investigation of narratives and argumentations by the movements, perhaps also comparative notes, would have been a very welcome touch!

[Melanie · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting history, light on academic orientation

This was an interesting read. It got a bit tedious, as it was a collection of histories - there were a lot of similarities. As an academic, I would have liked a stronger use of theory throughout, but that's just my personal leaning. It's a good record of the movement.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of essays from different cities on squatting and autonomous movements in Europe covering the years from around the 1960s to 2012. Focus is on western europe with an essay on Poznan in Poland being the exception (and maybe one on Greece and one on Vienna depending on the defenition of western europe). There are two essays focused on England, one on London and one on Brighton, but for the rest there is only one essay per country.

Since the essays is written by different authors with different perspectives the focus is shifting between the essays. All essays are discussing squatting to some extent, but for some the focus is a bit more on the overall autonomous movement. This isn't very sursprising though. Amsterdam has a very rich historical squatters movement which has had it's very own dynamic. For other countries/cities the squatting movement isn't as rich and has a dynamic which can't be seperated from the dynamic of the wider autonomous movement.

If the book had been written by one author it would have been a more coherent narrative. But what you get instead with different authors for every essay is more of a street view from the several movements. The various approaches gives an insight on what it is that is important for the movements and how strong they are. That they have developed a classification of different squatter types in Amsterdam could for example only have happened there since a movement needs to have reached a certain threshold for that to happen.

One lesson I take away after reading the book is that the squatter movements could succeed in a time when the city centres wasn't very attractive for capital. In the 60s and 70s there were a lot of empty buildings in some cities and this made squatting comparatively easy. Today when city centres see a lot more capital investment and few empty buildings the repression is much swifter which makes it hard to build something lasting.

In the end it is a nice and easy to read historical introduction to some of the more important squatter movements in cities in Europe. If you want to read more and more in depth they end every chapter with some suggestions for further reading.

[Laura]

Very clearly a collection of academic writings, either for post-doctoral programs or for publication in academic journals. The inclusion of a forward, a prologue, AND an introduction gives you an idea of the pomposity with which this topic is approached. If you are in academia then you are looking to this book for research purposes, and I'm sure it will fit your needs. If you are a regular person interested in the topic of squats and squatting, this book will bore you to tears.

[Aggrey Odera · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this for a paper I'm writing. Very good/ extensive review of squatting movements around Europe. I was mostly interested in Berlin (since its Hausbesetzer bewegung -mostly active in the late 70s and then again in the early 90s after the reunification,- is by far the most notorious in the West, and the city as a whole has housing policies that would shock most Americans), but I learned a lot about and was fairly impressed by squats and autonomous communes in cities like Brighton.

[Quentin · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book covers squatter movements in several European cities. Going into detail the ideals of each movement and ideals the people carried. All had one thing in common that their movements failed due lack of structure and infighting. Along sheer laziness preventing the communities from succeeding.

[River · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the best English language book on squatting in Europe that I have encountered. It's a collection of essays about squatting in various countries and cities, all written by folks who come from the academic world (for the most part) but who contribute well-written and comprehensible chapters. It's definitely worth reading.

[Madeleine]

i really liked this archive, but i think this falters as a collection in the sense that it's a bunch of disparate academics writing about street politics. this means at times that theories, focuses, and inquiries re: squatting, the law, the right to the city are not coherent across authors, and it also gives a book about radical direct action more of an academic and scattered feel than i think is necessarily productive (liiike, if i didn't read theory, would i be able to get through this?? idk! but should you be able to? yeah, prob !!). the best essays here were from people who cut their teeth in these movements. i'm interested in that affective pull.