The Autonomous City: A History of Urban Squatting

by Alexander Vasudevan

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.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Politics, Urban, Urbanism, Geography, Sociology

336 pages, Paperback

Published January 3, 2023

About the author

Alexander Vasudevan is Associate Professor in Human Geography and Fellow, Christ Church College, Oxford University. He is the author of Metropolitan Preoccupations: The Spatial Politics of Squatting in Berlin and co-author of the forthcoming Geographies of Forced Eviction: Dispossession, Violence, Insecurity. He has written for the Guardian, openDemoracy and New Left Project.

Reviews

[Douglas Murphy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well, while this is all very fascinating and super well-researched and all the rest of it, as I read I found myself becoming increasingly frustrated by the endless series of dismal defeats, either at the end of police truncheons, or through acrimony, disintegration and abuse, and how each time the author asks us to understand these ignominious situations as visions of a radical politics of care, fragments of a radical non-capitalist city, etc etc.

I'm just not sure I buy it, and with yet another love letter to Autonomia buried in there, barely any mention of how squatting in the rich world might possibly relate to informal squatted settlements in the developing world, and also a very blasé elision between the desperate patching up that squatters have to do, and the actual expert process of properly repairing buildings, I have much to disagree with.

I suppose at the end of the day I consider a state building hundreds of thousands of houses for its people to be more utopian than a few hundred punks shivering amongst the rafters, but then that's my lack of vision I suppose…

[Danielle Thorpe · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting insight into the history of squatting and its use within the struggle for rights to the city. I particularly enjoyed how the book offers windows into global cities and the projects of their inhabitants, some of which can still be seen today.

[Hexe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Had a lot of feelings in general reading this book as I've been part of and tangential to several squatting movements and subsistence squats. If you've never interacted with these communities this book is a hugely valuable source of information and perspective on motivation and cultural context.

If you have, you probably have critiques and lots of feelings about it too.

There was some basic mistakes re: German names & English phonetics that should have gotten caught by the copyeditor (Rota Flora/Rote Flora and others) and other stuff made me feel like some aspects could have been researched better and A LOT was left out of the section I have the most background with (Berlin), but every section in the book deserves at least a book length treatment so I guess they did their best?

Also I dislike Verso cuz a friend was sexually harassed by a very important person at Verso and I'm happy I got it from the library instead of buying it.

[Silje · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read this on the train back from Hamburg after visiting an event about co-housing, house associations and the quite interesting organization form of rental house syndicate which I didn’t know before. A lot of this is now promoted by the authorities, but the roots are in the squatters’ movement described in this book.

Not terribly well written and at times seems a bit of a list of certain housing acts, legal instruments and acronyms for organizations. But this is an important book, putting squatting in the big picture of a never ending global fight for affordable housing and a right to the city not just for the property speculators.

[Lawrence · Rating 3 out of 5]

A bird’s eye, breezy history of squatting movements in the West, from New York to Germany, Amsterdam, Denmark and Vancouver Island. While there are some nods to colonialism and pre-war actions, the book is mostly concerned with the high-point of the 60s and 70s before drawing some general conclusions for today (when things are even worse).

The geography and stories are remarkable in their similarity: government urban renewal forcibly vacates or lets buildings rot and the underground move in to set up shop. And they accomplish small victories! From transition to co-ops to some tenants’ rights, before they fall apart under police violence or internal squabbles.

The sheer violence of military police and state protection of capital is impressively reiterated. But the book is so fast-paced that we don’t get a feel for much else, particularly the deep ideologies or factions that influenced the movements. It’s more a chronology of events than anything else.

Reading this I had some nostalgia: there was a time when people were fighting the government building too much and too recklessly, when NIMBYISM was good! When there was enough of a net and solidarity for these actions! But as for building for the future, or really digging deep, I was left unsatisfied. Hopefully Vasudevan does a case study to really give us more than this tasting menu.

http://lawrencedebbs.home.blog/2024/0...

[Callum Robert Inkster · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely incredible, Vasudevan is able to recount and tell the stories of an otherwise hidden history. Both the highs of the ability to change one's own cities, to the lows of the constant vigilance and oppression that those people lived under.

As a Housing Crisis researcher, I've always believed Squatting to be a potential solution that needs to be explored. The Autonomous City taught me, not only was the thought not original but that it was also correct.

The Neoliberal order we now all live under, has warped people's perception of housing. From a right to an asset, which in turn has negatively polarised people to Squatting, ultimately leading to Squatting in Residential properties to be made illegal here in the UK.
This act, was one of the first Authoritarian steps our governments made. Squatting was always a form of protest, and to criminalise it, criminalises protest.

[Parastooghf · Rating 3 out of 5]

«تصرف عدوانی می‌تواند هم مسئله باشد و هم راه‌حل، تاریخی از سلب مالکیت و آوارگی و شکلی از سکونت و همبستگی. تصرف عدوانی را می‌شود به مثابه خشونت و به انزوا راندن پیکربندی کرد. همانطور که می‌تواند شیوه‌ای برای تولید فعالیت‌های حمایتی و خرابکاری باشد. در همان حال که برای برخی بازنمایی انزواجویانه هنرمندانه و خلاق از مبارزات اجتماعی شهر است، برای دیگران نشان از راه‌های متفاوت و از نظر اجتماعی بیشتر عادلانه سازمان‌دهی و به اشتراک‌گذاری فضای شهری دارد. این تناقضات پاسخ آسانی ندارد، با این همه اشاره‌ای گذرا دارند بر اینکه چگونه باید شهر را به گونه‌ای متفاوت بشناسیم و در آن زندگی کنیم.»
ص۱۵۷

[Bagumbas · Rating 2 out of 5]

Hmm I couldn't get into this at all, it's a very superficial look at squatting in Europa, which books like 'Squatting in Europe: Radical Spaces, Urban Struggles' and 'The Squatters' Movement in Europe: Commons and Autonomy as Alternatives to Capitalism' do much better, with fine-grained analysis that is missing here. Lots of typos and the comment in the other review about sexual harrassment by someone at Verso is disturbing.

[Doug · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating and insightful read for anyone interested in the history of squatting and its subcultures. Would definitely recommend to those wanting an intelligent and accessible insight into this area, as well as a timely reminder of countering ongoing housing crises through collective activism.

[Dimitri · Rating 5 out of 5]

A rich history of squatting - highly recommended.

[Michael Kowalchuk · Rating 3 out of 5]

I appreciated how the book started and ended with essays on New York, from the tenants' rights movement of the 30s to the demise of large-scale squatting in the East Village of the 1980s. For a collection that stands out as a singular, coherent defense of the squatters' movement, there were also some glaring flaws. The author repeatedly felt the need to emphasize how important his thesis was, and how important squatting is, instead of backing up these claims with richer evidence. If squatting is about creating a new kind of city and a new way of living, why was so much emphasis placed on state repression and squatters' response to that repression, instead of the interpersonal fabric of these squats or their unique spatial properties? Squatting was upheld as a viable alternative to capitalist oppression but the author spent little time addressing drug abuse and sexism within the squatters' movement. The strongest essays elaborated on the socioeconomic frameworks that generated the need for squatting; the description of NYC's 1970s financial crisis was quite useful. Overall, this is a great resource about the mechanics of squatting and the legal/political issues surrounding the movement. Unfortunately, much remains to be done to convince the reader that squatting yields genuine, liberatory autonomy from capitalism.

[Dennis · Rating 4 out of 5]

"The Autonomous City provides the reader with a conceptually diverse history of squatting in Europe and North America since the 1960s and engages critically with a wide variety of important questions. While [Vasudevan's] focus may stray towards the geographical, his minute treatment of varied sources serves as a great starting point for historians interested in exploring a popular history of squatters’ movements. The strongest part of The Autonomous City is Vasudevan’s approach to the topic from the bottom-up without glorifying actors and actions, and it deserves attention from an audience of historians."

See my full review in Global Histories, Vol. 3, No. 2:

https://www.globalhistories.com/index...

[Matthew · Rating 5 out of 5]

I couldn't put this book down once I started it - a fascinating history of radical housing movements around the world and the ideas behind them. Vasudevan obviously cares about the movement he is writing about, and does so so we can learn from the struggles of the past to inform our own today.

[Mills College Library]

307.336 V341 2017