Urban Political Podcast Ross Beveridge, Markus Kip, Mais Jafari, Nitin Bathla, Julio Paulos, Nicolas Goez, Talja Blokland

Lively Cities departs from conventions of urban studies to argue that cities are lived achievements forged by a multitude of entities—human and nonhuman—that make up the material politics of city making. Generating fresh conversations between posthumanism, postcolonialism, and political economy, Barua reveals how these actors shape, integrate, subsume, and relate to urban space in fascinating ways.
This podcast is produced in collaboration with the Urban Geography Journal.

This episode of the Urban Lives of Property Series expands discussions geographically and conceptually: Our guest in this episode, Jean-David Gerber, helps us think property from Switzerland and other places. Starting off with the observation that there is no single understanding of property, Jean-David argues that it is important for any consideration to be context-specific and to realize that property is not the same as propriété or Eigentum. Jean-David elaborates on his approach to property on the basis of the Institutional Resource Regime framework that he has been working on with colleagues for many years. Based on his fieldwork in Ghana, Senegal and Switzerland, he discusses the application of the framework aimed to consider the combined effects of public policies and property rights on the use of resources and the users themselves. Focusing on the case of Switzerland, he talks us through the legacy and ongoing relevance of old forms of collective property in forests and shared pastures in the mountains. Moving to the debate around new (urban) commons, the episode also covers current struggles and conflicts around the land policy paradigm in Switzerland, as well as new ideas in planning to exercise greater influence in urban development in the public interest.

In this discussion, members of the Terra-R (Territorialisations of the Radical Right) network examine the developments of the radical right in Germany beyond simplistic urban-rural and East-West attributions, and outline the current and future challenges for academia and civil society alike.

This is episode three of the Rent Strike Series, focusing on the Veritas Tenants Association’s ongoing multibuilding rent strike in San Francisco to demand a say in the terms of sale of their buildings. In November 2023, the Prado Group assumed ownership of 20 Veritas-owned buildings, while on January 18, 2024, Ballast Investments and their partner Brookfield Properties took over the remaining 75 buildings in the largest-ever sale of rent-stabilized units in San Francisco. Meanwhile, the rent strike has expanded to six buildings, and some of the strikers have secured concessions through collective bargaining, including a 75 percent reduction in rent over 12 months, cancellation of a scheduled rent increase, and dismissal of eviction lawsuits. In this episode, we get an update on these developments from Brad Hirn, lead organizer with the Housing Rights Committee of San Francisco.

To live in the age of precarity is a tolling, everyday struggle. It erodes one's strength to carry on, live another day, and keep the hope for a modicum of prosperity due to come in some vague future. And when things get unbearably harsh, when the hegemony of neoliberalism has individualised the problems and told those who sustain life by the skin of their teeth to keep their head above the surface without having an eye for care from the retreating state that sees no obligation towards the lesser-able citizens, and when the politics of fear buffets on the anxiety evoked by the physical proximity of the Other, refugees —the most vulnerable of all living in the city— are scapegoated for all the problems befallen on daily life. Refugees are easy targets. They, on principle, lack most forms of capital to claim status; they look different and sound different with sometimes an uncanny unbeknownst culture that attracts all forms of shaming and stigma; they are 'foreigners', somebody else's 'problem' who happened to be dropped at 'our' doorstep; and they are easy to blame for everything that goes amiss, be it housing shortage, street violence, economic stagnation or what have you.

However, we all have witnessed the compassion, solidarity, and affection given to refugees and all those who found little option but to flee from prosecution, war, climate disasters, and countless other unfortunate conditions that make one's life in her own home unbearable. We all can remember people congregating in Frankfurt, Munich and Humburg's Hauptbahnhof to welcome the war-stricken. We do remember protests, mass gatherings, the signs hung behind the windows to denounce the dehumanisation of the refugees, and countless families took in Ukrainians before they could find permanent residency. We remember the giving, hosting, embracing, and naturalising. We do remember the host society forcing itself to acculturate to new shapes of living. And we do remember hope.

Yes, there were, and still are, heinous facets of hate. But there are hopes for cosmopolitan solidarity, too, and in this episode, we will talk about the latter.

Unregulated restitution of property to prewar owners (or rather their legal successors) remains a major source of conflict over housing in Poland, most notably in Warsaw. This episode features Beata Siemieniako, a Warsaw lawyer and urban activist who has been supporting tenants in their struggle against ruthless developers for years. In her book „Re-privatising Poland. The History of a Great Scam“ (Reprywatyzując Polskę. Historia wielkiego przekrętu, Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Krytyki Politycznej 2017), she tells the story of conflicting claims to urban property and reflects on the pitfalls of restituting past property orders while neglecting present-day social rights. Florian Peters has talked to her about law, grassroots activism, and the impossibility to achieve justice by trying to turn back time.