Grassroots initiatives as pioneers of low-budget practices: An activists’ roundtable

Abstract

Grassroots initiatives around the world try to balance neighbourhood responsibility with politics. As David Harvey writes: ‘The urban obviously functions […] as an important site of political action and revolt’ (Harvey, 2012: 117). He regards territorial organisation and spontaneity, volatility and rapidity as characteristic features of urban political movements (ibid.). Other writers dealing with critical urban theory describe the political and economic tasks relevant groups need to perform. In this round table we wish to inquire into these performances. To this end, we have taken Brenner, Marcuse and Mayer’s finding that the accumulation strategies one finds in cities not only concern capital, but can also be local and highly specific (Brenner, Marcuse and Mayer, 2012: 1) as our starting point for asking the activists themselves how these other strategies and urban change come alive on a grassroots level.

RAC-LA from Los Angeles, the New Cross Commoners from London, the CiT Collective from Vienna and Gängeviertel from Hamburg answered our questions concerning the manner in which they organise to ‘save the city’. In this round table, ‘saving’ the city refers to all the various notions of saving: refashioning a civil society by mobilising the public, helping neighbourhoods or urban society in general to cope with current and future challenges such as growing inequality, avoiding the waste of money and resources in their voluntary work by redistributing, reusing or preserving items within the metabolism of the cities, or in many other ways. Some are aligned with the ‘right to the city movement’[1], a name coined by Henry Lefebvre, nowadays an umbrella organisation for activists ‘fighting for democracy, justice and sustainability in our cities’[2]. They share similar ideals, interests and motivations, but have developed diverse ways of pursuing them. All four of them, centred on the fight for space, resources and collectivity, sent contributions in response to our call for participation and contributed their experiences with organising themselves. After sending a questionnaire to four representatives, we compiled them for an activists’ round table which introduces their initiatives and shows how they work. Our questions concerning the ‘how-to’ are focused on methods, skills and calculations like the juggling of finances versus autonomy. The questionnaire enabled us to place different experiences and organisation models side by side, hopefully without losing their original voices.