The bureaucratization of urban space and the need to reclaim our cities

By Yavor Tarinski

City life, from its beginning, was all about uniting people that were not bonded by blood or clan ties. The only thing that connected them was the urban space they created and the ways of life it leads to.

The Case against Police Brutality: Towards Radical Social Transformation

By Yavor Tarinski

[T]he biggest enemy of society’s security is the state and the private organization’s belonging to it.

Selma Irmak, member of the Democratic Society Congress[1] 

Nation-State, Nationalism and the Need for Roots

By Yavor Tarinski

André_Devambez – La Barricade ou l’Attente 1911

The State is a cold concern which cannot inspire love, but itself kills, suppresses everything that might be loved; so one is forced to love it, because there is nothing else. That is the moral torment to which all of us today are exposed.

Simone Weil[1]

Free Public Transport and the Right to the City

By Yavor Tarinski

“Free public transportation implies many changes, a completely new way to look at the city, both in terms of how we move and how we tax, but also how we live, where we live, how we relate to each other as a society, and our broader relationship to the urban, regional and global eco-system.”

Judith Dellheim & Jason Prince [1]

Overcoming the State by Reinventing the Polis

By Yavor Tarinski

*The present text was delivered as a speech in a panel, entitled “Overcoming the State”, part of the 3rd Antiauthoritarian Festival in Ioannina, Greece (June, 2017).

[T]he rhetoric of Thatcher and of Reagan has changed nothing of importance (the change in formal ownership of a few large enterprises does not essentially alter their relation to the State), . . . the bureaucratic structure of the large firm remains intact [and] half of the national product transits the public sector in one way or another (State, local governmental organizations, Social Security); . . . between half and two-thirds of the price of goods and services entering into the final national expenditure are in one way or another fixed, regulated, controlled, or influenced by State policy, and . . . the situation is irreversible (ten years of Thatcher and Reagan made no essential changes therein).[1]

Cornelius Castoriadis

Community Through Urban Design

By Yavor Tarinski

Hence the citizens of a city are of no less concern to me than the city itself, for the city at its best eventually became an ethical union of people, an ethical as well as social eco-community, not simply a dense collection of structures designed for no other purpose than to provide goods and services for its anonymous residents.

Murray Bookchin[1]

Reclaiming the urban space

By Yavor Tarinski

Change life! Change Society! These ideas lose completely their meaning without producing an appropriate space.

Henri Lefebvre[1]

The importance of the city nowadays is increasing since, for first time in history, the bigger part of the human population lives in urban spaces and the city’s economic role is at its peak. As Antonio Negri suggests: “the city is itself a source of production: the organized, inhabited, and traversed territory has become a productive element just as worked land once was.  Increasingly, the inhabitant of a metropolis is the true center of the world…”[2]. That’s why it has been referred to over and over again in debates over political, economic, social and other strategies for the future.