From Urbanization to Cities

“This carefully reworked edition introduces a new generation of readers to Murray Bookchin’s historically informed case for reclaiming cities as the front-line of participatory democracy and ecological renewal. Never has that case been more powerfully argued, or more pertinent to the challenges of our time.” —David Wengrow, co-author, with David Graeber, of The Dawn of Everything

“Bookchin gives us a useful history and a call for action.” —New York Times

“The foremost Green philosopher of the age.” —Independent (UK)

From Urbanization to Cities is a sweeping history of the city, not as a destination for capitalist exchange and individual gratification but as a locus for directly democratic politics. Just as ecosystems rely on participation and mutualism, so must cities—and their citizens—rediscover these qualities, establishing harmonious and ethical social relations. Democratic municipalism is an emancipatory philosophy of self-determination, where politics becomes an everyday act in which ordinary people and local communities take the power of decision making into their own hands. From the Paris Commune to the Kurdish-led revolution in northeast Syria, democratic municipalism is a tool for wresting power from the nation-state, allowing capitalist urbanization to give way to humanly scaled, ecological, and egalitarian societies. Includes a new introduction by Sixtine van Outryve d’Ydewalle.