INURA

INURA supports the three year struggle of the Unitary trade union representation, the Factory Collective ex GKN and the female and male workers ex GKN in Campi Bisenzio, Tuscany, Italy

in English as pdf INURA_exGKN(1) or Text below and Film

in Italian in an article by Marvi Maggio, trade union representative, in the magazine PER UN’ALTRA CITTÀ

_________________________________________

Malaga, June 9, 2024

To whom it may concern

The International Network for Urban Research and Action is a

Network of people involved in Action and Research in localities

and cities started in 1991 and formed by researchers and

activists from many different countries, between which many

European ones, Cuba, Australia, Canada, USA, Mexico, Chile,

Hong Kong, China, Japan.

During the INURA Conference in Malaga held on the 3rd – 9

June 2024 the impressive 3 year struggle of the Unitary trade

union representation, the Factory Collective ex GKN and the

female and male workers ex GKN, was presented to us by

Marvi Maggio, a trade union representative. We fully support

the requests and claims of the Collective to the Italian state

and the regional government to make a public intervention for

a reconversion of the factory towards a renewable energy and

light mobility hub in Campi Bisenzio, Tuscany, under the control of the

workers. In this way, the place of work would be preserved

through reconversion.

We admire the practice of the collective that illuminates the

present: solidarity, interconnected struggles, convergence

practice, and the urgent transformation of production from

polluting ones towards ecologic production.

On the basis of our knowledge we support the collective and

encourage all the involved institutions, political and technical to

realize their claims for public intervention for the reconversion

of the factory.

INURA

Open Letter to the Federal Council of Switzerland concerning Credit Suisse bank’s huge real estate stock being taken over by the largest Swiss bank UBS. The letter was written as a collective effort at 31st INURA Conference Retreat, June 1-4, in Salecina, Canton of Grisons, Switzerland. Read the Open Letter

Reflections from the 30th Anniversary Conference of the International Network for Urban Research and Action, INURA, in Luxembourg

INURA Luxembourg continued an old tradition: INURA bulletin Nr. 33 out now !

Reflecting on research and activism in times of uncertainty and crisis: The 30th Anniversary conference of INURA in Luxembourg | Brennpunkt Drëtt Weltcon

From June 25 to 28 the 30th INURA Conference was held in Luxembourg. More than 60 participants gathered to learn about Luxembourg and to celebrate 30 years and the 30th conference. Read this report Reflecting on research and activism in times of uncertainty and crisis: The 30th Anniversary conference of INURA in Luxembourg | Brennpunkt Drëtt Weltcon: Download 30th_INURA_conference_Luxembourg

INURA Annual Report 2021 _ 30 years of International Research and Action

June 25 – 27, followed by the retreat June 28 – 29 , register here. Early bird registration until April 20.

Our colleague and comrade Tomislav Tomašević, activist, scholar, inura member and organiser of the 2019 INURA conference in Zagreb, politician since 2017, was elected on May 30, 2021 new Mayor of the Croatian capital city of Zagreb (805’000 inhabitants) with an excellent result of more than 65%. Congratulations and good luck!

Jan 16, 2021, Eugene Kalinouski, 22y urban geographer, was sentenced FOUR (4!) years of prison because of beat (by) OMOH Belarus police officers. This video explains what has happened.

Eugene (also transcribed as Yauhen) joined the INURA conference in Warsaw 2018. Eugene now declared political prisoner by VIASNA

THIS IS HOW YOU CAN HELP
Hello everyone!
Firstly, I (Marta) want to say a huge THANK YOU for all your love and support!
Secondly, this is how you can help us from abroad:
1. Financial help
We need money on short-term and long-term needs:
Short-term needs:
-advocate services
-сompensation for so-called “victims”
-food, clothes, books for Eugene in prison
Long-term needs:
When Eugene will be released, sooner or later, he will need some money for a start. I’m not sure that he will continue to work for the start-up he used to work for – it’s the matter of how much time he will spend in prison. So some kind of a personal fond for him is a necessity, e.g he will definitely need such things as:
– psychological help and medical check-up
– new laptop and smartphone [his belongings were confiscated]
and etc
I sorted out two ways of payments from abroad:
1. PAYPAL
As I understand, all you need for payment through PAYPAL is my email. Here it is: martashpinder13@gmail.com
2. Card
Bank account in euros:
PL30 1020 1811 0000 0302 0374 4570
Bank account in dollars:
PL25 1020 1811 0000 0502 0374 4562
Name: Marta Shpindzer

(If you need Marta’s address contact us: contact@inura.org. Marta is Eugene’s partner. We are in contact with her. You can also contribute / donate through INURA)

If there are questions or recommendations, let us know!
2. International organisations
Currently I’m writing the detailed document in English about the trial process (almost done🙂) and I want to send it to the organisations like Amnesty International and etc. If you have any contacts with the organisations like that, please let me know!
3. Contacts
I hope that Eugene will be released sooner than 4 years and we really want to have some options for him when he will be free. Eugene is a great specialist in GIS, urban planning, space syntax (I have his CV, if you are interested)
If you think that you will be able to help us to find the job or the university program for him in the future, please leave me your contact!
That’s it for now. I’ll be grateful for any recommendations!

Marta

Auni Haapala, Researcher
Athanasios Votsis, Senior researcher
Weather and Climate Change Impact Research, Finnish Meteorological Institute

Originally posted on https://smartland.fi/overcoming-the-enclosures-of-urban-space-with-urban-commoning/ as part of the SmartLand project (Finnish Strategic Research Program)

In the search for more sustainable modes of urban development it is vital to pay attention to the dynamics that ‘enclose’ urban land, infrastructure and public spaces from local citizens, often for the purposes of profit-making and commercial activities. Enabling citizens-led efforts to reclaim commons should be high on the agenda of sustainable urban land use policymaking.

Urban commoning refers to the bottom-up local action increasingly taking place in urban spheres. Self-organized groups of people initiate and maintain community gardens, communal housing, peer-to-peer forums for exchanging help, time and goods, and the use of public places for various purposes from ‘restaurant day’ to demonstrations.

Often the practices of commoning originate as confrontation of the struggles of everyday living, such as unaffordable rents and reduced access to city spaces. In a sense, commoning addresses the different forms of enclosures that limit what can happen in the city by initiating alternative social practices to live and interact in cities (Bresnihan & Byrne 2014; Borch & Kornberger 2016). Bottom-up adaptive responses to urban challenges are increasingly viewed as an essential component of sustainable, resilient societies (UN 2018).

The historical roots of commons and enclosure travel back to the meadows in England; the large-scale privatization of communal pasture lands to private management and ownership. Today’s urban condition and globalized economy has created new forms of enclosures (e.g. Sassen 2014), but the questions over land, resources and their usage remain central.

Forms of enclosures are many. Expansion of Airbnb accommodation — although a great example of a commercialized sharing economy platform — have in many city districts around the globe altered housing markets in such ways that local residents have been forced to migrate whereas flows of tourists have stayed, benefitting the property owner (Hult & Bradley 2017).

Similarly, some effects of climate change mitigation and adaptation policy — e.g. energy efficiency standards for buildings or urban green gentrification — impose unevenly harsh constraints on the right of vulnerable dwellers to socially and economically sustainable public and private spaces (Blok 2020; Anguelovski et al. 2016).

Challenge for cities

The core aim of the Smartland project is to identify and develop suitable land use policies to address the increasing and entwined environmental, economic and social challenges emerging in and from the urban: the production of greenhouse gas emissions, rising housing prices and social segregation.

Approaching the city as a terrain of struggle over commons may make more visible the different forms of enclosure that are in play in the city and limit local people — often first the most disadvantaged groups — to sustain everyday life and wellbeing in their very own urban habitat.

For urban land-use policymakers and practitioners the challenge surrounding urban commons is twofold: to identify and aim to diminish potential future enclosures, and to find ways to enable and facilitate the emergence of urban commoning practices. This requires re-thinking the contemporary city-led land-use policy and planning to go beyond view of local residents as merely ‘participating’. It is acknowledging local citizens as active “makers” and “sharers” of their city (Hult & Bradley 2017).

References

Anquelovski, I., Shi, L., Chu, E., Gallagher, D., Goh, K., Lamb, Z., Reeve, K., Teicher, H. (2016). Equity impacts of urban land use planning for climate adaptation: Critical perspectives from the Global North and South. J. Plan. Educ. Res. 36(3), 333–348.

Blok, A. (2020). Urban green gentrification in an unequal world of climate change. Urban Studies. First published online January 21, 2020.

Borch, Christian, and Martin Kornberger, eds. (2016). Urban Commons: Rethinking the City. 1st ed. London: Routledge.

Bresnihan, P. & Byrne, M. (2014). Escape into the City: Everyday Practices of Commoning and the Production of Urban Space in Dublin. Antipode 47 (1), 1-19.

Hult, A. and Bradley, K. (2017) Planning for Sharing – Providing Infrastructure for Citizens to be Makers and Sharers. Planning Theory & Practice, 18:4, 597-615.

Sassen, S. (2014). Expulsions: Brutality and Complexity in the Global Economy. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

United Nations (2018). Sustainable, resilient and inclusive societies – the path towards transformation. Together 2030 written inputs to the UN High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF) 2018.