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This essay was originally published on Verso’s blog on May 17 On the brink of working class and student insurgency came Guy Debord’s The Society of the Spectacle (1967), the radical book of the 1960s, perhaps the most radical radical book ever … Continue reading →

Originally published on Verso’s Blog, 11th April 2018 There are few urbanists today who know their city as intimately as Paris’s popular historian, publisher and organic intellectual, Eric Hazan. He’s the only writer I’m aware of whose books have indexes for … Continue reading →

  This past July, I participated in the Ecocity Summit at Melbourne’s South Wharf Convention Centre, a jamboree gathering of global ecologists and environmentalists, greens and smart technologists, politicians and NGOs all battling the impact of climate change on cities. … Continue reading →

Just as mainstream politics plumbs the depths, this year’s Golden Jubilee of Guy Debord’s The Society of the Spectacle and Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude helps radical politics soar. With spellbinding brilliance both books continue to fascinate … Continue reading →

There’s awe-inspiring immensity down there. I’m looking out over Mexico City, from thirty-six floors up in the sky, a recumbent giant right before me, shimmering in glorious February sunshine. It’s a miracle I’m here, shacked up in this lux hotel … Continue reading →

This essay first appeared in Review 31 on 24th January 2017 Storytellers, the late John Berger was wont to say, are ‘Death’s Secretaries’: they borrow their authority from the dead. Death hands storytellers the file, ‘full of sheets of uniformly black … Continue reading →

2017 marks the Golden Jubilee of Henri Lefebvre’s Right to the City, his “cry and demand” for a more participatory and democratic city life. It’s a cause both to celebrate and commiserate. But celebration and commiseration have typically been part … Continue reading →

A tribute to John Berger, who passed away aged 90 on 2 January 2017. Posted originally on Verso Books blog, 3 January 2017. John died yesterday. I’ll remember his voice, his laugh, his charm and generosity. His words. Stripped-down words, … Continue reading →

This essay offers another take on debates about planetary urbanisation—or “planétarisation de l’urbain,” as philosopher-urbanist Henri Lefebvre calls it. I will come back to why I think he calls it that later on. Before then, I want to start out … Continue reading →

One of my all-time favourite essays on “amateur reason” is by the French poet Charles Baudelaire: The Painter of Modern Life, published in 1863. Funnily enough, this set piece of art criticism has been celebrated for many things, especially as … Continue reading →