New number
released.
Yes, you can
read V7N1
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New number
released.
Yes, you can
read V7N1
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Zenia Hellgren
Jul, 2026

Research as Resistance: Antiracist Counternarratives and Transformative Action
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In a world increasingly plagued by violence, academic research is not only a form of resistance, but also a vehicle for transformation. By dismantling the false dichotomy between research and social engagement, this article argues for the public responsibility of academic work. Far from remaining neutral in the face of the issues they study, researchers must identify alternatives and open new ways of thinking. In it, the author argues for the need for an explicitly anti-racist agenda, one that recognises that discrimination is not an anomaly but an institutional, structural and systemic practice. In this line, she calls for reflection on the assumptions, values, and potential social consequences arising from research and knowledge production.

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Zaid Jaloudi | Irene López
Jun, 2026

Frontlines of Resistance: At the Edges of a Burning World
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Whilst the struggle for resources continues to reshape the world map, ICE is carrying out the largest internal deportation operation in US history. The forces of extraction, coercion and imperial restoration have abundant resources at their disposal and operate on a massive scale, importing and refining their tactics of domination and annihilation. Yet, at the same time, there is a generation that is linking its local struggles and challenging this global machinery. Therefore, although we find ourselves at a particularly dark chapter in human history, this issue of Metapolis sets out to acknowledge and take seriously the fact that the world today is not only burning: it is also resisting.

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Eva Saldaña Buenache
Jun, 2026

Trenches of Hope: Ecotopias in an Upside-Down World
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The 21st century is being bled dry by an onslaught of extractive violence. Fossil capitalism not only destroys ecosystems and drives climate change, but also funds authoritarian regimes, fuels global wars and leaves us deeply vulnerable and dependent. This article provides a thorough analysis of the current fossil-based, imperialist and militarised model; but it also explores all the pathways towards building an ecofeminist alternative. Through a comprehensive proposal for a new relationship with life and future generations, the author charts, with clarity and democratic courage, a detailed roadmap to living better whilst placing less pressure on the biosphere. The question is whether we will be able to organise ourselves in time or whether, as the present seems to suggest, we will bequeath a scorched planet to the future.

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Zeidon Alkinani
May, 2026

Arab Existentialism in the Face of Regional Rivalries
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Faced with the decline of the United States’ management capacity, three non-Arab regional powers—Iran, Israel, and Turkey—are advancing competing hegemonic projects in a system of Arab states structurally incapable of organizing a collective response. This article argues that Arab fragmentation is neither a cultural condition nor a residue of failed state building, but rather the result of an asymmetric external penetration that operates without regional counterweights. The author illustrates how this fragmentation constitutes a source of systemic risk for the global political economy—from energy bottlenecks to the coordination of sovereign wealth funds—and how, in this regard, structured Arab multilateralism is not that much a regional aspiration, but a global necessity.

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Lorena Fréitez Mendoza
Apr, 2026

Rebuilding the Nation-Dam in the Face of Radicalised Imperialism: Challenges from Venezuela
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Against a global backdrop of recolonisation and dispossession, the recent invasion of Venezuela must be understood as the culmination of an unprecedented national crisis, which has led to the largest diaspora in Latin American history and a social divide that remains unbridgeable. This article describes how the country’s political crisis is not merely a crisis of representation, but one of society’s convictions concerning all aspects of public life. The author analyses the context of foreign tutelage and widespread mistrust that have turned Venezuela into a land subject to imperial doctrine and domination; pointing to residual popular organisation as the reservoir of social sovereignty that could drive the democratic reconstruction of the state.

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John Ralston Saul
Mar, 2026

Stubborn Compassion: A New Canadian Independence
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In contrast with the Canadian legacy of compassion, the US and its economic system are built on violence: an unbroken line of slavery spanning over 400 years. Building on this premise, the article explains how “the Roman Empire of our times” seeks to shape the destiny of nations through bombing campaigns and military interventions. Through a historical review of Canada’s behaviour towards a neighbour that intimidates and invades, the author analyses how one of the leading forces in the Second World War was reduced to a passive international status. Ultimately, he calls on Canadians to unleash their creativity in imagining a future of emancipation, joined with the wider world rather than with a US that sees them as an “appendage”.

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Jaume Asens
Feb, 2026

Germany and the Holocaust: the Weaponisation of Memory
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Far from serving as a universal cautionary tale, the Holocaust has been turned into a moral shield to justify new forms of destruction. This article explores the limits and omissions in an ethics born of trauma, as well as its colonial and Eurocentric underpinnings. Tracing its long genealogy, it analyses the system of symbolic production that turned memory into a profitable commodity and anyone who broke the tacit post-war covenant into a proscribed heretic. The author reveals how, while Germany feels entitled to define the bounds of decency, Israel repeats the crimes it claims to remember. The challenge lies in recognising when memory ceases to challenge the present and begins to shield it instead.

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Ana María Larrea
Jan, 2026

The People Who Became a River: The Struggle for the Commons in Ecuador
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Against the backdrop of democratic decline and the inequality between carbon-emitting countries and those suffering the worst consequences, this article recounts a series of experiences in the defence of the commons in Ecuador. From the proposal made by the Ecuadorian state to the international community not to exploit the Amazon’s oil reserves, through to the referendums to declare certain areas “mining-free”, and on to the social and environmental mobilisation in the province of Azuay and the constitutional recognition of the Rights of Nature. Through these examples of collective struggle, the author paints a hopeful picture while illustrating the relationship between territorial identity, local autonomy and cultural change.

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Paula Medina | Tristán Torrejón
Dec, 2025

The Horizonless Generation: Callings, Narratives and Yearnings of a Global Youth (Part II)
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In the face of a single narrative of terror, collapse, and catastrophe, and before an international society that remains lethargic and unmoved, today’s youth can take nothing for granted—yet neither can they afford to consider the world we live in is a lost cause. Through the global redefinition of strikes as an insurgent practice, through denunciation, awareness, irreverence, or sheer affective power, the young people of today are slipping through the cracks of the bleak, resigned, apathetic, and apocalyptic present that looms over their capacity for action. This volume intends to be a song of hope—somewhat out of tune, perhaps, but choral—of the youth of our era: the agents of change and custodians of the future.

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Tatiana Delgado
Dec, 2025

Youth in Handcuffs: a Tale of Criminalisation in the Slums
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In Argentina’s “villas”—slums where the country’s most vulnerable population is concentrated—the security forces allow crime to go unchecked. This absence of state protection triggers soaring levels of insecurity, against a backdrop of a severe lack of access to the most basic services. From precarious housing to arbitrary arrests, from punitive policies to cases of “trigger-happy” policing, this article describes the everyday institutional violence suffered by young people in Argentina’s working-class neighbourhoods. Through testimonies and official data, the author paints a picture of a youth justice system which, far from supporting adolescents, traps them in a cycle of abuse, harassment and neglect.

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Javier Gil García
Nov, 2025

The Tenant Generation: Inequality and Class Conflict in Rentier Capitalism
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The financialisation of housing is one of the most decisive economic and political developments of recent decades. It represents the shift whereby housing became a central instrument for capital appreciation and the cornerstone of the new neoliberal social contract. Homes are no longer bought to be lived in, but to generate income through renting. For the emerging generation of tenants, socialised with middle-class expectations, this translates into a way of life marked by instability, economic pressure and structural vulnerability. However, with the consolidation of tenancy as a new social class and renting as a systematic mechanism of income extraction, the struggle for housing can become a strategic vector in imagining and building a different economic order.

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David Veloso Larraz
Oct, 2025

For a Politics of Failure: Queerness on the Horizon
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Contrary to popular belief, resignation, apathy, and indifference are not the predominant attitudes among young people. In fact, resistance narratives and new modes of mobilisation outline the structural pressures shaping their lives—precarity, unequal opportunities, and the very stigmatisation of their discontent. From Chile to Morocco, young people challenge entrenched elites, experiment with decentralised digital organising, and connect local struggles with global causes. Even against the push of far-right cooptation and mainstream media narratives, the climate struggle, the housing crisis, and the new wave of feminist movements are generationally reframing the ways and the shape of civil activism toward a political culture more grounded than utopian.

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Fefa Vila Núñez
Sep, 2025

For a Politics of Failure: Queerness on the Horizon
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The younger generations no longer place as much faith in norms, but they also struggle to find a clear refuge. They are driven by a mixture of freedom and exhaustion, desire and anxiety. As a result, the need to educate ourselves on the value of defeat is now more urgent than ever. In failure, we find a way to inhabit time, to resist the speed and competitiveness that demand us to be productive. Failure, insofar as it is queer, is a political and creative force: a way of building community from fragility and imagination from precariousness, of establishing alliances and expanding democracy in all its meanings. In the ruins of the post-neoliberal world, faced with the trap of cultural homogenisation and the success that defines it, the queer art of failure is a radical commitment to hope.

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Lucía Asué Mbomío
Aug, 2025

What Was Lost with Jesús Santos: Portrait of a Leadership Rooted in Closeness
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Jesús Santos, deputy mayor of the southern Madrid municipality of Alcorcón until his passing, embodied the closeness and involvement that our politics had been lacking. Not only did he crystallise the pride and affection of a maligned periphery, but he also naturally reconnected decision-making with presence, listening and the remembrance of that which unites us. Faced with a youth in crisis, demobilised and vulnerable to the scourge of neo-fascism, weighed down along with the rest of society by democratic disenchantment, the very memory of Jesús becomes an act of vindication of the possible. Clamouring only for young leaders as if disaffection were just a matter of generational jargon or social media savvy is a waste of breath. The ways of traditional politics will continue to fail as much as their diagnoses. We need to commit to genuine, rooted leadership that knows and loves its people, and understands its place as an extension of that knowledge and love.

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Matthew T. Huber
Jul, 2025

The Kids Are Not Alright: Why Youth Will Not Cool the Planet
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In September 2019, the world erupted in a kind of climate insurgency. At the time, we hoped the young generation, whose future was most imperilled by climate change, would rise up and force all of society to transform itself, pushing them to ensure a better tomorrow. From the standpoint of 2025, however, it’s clear this theory of change has not worked out. As global temperatures keep rising and states and corporations walk back their pledges, the world must acknowledge single-issue politics have been the hallmark of a divided and defeated Left during the last decades of neoliberalism, and thus also of climate failure. As younger climate activists rediscover the potential and effectiveness of joining forces with labout movements, we must reflect on the possibilties and the urgent need of a re-united social font that can save the planet as it saves itself.

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Tristán Torrejón | Paula Medina
Jun, 2025

The Horizonless Generation: Callings, Narratives and Yearnings of a Global Youth
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The youth of the new millennium set out to discover the world with promises of certainty, abundance and peace, only to find themselves facing a cost-of-living crisis, homelessness and job insecurity. These expectations, which turned out to be a civilisational mirage, gave rise to an epidemic of anxiety and resignation, but also to the non-conformity of today’s young people. While ducking the impact of a never-ending string of “historic events”, this generation is learning to stir up collective reflection and challenge the dominant narrative—patriarchal, colonial, classist and adult-centric. This volume explores the youth mobilisation of the present as a disruptive challenge to nostalgia.

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Loueila Sid Ahmed
Jun, 2025

The Young Who Arrive Alone. Narratives and Dehumanisation of Migrant Minors in the Canary Islands
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Migrating hundreds of kilometres in a bid to reach Europe is not a fleeting whim, but an aspiration deeply rooted in the collective imagination of societies facing the bleak prospect of poverty. For the majority of youngsters arriving on Spanish shores via the Atlantic route, migration does not simply mean seeking a better life—it is a response to the most primal instinct of all: survival. This article examines the circumstances that drive these minors to risk everything, but also the narratives that shape their integration in host countries: securitisation, racist rhetoric, deceptive discourse, “zombie ideas”, and symbolic borders. Borders are not only physical walls, but also the conditions imposed to cross them.

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Zaid Jaloudi
May, 2025

The Cost of Solidarity: Suppression of Pro-Palestinian Voices in U.S. Academia
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Because of their solidarity with Palestine, American university students became targets of the state’s repression machine. Blacklisted, victims of mass arrests, arbitrary expulsions and even deportations, young activists saw their universities become spaces of surveillance, censorship and control. The university uprisings of 2023-2024, heirs to the anti-Vietnam movement and a long tradition of nonviolent protest, exposed the crisis of legitimacy not only of American higher education but of its entire democratic system. By linking struggles for justice across racial, religious and national divides, these young people transformed the moral emergency of the Gaza genocide into an ethical and personal commitment to the right to dissent.

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Tesh Sidi
Apr, 2025

A Generation
Born Old
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Carrying the weight of environmental debt, with anxiety lodged in their bodies, wars to denounce and rights yet to be won, today’s youth are victims of exhaustion, precarity, and emotional exile. Exposed in the absence of a strong state, instead received the neoliberal stigma of meritocracy. In Spain, they were called “Ni-nis” because they couldn’t study or find work. In the Sahara, under far harsher conditions and burdened by a generational conflict, they learned to survive instead of dreaming. This article is both an intimate account and a political chronology of the events that have shaped today’s youth: the 2008 financial crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the emergence of new political parties born from the hopes and the rage of the streets. With the dizzying pace of technology as its backdrop, this piece bears witness to generations of youth turned to the trenches—but who still carry the seed of a new world.

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Ángela Rodríguez “Pam”
Mar, 2025

Between Imposture and Legitimacy: Young Women in Public Life
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Feminism has evolved with race, social class, and generational shifts, marking visible differences between today’s young women and those who came before them. It has also helped map the enduring inequality between men and women regarding productive and reproductive labor. In this sense, one of the most significant achievements of feminist theory has been to identify that the force behind the endless replication of gender roles is economic: for society to function, women take on a large share of the work that must be done. Beyond this unpaid labor, the author reviews phenomena perpetuating inequality in society: scientific androcentrism, which suggests that medicine may be more effective for men than for women; impostor syndrome, stemming from the lack of legitimacy women face in the public sphere; and History itself, patriarchal in how it reflects the worldview of those who hold the most power.

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Jody Metcalfe
Feb, 2025

Digital Solidarity and Activism Against Gender-Based Violence and Femicide in South Africa
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Humanity is bearing witness to more than six active genocides and a massive epidemic of violence against women, children, young people, and LGBTQIA+ people. Statistics on sexual violence indicate the severity of this problem in South Africa, where societal pressures and structural barriers still lead to systematic underreporting. The lack of response by the government has given rise to a wave of digital solidarity with both victims and survivors. These digital activists, connected to other global digital solidarity movements broadly, are working to raise public awareness and rehumanise those who have been murdered. Amid rising fascist regimes that threaten the rights of women, children, young people and the LGBTQIA+ community worldwide, these social media activists are establishing an essential link between the legacies of colonial sexual violence and modern-day gender-based violence while highlighting the role of resistance by the most vulnerable groups.

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Sani Ladan
Jan, 2025

Youth in West Africa: Between Democratic Mobilisation and Supporting Regime Change
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West Africa is home to one of the youngest populations in the world. However, far from being homogenous, African youth have mobilised both to defend civil elections and to support coups d’état. The apparent paradox between the democratic struggle in Senegal and support for the military juntas in Niger, Burkina Faso and Mali is not so paradoxical if we consider that the breakdown of constitutional order is perceived as a way of re-establishing order and national dignity. Between “low intensity” democracies, persistent crises, patrimonial state models, structures inherited from colonialism, economic asphyxiation and state brutality, young Africans seem willing to challenge those who undermine democracy, even by opting for desperate alternatives. In their aspiration for institutions truly representative and accountable, and in their eagerness to build local solutions to problems exacerbated by foreign interference, West Africa’s youth have become an active part of the reconfiguration of power on the continent.

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Patricia Guzmán Cabello | Rafael Heiber
Dec, 2024

Security in Crisis: Challenges for Rediscovering the Future (Part II)
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The public now beholds the open hijacking of multilateral spaces: the United States, defending its decadent hegemony; China, building a cunningly multipolar protagonism; Europe, growing ever increasingly fractious; and Russia, together with its allies, through vetoes and complicities. In short, the wole world is enabling the inhumanity of a genocide that has killed tens of thousands of children and the entrenchment of warmongering as a pillar of international security. Our times are shaped by the rise of ultra-nationalist narratives—supremacism to overcompensating for mediocrity—, climate change denialism—another chapter of the anthropocentric saga of domination and destruction—, the hardening of anti-migration policies—tools to marginalise manufactured poverty. In this era, everyting—from forests to genes, from minerals to knowledge—is at risk of becoming monetised. Humanity thus, urgently needs to recover its communal essence and its existential range.

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Barbara Adams
Dec, 2024

Keystones for the future: Unlocking global governance failures of yesterday and today
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The Summit of the Future put on the agenda the failures and shortcomings of international cooperation, as well as the nature, scope and quality of multilateralism. It exposed global governance for what it is: a failed system that nevertheless “works as intended”. The Bretton Woods Institutions, the UN Security Council, the management of Intellectual Property, investor-state dispute settlement and also GDP as the dominant—and inaccurate—indicator of progress make up the old political shell of the post-1945 world order. An order that can hardly contain the contradictions exploding inside and outside it. There is an urgent need for a real reform of global institutions, one that gives real space to developing countries. The Global South must sit at the decision-making table, becoming true actors for their own cause and leading their own development paradigms.

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Luciana Lemos
Nov, 2024

Manaus: Water Management Challenges in the Middle of the Amazon Forest
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Manaus is at the centre of debates on the future of the Amazon and climate change. Located in one of the world’s largest river basins, the city demonstrates the need for a holistic model of water management that takes into account the real costs of environmental damage. If development is not to compromise ecological and human health, we need to move towards a relational approach that realigns water policy with indigenous values such as respect and reciprocity. An environmental justice paradigm that combines indigenous knowledge with modern technology, and safeguards the planet’s biodiversity by ensuring an active role for local communities in shaping their own future.

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Pedro Arrojo Agudo
Oct, 2024

Water Shortage or Ambition Surplus?
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Water enables human societies to settle and live together and is a critical global peace and security issue today. Establishing ethical categories distinguishing between water for life, water economy, and water crimes is indispensable to ensure access to clean water for the more than 2 billion people currently deprived of this right. Now that many of the world’s territories are reaching the limit of habitability, we must move from a paradigm of resource competition to one of shared responsibility. This means recognising the water cycle as a common heritage that cannot be appropriated by anyone and preventing water from being used as a weapon of war. To this end, states must assume public control over aquatic ecosystems, protecting them from financialisation and the prospects of unsustainability to which we are headed.

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Selene López
Sep, 2024

Between the Eagle and the Dragon: Latin America’s Stance in the Energy Transition
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The energy transition has become a crucial geopolitical battleground. While the United States appears to have made a “strategic inward turn”, resulting in a novel and unexpected “green nationalism”, China has become a dominant global supplier of critical resources for decarbonisation. The manoeuvring of both powers, together with the rich endowment of critical minerals present in Latin America, poses a huge challenge for the region. The growing extractive pressure on countries with large lithium reserves, the risk of future re-primarisation, and the challenge of balancing economic interests with environmental and social impacts are some of the most difficult challenges facing Latin America amidst this complex geopolitical landscape. If Latin American nations managed to take advantage of their collective bargaining power, the energy transition could represent a new opportunity for integration for them all.

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Laura Varella
Aug, 2024

Fabricating Fear: How War Profiteers Lead Us to an AI-driven Warfare
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In a society steeped in inequality, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is being used as a means of social control, mass surveillance and discrimination. The ultimate expression of this alarming trend is the use of autonomous weapons systems, which apply force without human intervention. This article analyses the serious ethical, moral and legal issues raised by these weapons, which many militarised countries are already developing without accountability, taking advantage of the regulatory vacuum and the deadlock in multilateral negotiations. The rhetoric of the “AI arms race”, promoted by the technology and arms industries, has led to the normalisation of a supposedly inevitable “AI-driven war”. The world now has the opportunity to stop being held hostage to military powers by challenging these harmful notions of security and placing people and the planet above the profits of the military-industrial complex.

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Ariel Goldstein
Jul, 2024

Deciphering the Global Far-Right: Alliances, Narratives and Strategies
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The rise of the far right reflects capitalism’s drive for wealth-concentration through anti-democratic means. It is intimately linked to social media as an ecosystem of celebrities, war narratives and charismatic leaders who serve as great influencers. Halfway between self-help literature and evangelical preaching, the gurus of the far right are one of the phenomena analysed in this article, along with their international alliances, religious experiments and other ‘moral crusades’ that comprise the identity corpus of this reactionary global movement. In a context where the centre loses its identity to the extremes, it would seem that a more interventionist model in the face of extremism is more effective than one that, under an unrestricted and naïve interpretation of freedom of expression, allows the flow of toxic and seductive discourse into public debate.

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Rafael Heiber | Patricia Guzmán Cabello
Jun, 2024

Security in Crisis: Challenges for Rediscovering the Future
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The success of humanity as a species has much to do with its own vulnerability and the solutions found to overcome it. However, the divide between moral-ethical development and technological advancements—which is significantly faster—breeds a deceptive sense of self-sufficiency tearing this consciousness of our fragility apart. Thus, human beings find themselves helplessly facing the rise of autocracies, financial conditioning and the ruins of more than 40 years of neo-liberalism. The authors contributing to this volume elaborate causalities and critically contextualise this tumultuous time, but also encourage the reader to dare to conceive the impossible. Indeed, as we witness the clash between geopolitics and the dogmas of the free market, there is much to be discovered: bridges to overcome neo-colonial relations between world nations, allies sharing the will to create alternatives, and paths of reconciliation that promote a new global common sense.

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Arlene Clemesha
Jun, 2024

The Nakba as a Rite of Passage… Towards Genocide?
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The war in Israel-Palestine began the day after the UN approved the partition of its lands for the creation of an ethnic Jewish state. This article reviews the main historical milestones from 29 November 1947 to the present day: the discriminatory laws and devices that led to the forced expulsion of thousands of Palestinians, the invasion and theft of homes by radical settlers, the attacks and demolitions of houses that were the starting point of ethnic cleansing… In short, the various targeted forms of demographic engineering designed to ensure Jewish racial supremacism between the Mediterranean and the Jordan; which respond to undeniable economic and geopolitical ends, and which led to the apartheid regime and the genocide we are witnessing today.

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Diego Borja
May, 2024

Towards a different economic order: A vision from the South
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The rise of the Global South and de-globalisation are bringing forth a new economic order, in which trading in national currencies has gained significant ground. In addition to opening up the possibility of nationalising strategic resources, these can represent an integration strategy for some regions of the world, as happened in Latin America in the early 21st century. Value déficit regarding the US dollar or the questioning of the mainstream approach to the climate crisis are among the many points of agreement between nations of the South. These countries seem to now visualise themselves as actors capable of joint articulation in challenging the global status quo. Southern political integration can thus be understood as a dynamic process of mutual learning, facing the geopolitical interests of the North as their main disruption factor.

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Álvaro García Linera
Abr, 2024

The Age of Uncertainty. Liminal Time
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The triumphant globalism that was, until recently, “the enthusiastic common language of societies”, is being replaced by trade wars, industrial protectionism, and geo-economic fragmentation. Geopolitical priorities now seem to prevail over the dogmas of free trade. Cases such as Trump’s, Bolsonaro’s, or Milei’s feel like “neoliberal Jurassic islands” in the midst of this over-arching trend towards state intervention of the economy. These are, according to the author, “the clearest signs of the twilight of the accumulation-based model that dominated the world for the last 40 years”. With the consummation of this decline, a new cycle emerges, and so we find ourselves in a transitional era of global turmoil that Álvaro García Linera refers to as “liminal time”. A “fiery moment” defined by the acceleration of events and a sheer lack of direction and faith in the future; yet also an auspicious moment to stop clinging to outdated beliefs. A time, that is, of cognitive readiness to overthrow old ideas.

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Soledad Magno
Mar, 2024

The rise of the far-right as a result of the crisis of neoliberalism: the case of Argentina
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This article analyses the rise of far-right symbol Javier Milei to the presidency of Argentina as a kind of collateral disruption of the wider global crisis of neoliberalism. In a country that was believed to have achieved a democratic coexistence of unbreakable boundaries, the Covid-19 crisis deepened the contradictions of the system, giving way to an atmosphere of social confrontation and political violence that culminated in Milei’s dystopian and anarcho-capitalist project. This is both a symptom of a system in crisis and the result of pushing the system itself to its extremes. The Latin American experiences that contested the global neoliberal cycle of the 2000s, becoming a beacon of the alternative to neoliberalism in the past decade, are extremely valuable in resisting this wave of involution.

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Pedro Manuel Moreno
Feb, 2024

Global Tensions and Trade Sovereignty
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The current state of food and energy security in the world is worrying, and the interconnectedness of contemporary international society makes self-sufficiency virtually impossible. Nations need each other for their supplies, so in order to speak of food sovereignty or energy sovereignty, we must necessarily speak of commercial sovereignty. The author argues that this will not be achieved until world trade is de-geopoliticised, and gives the example of the Black Grain Initiative, carried out in the midst of the Russian-Ukrainian war, to demonstrate that protecting trade as a vehicle for development and equality between countries is a question of political will. In this global order, which is increasingly being crossed by unforeseen events and reprisals, the necessary will is to commit to multilateralism as a path to peace.

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José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero
Jan, 2024

Peace, an Ongoing Endeavour
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Just as the Millennium Development Goals became a horizon of hope for the last century, the key challenge for this generation is to push for the creation of a truly global political community. One that is mature enough to endow itself with a global constitution. Transforming the United Nations and updating its founding charter in line with the geopolitical shifts of the contemporary world should be the starting point to this objective. Aiming to reverse globalisation, denying climate change or renouncing the utopia of abolishing war are opposite paths to the civilising spirit this endeavour requires. We must renew our commitment to equality, progress and science if we are to multilaterally face the challenges of a future that’s now very much present.

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Lola Allen | Fernanda Ribeiro
Jul-Dic, 2023

A Global Bauhaus for a Sustainable and Just Future (Part II)
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Most current international conflicts have an ecological and geopolitical dimension. The South provides the raw materials for the decarbonisation of the North, while bearing the environmental and social brunt of this extraction. The West, for its part, has become increasingly forceful in exporting what it presents as ‘universal values’ to the rest of the world. These tensions reveal the unjust configuration of the international system, riddled with power brokers and ineffective institutions. However, the tools to build an alternative financial architecture that prioritises people and nature over capital returns already exist: from South-South cooperation to regional development banks, this volume explores new paths for a sustainable future.

+ MÁS

Kruskaya Rojas Pilaquinga
Jul-Dec, 2023

Between the People and Power: The Role of the Media in Ecuadorian Democracy
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Mass media influence national identities, lifestyles, consumption patterns, and the very concept of citizenship—not only through the narratives they establish, but through the facts they neglect and omit. Ecuador is one of those Latin American states where democratisation has not led to a significant reduction in social inequalities. Its current media ecosystem, far from fulfilling its role of guiding, informing, and educating society, actually displays a troubling entanglement between media power and political power. To guarantee citizens access to media that serve the public interest rather than merely generating profit, it has become essential to limit the concentration of media ownership in private hands

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Tom Kucharz
Jul-Dec, 2023

Civil Disobedience in the Face of Capitalist Expansion and War Regimes
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Capitalism is undergoing a phase of savage expansion, in which war —military, economic, and environmental—has become the ultimate weapon. The occupation of Gaza, gold mining in South Africa, illegal mining in Brazil and the deforestation of Indonesia’s virgin rainforest are just some stark examples of this authoritarian “post-liberal capitalism”, seeking to secure the Global South’s resources for the North, through exploitation, violence and neocolonialism. Climate degradation and biodiversity loss cannot be separated from poverty and inequality, as they stem from the same extractivist model. Without a radical questioning of this system, which unleashes eco-imperial wars between powers while preaching an ‘ecological transition’ led by financial oligarchies, any intermediate solution will be futile.

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Ricardo Sá Ferreira
Jul-Dec, 2023

The State Rewritten: Elite Repression, Austerity, and the Revolutionary Struggle for Democracy
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The Eurozone debt crisis exposed a network of vast and interconnected economic, political, social and environmental aftershocks that continue to undermine the stability of modern societies. Austerity policies had an insurmountable human cost and prompted punitive shifts in which the state replaced its care-based approach with a disciplinary one. By imposing this rationale, privatising punishment, and expanding the state’s surveillance capacities, the state relinquished it’s role as a provider of social welfare, and everyday life became a space of criminal legal regulation. This rupture of the social contract fractured the solidarity of the working class, but it favored the emergence of new political parties that rekindled a sense of possibility. The brutal counter-offensive of the elites against these progressive parties inadvertently reveals how much of a threat energetic and mobilised popular movement represent for the powers that be.

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José Manuel Gómez Giménez
Jul-Dec, 2023

Cities and Nations: from Emancipatory Forces to Global Challenges
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Centres of cultural, commercial and knowledge exchange, cities have always been spaces of creation, but also of conflict. Today’s globalised world seems to be challenging this promise of freedom, as well as the artificial limits of borders, demonstrating that current political structures do not respond to the territorial dynamics of an interconnected planet. The same is true of nation-states, which—although they made possible the consolidation of broad welfare systems underpinned by the social democratic consensus—are now showing clear signs of exhaustion. In an increasingly interconnected world, insisting on absolute sovereignty may prove not only impractical but also dangerous. If we are to stem the rise of populist and simplistic political alternatives based on identity-based retreat, it is time to abandon the theoretical constructs on which neoliberalism, Western modernity and its methodological nationalism have been built.

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María G. Navarro
Jul-Dec, 2023

“We Were Plundered, Yet We Owned Nothing”
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Socialism and feminism caused a radical break away from 19th-century thought with the revelation that both workers and women had been excluded from the common good. With this starting point, this article outlines a conceptual history of the commons, analysing notions such as the “moral economy of the masses” or political principles such as co-obligation—that is, reciprocal commitment to the same activity. The author recalls that the political tradition of republicanism is divided into two approaches—elitist, on the one hand, and participatory or egalitarian, on the other—defending practical activity as the means by which things become common. In other words, as the forger of a new collective subject.

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Maria Olympia Conceição
Jul-Dec, 2023

Ideas for the Decolonisation of Brazilian Political Participation
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The future continues to replicate the past: Race-based environmental injustices have intensified in recent years as a result of the processes of industrialisation and urbanisation that derive, in turn, from the articulation between colonialism and capitalism. The dispossession and territorial exploitation that characterise the Anthropocene have given rise to a model of exclusion toward those who still maintain a relationship of intimacy, ancestry and respect for the land. In contrast, these indigenous and Afro-descendant communities possess deliberative devices that, in line with the recent Global Bauhaus, can bring us closer to a true environmental democracy. Even if sceptics criticise this aspiration as utopian, we must build a model of horizontal, intercultural citizen participation that is capable of integrating different types of knowledge.

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Fernanda Ribeiro | Lola Allen
Jan-Jun, 2023

A Global Bauhaus for Sustainable and Just Futures
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Today’s convulse world map is shaped by a financial system that underpins inequality rather than alleviates it, a democratic paradigm reduced to a mere periodic electoral exercise, and a multilateral framework from a bygone era which drags along and perpetuates colonial power structures. A radical transformation of the global economy, prioritising sufficiency over excess, redistribution over accumulation, and ecological balance over profit maximisation is more urgent than ever. This edition of Metapolis aims to be an invitation to think like the Bauhaus artists: from the conviction that the simplest elements can lead to great ideas. In this spirit, now is the time to commit to a change of model that prioritises resilience, encourages the protection of biodiversity rather than exploitation, and ensures that environmental sustainability, economic justice and social equity are addressed as interconnected imperatives.

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Jason Hickel
Jan-Jun, 2023

Anti-colonial Revolution: the Only Way out of the Ecological Crisis
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The Global South provides 80% of the resources and 90% of the labour that drives industries around the world, yet bears the brunt of the economic costs and damages caused by climate change, including climate-related deaths. This global imbalance is rooted in the 500-year-old colonial project, which saw the global North appropriate the land, raw materials and labour of the South. Still, we must underscore this unjust and immoral world order is not a product of the so-called Anthropocene, but of the capitalist economic system: a perverse model that encourages investment in fossil fuels, SUVs, fast fashion, cruise ships and weapons, while neglecting sectors that are socially and environmentally indispensable. Thus, the only way out of the ecological crisis in which we are immersed is an anti-colonial revolution that reverses these dynamics and, through public planning, restores sovereignty to the South. The liberation of the Global South is, in this sense, a prerequisite for a true green transition.

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David Koranyi
Jan-Jun, 2023

The Battle for Democracy: Empowering Citizens and Cities
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The advance of authoritarianism on a global scale requires a global strategy that takes advantage of the as yet unexplored capacities of citizens, cities and digital platforms. To this end, it is essential to replace obsolete and restrictive governance models, which reduce the role of citizens to that of passive observers, with others that allow them to take ownership of government decisions, as active contributors to the democratic space. In an increasingly interconnected world, we need to foster a culture of empathy and solidarity that recognises our common humanity and the interconnectedness of our struggles. Weaving networks of cities that challenge classical approaches to diplomacy is one of the ways towards building such a global narrative that transcends borders.

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Ivana Vasic-Lalovic
Jan-Jun, 2023

Breaking the Vicious Cycle: the Urgency of Reforming the International Financial Architecture
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The climate & development finance gap, combined with the absence of effective mechanisms to address sovereign debt, is leaving developing countries without meaningful pathways for recovery and resilience to future shocks. The Global South faces a direct trade-off between debt repayment and investment in essential public services such as health, education and infrastructure, but also in climate change adaptation and mitigation policies. A radical reform of the international financial architecture is needed, to break this vicious circle that strangles Southern countries’ budgets: a comprehensive global response that includes the elimination of surcharges, the establishment of reliable and pluralistic debt relief, restructuring and cancellation mechanisms, as well as direct transfers from wealthier countries.

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Salil Shetty | Omar Waraich
Jan-Jun, 2023

Why democracies must deliver
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The world’s democracies have recently been sabotaged by a class of individuals, more dangerous than traditional military dictators, who use power to crush their own institutions. This phenomenon, referred to by the authors as “the rise of autocrats”, is just one aspect of the “polycrisis” facing humanity today. The debt of the poorest countries, the lasting effects of pandemics, the outbreak of armed conflicts, the soaring costs of living, energy, and commodities—all these are different, overlapping dimensions of the same systemic predicament. Multiple crises that have led three quarters of the world’s young people today to define the future as “frightening” and to distrust the systems of governance supporting the unjust world they will inherit.

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Youssef Mahmoud
Jan-Jun, 2023

The 2024 Summit of the Future: an opportunity for U.N. regeneration in an era of radical disruptions
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There is a growing consensus that if it wants to remain relevant, the United Nations (UN) must lean into the future and start changing by design rather than by accident. The author argues in this article that the time is ripe for conversations that analyse the assumptions, prejudices and entrenched beliefs that have informed the work of multilateralism and discern those no longer fit for purpose. These reflections should look back to the future as a way to disrupt the present and generate visionary aspirations for a UN that is fit for a radically different world. The starting point would be to debunk the myth that the Security Council was designed as a collective security mechanism because it is not.

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Audrey Irvine-Broque | Jessica Dempsey
Jan-Jun, 2023

Towards serious biodiversity policy: foreign debt in the long duree of extractivism
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The ways of the global financial system are a key underlying factor in the massive loss of biodiversity around the world. In order to meet the rising interests of their international creditors, many countries are pushed into intensifying the exploitation of their ecosystems, exposing an undeniable link between their own external debt and the current ecological crisis. As “debt repayments are short-term and require rapid repayment, unlike investments in sustainable development”, a spiral of indebtedness is forcing dozens of nations into extractivism.
Thus, foreign debt is responsible for countries “spending more on interest payments than on education or health”. Unsurprisingly, these are the same countries of the Global South that were historically plundered by the North.

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Irene López | Marta Cazorla
Dic, 2022

Multipolar dispute: between old mistakes and new uncertainties
(part II)
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The resurgence of the age-old spectre of war in the heart of continental Europe was first sensationalized by the mass media, then banalized afterwards. The outcome is a combination of warmongering, agitation and trivialization of the nuclear threat, a particularly dangerous development at a time when generalized rearmament brings us closer to a total war scenario not seen since the days of the Cold War. War psychology has already warned of the disastrous consequences of approaching military conflicts as if they were “war games”, virtual reality or science fiction. Moreover, it should be kept in mind that there are numerous incentives (and juicy profits) for the Russian-Ukrainian war not to end.

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Rafael Heiber
Dic, 2022

Geopolitics and the generative limits of the ungovernable
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In his article, sociologist and climatologist Rafael Heiber analyzes some of the characteristics of the current Russian-Ukrainian conflict, such as the fact that “the objective of hybrid warfare is not always classical victory” but chaos or destabilization. For the author, the current world order is the residual outcome of colonialism and post-World War II global rearrangement. He sustains that “the states of precariousness, loneliness and excesses that characterize the economy of attention” give rise, together with the fragile peace recently broken by the Ukrainian war, to a present full of vulnerabilities and uncertainties.
In closing, the author reflects on how Artificial Intelligence is displacing and re-signifying the whole range of human activities. “It would not be surprising to witness in the coming years the emergence of modern versions of the English Luddites of the 19th century,” he warns.

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Axel Ruppert
Nov, 2022

A geopolitical European Union to what end?
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The paradigm shift towards militarization and hard power in the European Union’s geopolitical strategy, which began well before the war in Ukraine, has failed in its aim to provide more security inside and outside its borders and secure more autonomy in an increasingly multipolar world. In this context, Ruppert argues for a collective security approach that opposes the current antagonistic security policies and structures which, based on neocolonial backyard policies, have diverted to the military-industrial complex the funds and resources urgently needed to address the climate and socioeconomic emergencies we are facing today.

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Idoia Villanueva
Oct, 2022

A More Multipolar but not more Democratic International Scenario: The Geopolitical (dis)Order of a World in Reconfiguration
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MEP Idoia Villanueva analyses how the universalisation of the liberal paradigm favoured the accumulation of capital and resources among the Western powers; and how the transatlantic alliance served, from its origin, as an instrument to legitimise and reproduce US hegemony. Thus, in a world order still determined by US dominance, the EU must decide between establishing itself as a global actor in favour of international democratisation or, in the author’s words, “remain a subordinate actor and reduced to the fodder of superpowers”. The war in Ukraine is seen from this perspective as “a war on Europe’s doorstep that the EU never wanted or foresaw”, as the current conflict puts Europe in a clearly uncomfortable position, between its military ally and the giant on which it depends energetically.

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Ray Acheson
Sep, 2022

Abolishing Geopolitics and Building a World Without State Violence
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Drawing on his work in various organizations and campaigns for arms control—among which is the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, which was awarded the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize—Ray Acheson point out in their article the close links between colonialism, inequality, patriarchy, state violence and nuclear weapons. Both the use and the mere existence of nuclear weapons have, they claim, disastrous humanitarian and political consequences. Thus, a global effort is necessary so that all governments adhere to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons and work towards an international security based on disarmament, denuclearization, demilitarization and the fight against inequality at a global level.

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Jacques Ramírez
Ago, 2022

the geopolitics of migratory horror
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In this article, anthropologist Jacques Ramírez analyses the background to the present “geopolitics of migratory horror”: that is, the progressive, global tightening of migration policies, and the primacy of control-based and securitisation approaches to migrant flows. In parallel to this generalised reinforcement of borders, however, the author argues that migrants are today “active social actors, on the move, fighting for their own future”, and that the view of the migrant as a “passive subject” holds an exploitative bias. From a decolonial perspective, the Ecuadorian researcher defends universal citizenship as a legal-political proposal to de-territorialise rights. In other words, to overcome the classical vision that grants rights and obligations only to those individuals recognised as members of a given polis. He advocates for a geopolitical framework of global justice, capable of recognizing historical asymmetries and inequalities between countries.

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María Lois
Jul, 2022

Movement and (in)security: from the politics of surveillance to the politics of compassion
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Sociologist María Lois reflects on the narratives and public discourse around migrant mobility that shape public opinion on this social phenomenon, as well as the public and institutional policies that regulate it. Lois specifically analyses EU territorial strategy, particularly in the context of COVID-19 and the crisis in Ukraine, and encourages us to think openly about the circuits of production responsible for both institutional and non-institutional rhetoric around mobility, focussing on what these mean for society at large.

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Marta Cazorla / Irene López
Jun, 2022

Multipolar dispute: between old mistakes and new uncertainties
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In the wake of a global pandemic and with echoes of our Cold War past resounding, the geopolitical landscape of the world is changing. Energy is becoming scarce, and the climate crisis remains largely ignored. As nationalism grows and the military industrial complex accumulates more wealth, how can we ensure that old power dynamics do not simply reproduce themselves? Strong voices are advocating for feminist approaches and deliberate reflection to turn this ship around, but is there any hope for such a polarised world?

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Rafael Fernández
Jun, 2022

International relations and the energy crisis: what has changed since war broke out in Ukraine?
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In this piece, Rafael Fernández analyses the current and complex state of international energy relations, currently undergoing an upheaval unparalleled since the Yom Kippur War. Fernández argues that the war in Ukraine will only serve to reinforce, rather than weaken, the power held by dominant players on the energy market. However, regardless of how the situation develops, it is renewed concern around the issue of energy security that will serve as the catalyst for the implementation of a much needed new strategy for real energy transition, giving rise to radical change in the global energy supply.

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Irene Zugasti
May, 2022

War Effort and Kitchen-Sink Geopolitics
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Irene Zugasti champions the tradition of internationalist, feminist and militant diplomacy in the face of the uncritical, romanticised glorification of war. Hers is a kitchen-sink geopolitics which draws on the feminist tradition in order to link the personal to the political. She confronts “war effort” with a quotidian “peace effort”, historically led by thousands of marginalised women, which aims to cultivate new relationships with territory, with the Other, with power and with conflict itself.

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David Vine
Abr, 2022

(The only way to) Stop wars and save the world
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David Vine outlines the history and global reach of the Military Industrial Complex, whose political and economic power has only expanded since the end of the Cold War. Undermining this power is a necessary prerequisite to free the enormous quantities of financial and human resources it accumulates and are needed to address the urgent environmental and social challenges that the World faces today. If we want to avoid nuclear annihilation, Vine argues, we need to build an ambitious transnational movement of movements to dismantle an increasingly transnational MIC.

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Mary-Jane Rubenstein
Mar, 2022

A Tale of Two Utopias: Musk and Bezos in Outer Space
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It is probably old news to you by now: Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos want us off the planet. Not all of us, of course, but according to both of these absurdly wealthy utopians, the future of the species will depend on those humans who have got the foresight, fortitude, and finances to head to outer space. But How can we hope to make a habitat out of Mars when we cannot even preserve the habitability of Earth?

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Eduardo Barcesat
Feb, 2022

The future of human rights and overcoming anthropocentrism
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The real sovereignty, social justice and economic independence of the peoples of the world depend on the effectiveness of the civil and political, economic, social, cultural and environmental rights contained in the International Bill of Human Rights. Far away from being a lofty set of norms, Human Rights constitute a crucial contribution to face the ecosocial challenges of our time, provided that the State manages to rise up and legitimise itself as a guarantor of its full validity and effectiveness and becomes answerable to its citizens.

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Ramzy Baroud / Romana Rubeo
Jan, 2022

Beyond the ‘Interregnum’: Is a Non-Hegemonic World Possible?
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Moscow and Beijing are clearly not basing their future relations on the outcome of the Ukraine war alone. What they are working to achieve is a long-term political strategy that they hope would ultimately lead to a multipolar world. Still, post-World War II U.S. hegemony seems destined to endure with Europe historically unable to integrate Russia and now even more dependent on NATO. Until the tussle is over, the world will continue to experience a transition, rife with possibilities but also dangers.

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Patricio Cabello / Andrés Lomeña
Dec, 2021

A new political imagination: creating realistic utopias (part II)
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The several crisis we are facing require that politics find new vehicles of communication and action that move beyond manichean paranoia and confrontation. This new issue of metapolis aims to transport us to that horizon of possibility, demonstrating that despite the inertia of the forces that seek to stop us, we can still succeed in creating a new political imagination.

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Jean Wyllys / Judith Butler
Dic, 2021

The power of dissident solidarity in the rise of ultraliberal authoritarianism
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Judith Butler and Jean Wyllys reflect on the central role of solidarity in a context marked by the rise of a new global fascism. Conflict arises as a key element for the establishment of ineludible alliances to tackle the challenges we face. The authors concretely address the ultraliberal authoritarianism that has gained force in Brazil and the United States, as well as the reactionary far right that sees the LGBTQIA+ movement as a threat to the idea of family and nationalism. Unity, they argue, is the only possible political agenda. Marxists, progressives, feminists, queers—all of these forces are steering the same boat. There is no other option because otherwise they will capsize.

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Mariano Gómez Aranda
Nov, 2021

Medieval imaginary and Black Death: pandemic, medicine and religion
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The current pandemic will have a direct effect on how we view and think about politics for years to come. It seems difficult to predict exactly how, but if we look back at the mediaeval Black Death, the largest pandemic humanity has experienced to date, it may impart some points of comparison and help us to reflect on how exactly our collective trauma from this experience may unfold. At what resulted in a pivotal moment in the middle of the 14th century, the Black Death also resulted in a rise in ‘fake news’ and xenophobia, which led to the expulsion, massacre and scapegoating of many Jewish communities. At the same time, it also marked a turning point in terms of the collective religious imaginary of the era. Rationalist interpretations of religious texts were introduced and provided a theological basis for the calls emerging from the medical community demanding sanitary measures in order to prevent contagion.

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Antonio Penedo Picos
Oct, 2021

New poetics for the digital age
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The divide which is becoming entrenched centres on separating the working subject from the real human like never before. The former is asked (though really they are forced) to attain a deep knowledge of only that subject matter which is deemed to be productive, while the latter seems to be asked for (or advised of, as it were) nothing. We regularly hear the World Health Organisation’s statistics on the rise of mental illness, not only in the Western world but also across the globe. Can we believe that economic thresholds are the sole deciding factor in these percentages? What if we started to consider that the opposite were true? It is at this juncture that digital language and nascent cyberculture once more take centre stage.

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Romualdo Dias
Sep, 2021

Imagination and Action: Movements between Immanence and Transcendence
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Working from the basis of the critical pedagogy tradition Romualdo Dias proposes a didactic framework that unites imagination and action. Only insofar as we dream—or only when we practice a certain metaphysical leap towards an imagination separate from factual realism—does change become possible. Romualdo connects the idea of utopia with education, crucial in the process of awakening the conscience to a greater immanence, or in other words, a realism that is expanding towards what is possible but as of yet realized.

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Sofía Coca
Ago, 2021

Cultural mediation for social change in pandemic times
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Cultural mediation is an amalgam of practices, tools and methodologies that involve facilitation, support and recoding, but mediation is also the search for a common language, a language that may be new and invented and that seeks to inspire. A language that sometimes attempts to revive lost words or rituals. A language that sometimes resembles a patchwork quilt.

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David Bollier
Jul, 2021

Commoning and Changemaking
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The old and new commons paradigm helps us name and understand a richer notion of value and create new types of socially constructive institutions based on bottom-up acts of participation, mutual support, conflict, negotiation, communication and experimentation.

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Andrés Lomeña / Patricio Cabello
Jun, 2021

A new political imagination: creating realistic utopias
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We need new goals and a new language articulating these goals in order to rehabilitate the currently unhealthy sociopolitical climate. This entails drawing on historical ideals, but also allowing past mistakes to inform a new, ambitious, and credible program for change. Such change must move beyond individual needs and myopic political vision, grounding the new political imagination in explicit realism. to meet societal demands and chart a new future, such a proposal must have the capacity to attract, convince, and be driven by a combination of science, critical consciousness, and action.

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Concha Roldán
Jun, 2021

Historical notes in a reflection on tolerance for a new political imaginary
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Tracing the etymology and history of thought regarding the concept of tolerance informs the current and future political imaginary. Borne out of modernity, this concept and its origin was limited to a negative formulation of allowing something while not approving for it. In tracing modern thought, it evolved into a positive tolerance of other cultures, underpinned by justice, perspective and pluralism. If we truly understand its origin and evolution, tolerance does not translate to relativism or monolithic beliefs, but rather is a methodological tool with which to exchange knowledge, promote a situated rationality and achieve progress that can shape a new political imaginary.

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Maysoun Douas
May, 2021

Towards a New Social Contract for the 21st Century
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The decline of democratic systems, deepening inequalities, complex and bureaucratic international institutions, fragile social models and exploitation of the natural world can still be remedied. A new social contract could restore the space of active citizenship and invoke the global societal collaboration that our current reality demands .As part of this, we must understand where we have came from and the “truths” that have formed the basis of our societal construction up until now, and move past territorialization as inherent to citizenship. Instead we should look to digitization as the new engine of postmodernity, renewed democracy as a tool, and youth as key actors, in order to achieve future societal well-being and sustainability.

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Jo Guldi
Abr, 2021

Pandemics Occasion the Rethinking of Shared Technology
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Past epidemics of malaria and cholera across the British empire taught lessons about shared infrastructure. While these diseases are largely eliminated in Europe, they endure in other parts of the world as a testimony to where money is spent, or not spent. Looking back on the history of disease, we witness how systemic crisis can stimulate change in public infrastructure. This epidemic is an opportunity to transform infrastructure yet again, perhaps this time utilizing technology to address and attempt to rectify the ways in which these systems can continue to exclude many communities and the developing world.

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Steve Keen
Mar, 2021

A Modern Debt Jubilee
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Our current societies, with advanced levels of industrialization and knowledge, continue to stymie innovation at the expense of the collective benefit. This is particularly manifested in the blind adherence to neoclassical economics and unchallenged economic systems. The «Modern Debt Jubilee» serves as one strategy with which to challenge these paradigms and provide solutions. It addresses the systemic problem of central banks printing trillions of dollars to lower interest rates to make asset owners feel richer and spend more, which does not engender economic growth due to the rich accumulating much of this new money into their existing assets. The Jubilee would leverage these same central banks to provide freshly printed money to the indebted, wiping the global debt slate clean.

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Joost Smiers
Feb, 2021

Roaming noise and other unwanted sounds. Protecting the public domain
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Public spaces are full of sounds, many of which can be undesirable for the majority of individuals. Noise can affect our state of mind and health, but does not «ask permission» before entering our ears. While this kind of intrusion may not be immediately apparent, it is important that it be addressed as a public concern, given how it acts as a form of contamination that can damage the hearing or mental health of citizens. In short, as with other public matters, noise occupies the public space to the extent that it should be regulated in order to preserve our collective well-being.

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Jesús Rey Rocha / Emilio Muñoz Ruiz
Jan, 2021

Science and democracy: institutions in search of a sociopolitical identity
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Science and democracy are comparable in that they are not characterized by absolute truths, but rather «evolutionary» truths, which should be subject to constant critique and analysis. Both also possess internal and external dimensions; in the context of phenomena like the COVID-19 pandemic, the external dimension becomes crucial, as it links science or democracy to institutions and citizens. Recovery and regeneration of the current state of governance is possible, if there is a true pivot to empowered institutions and citizens. In order to overcome the systemic crisis that we face, a framework of strong, reliable and committed institutions, underpinned by an individual and collectively responsible citizenry, is the way forward.

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Colleen Boland / Rafael Heiber
Dec, 2020*

The post-pandemic city: transnational cooperation and public policy
(Part II)
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Insights from living with the repercussions and realities of the COVID-19 crisis for a full year now have demonstrated how a global meta-crisis can accelerate and exacerbate inequalities, further jeopardizing societal wellbeing. Still, examples of both concrete micro and meso level change within local communities, via citizen mobilization, have illustrated how reshaping the urban landscape is profoundly linked with the rural, as well as bears transnational implications. Restoring power to the public space, catalyzing participatory citizen networks and revolutionizing policy as based in solidarity and coexistence are crucial in rectifying the more profound, systemic crisis, to achieve a viable human and planetary future.

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Rebeca Grynspan
Dec, 2020*

A new, «glocal» social pact for recovery
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The COVID-19 pandemic represents a challenge in global coordination. More than ever before, multilateralism proves to be an indispensable tool in confronting major world challenges. The health crisis precipitated by the disease is merely symptomatic of greater environmental and systemic crises that threaten humanity. This necessitates a multi-level and multi-stakeholder social pact, involving cities as well as international organizations. We need institutions capable of engaging in innovation, as well as of achieving long-term and green agendas. The latter in particular uniquely presents the possibility of our civilization’s survival.

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Felipe Llamas
Nov, 2020

Old challenges in a new context: the pandemic accelerating city multilateralism
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The COVID-19 pandemic has jeopardized the legitimacy of national and international institutions, inspiring worrying trends of isolationism and protectionism. Meanwhile, as populations struggle to survive not only a health crisis, but one of social and economic dimensions, local authorities provide for the continuity of public services. These local and regional communities and their leaders recognize that the current situation calls for addressing systemic inequalities and an ecological transition. In order to achieve this societal wellbeing, transnational cooperation between these diverse localities, grounded by the immediate needs of their populations, is the way forward.

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Fernando Carrión Mena
Oct, 2020

The Global Transurban System: Forms It Takes and New Challenges
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COVID-19 has become a fundamentally urban disease: social interaction, so characteristic of cities, has put them all at the epicenter of this pandemic. Through the local integration process it is possible for us to identify the main assemblages that constitute the Global Urban Network. Recognizing the inter-urban and trans-urban logics means exploring an unchaperoned horizontal cooperation, and the transformation of the city-state relationship, both nationally and internationally.

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Bob Black
Sep, 2020

Work After Coronavirus
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The economic impacts of the COVID-19 crisis have been crippling, and unemployment is rampant. Up until now, the economy has been divided rather arbitrarily into a primary agriculture and extractive industry, a secondary manufacturing sector, and a tertiary «service» sector. The latter sector has become more and more bloated, with many unjustified jobs. Meanwhile, the pandemic has taught us that authoritarian and city-centric labor regimes are unnecessary. Work has the potential to be transformed into a new type of activity, an autonomous, productive play that allows for healthier, freer societies.

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Leticia Merino / Simone Buratti
Aug, 2020

Cities, COVID-19 and Commons in Latin America
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Cities derive their value from commons: goods, benefits, or services collectively, used, created and preserved, and are governed by collective action. In the case of Latin American cities and megacities in particular, collective action and sharing of resources has taken place during the COVID-19 crisis. However, a history of colonialism, neoliberal policies and inequality make this region particularly vulnerable during the pandemic. This article traces the reasons why now, more than ever, the Latin American region must learn from this crisis in order to build more resilient and equal societies.

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Saskia Sassen
Jul, 2020

Urban capabilities: those we want in our cities and those we should avoid
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In considering cities and how we want to construct them, it is fundamental to analyze the actors shaping them, and their capabilities. Beginning in the late 1980s, the financial sector and its innovative capacity for extraction has played a key role on the global stage, in a very different manner from that of traditional banking and corporations. Now, with the COVID-19 phenomenon also resembling a global actor, it becomes all the more clear that, no matter how it is disguised, high finance operates to the detriment of local and household economies, as well as to the flow of urban spaces.

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Rafael Heiber / Colleen Boland
Jun, 2020

the post-pandemic city: transnational cooperation and public policy
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The COVID-19 pandemic and its immediate effects have not only triggered crises worldwide, but also have raised awareness about greater systemic failures that have been plaguing our modern society. Progressive advocates have already attempted to shed light on these problems, demanding alternative models. Further efforts might now resonate enough to implement them. As we present in the overview of all articles that compose the launch issue of metapolis, this is a step that depends on strengthened relations between transnational cooperation and public policy, to transform the life of citizens attuned to common values.

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Manuela Carmena
Jun, 2020

Before and after the pandemic: a city of solidarity, creativity and participation
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Solidarity, creativity and participation are the three main pillars upon which cities should be built. The COVID-19 pandemic has proven we cannot have healthy cities if the entirety of our citizens and government officials do not embrace the principle of solidarity. Participation is inherent to cities as public spaces of freedom. Last but not least, creativity is essential, as it allows us to imagine better worlds: it is only in imagining them that they can begin to be real.

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Alfredo Aguilar
Jun, 2020

let us give the future another chance
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Science is a fundamental pillar for designing effective policies and guiding public-private efforts. From the current pandemic to climate change, all of humanity’s challenges are closely interlinked with the biosphere. Global challenges require global, and therefore synergistic, responses. We propose Bioeconomics and Biodiplomacy as two new tools to integrate local, national and global initiatives for the transformation we need.

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Herta Däubler-Gmelin
Jun, 2020

The post Covid-19 challenge: a simple reset or a real change?
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COVID-19 has exposed the very real weaknesses of global cooperation. It affects not only disenfranchised populations and underdeveloped countries, but also Europe. This pandemic has shaken a false sense of security among the more developed regions of the world. At the same time, we have witnessed how democratic societies are not necessarily less efficient than authoritarian ones when it comes to crisis management, and that far-reaching solutions are attainable when threats are perceived as sufficiently severe.

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Alfonso Zegbe
Jun, 2020

Socioemotional wellbeing: a revisited approach
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This article presents an approach and vision that should be considered in the different stages of policy making, in order to promote the wellbeing and happiness of individuals and their communities. This proposal is presented as a transversal approach that can be applied to various sectors and social rights, including health and wellbeing, education and lifelong emotional learning, food security, urban and rural spaces and flows, and housing and human habitats. The article closes with some final reflections on the future of government interventions, and approaches to the concepts of wellbeing and happiness.

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Laura Basu
Jun, 2020

The post-pandemic city beyond state and market: a thought experiment
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The COVID-19 pandemic and the international racial justice movement sparked by the police murder of George Floyd have led many to deeply question the capitalist system of markets and nation-states. Bringing together fiction, theory, and real-world examples, this contribution asks the reader to imagine what a utopian city beyond both the state and the market might look like.

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Wadah Khanfar
Jun, 2020

Covid-19 as a meta crisis and our post-pandemic order
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This pandemic provides a space-time from which a new world order can emerge, based on the great potential of an interconnected social organization. A transition that requires re-imagined institutions and societies, as the power of ideas makes a new world history possible. The post-pandemic world may not be equitable or secure, but it will push humanity to build a more just alternative under a new value system that will make the common good prevail.

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