Walking the City

Around the world, the neo-liberal city pushes active citizenship to the margins; questions of citizens' rights to make use of urban space are now an issue on the agenda of public discourse. Gentrification, privatisation, zonification; there is no room, except consumer space, left for the citizen. But we can fight back and reclaim lost territories. We walk and observe. We see patchworks across the global city; we see citizens making their own zones of commerce, of social interaction, of solidarity. We see transient structures raised, and torn down; meeting places, shifting according to the time of day; the people using the city, according to their needs.
We walk as observers; we open our eyes; we consume the city, rather than allow ourselves to be consumed by it.
Walking the City is a showcase for temporary occupations in cities as different as Rome, Glasgow, Morelia and Denver. In spite of the cultural, economic and social variations among these cities, all share in common creative strategies of informal reclamation and development of public space; each city generating groups of “urban hackers” against current and official municipal policies.