RESURGENT CITIES FORUM
Urban Front is proud to announce the culmination of the RESURGENT CITIES project with a public forum and celebration. This global initiative responds to the widespread impacts of neoliberal urban policy by connecting local actors in Mexico City, New York, Rotterdam, and Quito to foster collaboration, break disciplinary boundaries, and center civil society in the creation of more just and livable cities. Over the course of the project, each city developed its own focus. This forum will be a space to share what we've learned, highlight emerging practices, and celebrate the power of communities shaping their own urban futures. If you are around, join us in this important conversation.
DAY 1: MONDAY, MAY 26th, 9.00 - 19.00 hrs
Walk In & Breakfast
9.00 - 10.00 hrs
A Warm Welcome
10.00 - 11.00 hrs
We will begin the Forum with a warm welcome and introduction to the Afrikaanderwijk Coöperatie and its Coöperatief Consultancy Buro. We will also give more context to Urban Front and the Resurgent Cities project, as well as introduce the program for the coming days. Renowned geographer David Harvey will frame the Forum in the current economic and political landscape.
With Annet van Otterloo, Jeanne van Heeswijk, Miguel Robles-Durán, Emiliano Gandolfi, David Harvey.
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Collective Knowledges, Local Fabrics: Strategies for Community Action
11.15 - 14.20 hrs, including lunch break
How can we learn from the strategies of the past to fight the struggles of the present?
During this workshop, we will develop an understanding of the current context of Rotterdam South and learn from previous fights for housing justice and neighbourhood power in Rotterdam. Rotterdam South is characterized by a process of state-led gentrification, resulting in rising housing prices, demolition of social housing, socio-economic discrimination, and displacement. Although the policy program NPRZ (Nationaal Programma Rotterdam Zuid) invests a lot of resources in the neighbourhood, most of it doesn’t end up with the inhabitants. The voices of the residents are mostly ignored, and participation is often superficial. In order to change these dynamics, we need collective action! Through historical examples, we will explore different strategies communities used to fight back. In the 70s and 80s, residents built power through collective organising, direct action, and a diversity of tactics, pushing for a building policy that facilitated democratic participation between residents and administrators. Together, we will examine what we can learn from their tactics and how they could be applied to the current context. We will discuss: How to unite people and overcome political apathy? How can we avoid repeating the mistakes of the past? How to build a stronger movement?
With Jeanne van Heeswijk, Janneke Absil, Emiliano Gandolfi, Lila Athanasiadou, Mustapha Eaisaouiyen, Gijs Custers, Annet van Otterloo, Hind Serkouh, Tait Mandler, and Julia Wilhelm.
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Rethinking Urban Futures through Housing: Mexico City as a Paradigm Shifter
14.30 - 17.00 hrs
This workshop will delve into non-commodified housing development rooted in ancestral forms of relating and stewarding of land as a way to challenge the hegemonic private property largely imposed on our society. We’ll bring together activists, public officials, and housing organizers from Mexico City to discuss practical and actionable instruments that challenge the dominant private property system—such as land banks, rent stabilization,community land trusts, and cooperative housing. Responding to growing inequality, exclusion, and displacement produced by speculative development in large cities, this session will explore how Mexico City could become a paradigm shifter, positioning as a metropolis providing permanent affordability, long-term stability, and democratic control of land and community resources. All this through the promotion of endogenous housing development grounded in ancestral social and land relations and backed by progressive public policy.
Beginning with a grounding introduction, the session will unfold through six interconnected segments—recover, disrupt, shift, preserve and integrate. Recover will reflect on pre-colonial legacies of land relations and the movements working to reclaim ancestral practices. Disrupt will challenge the dominance of private and rental property systems, questioning their role in perpetuating inequality. Shift, will consider the promise and challenges of shared ownership and cooperative housing. Preserve will highlight the importance of policy and regulatory frameworks underscoring the way social movements have shaped through long struggles social oriented land and housing reforms since the Mexican Revolution which gave way to one of the most progressive constitutions of the time. Integrate delves into potential strategies for ensuring justice, equity, and sustainability into future urban development. Finally, in Other Forms for Inhabiting, participants will contribute lived experiences and alternative imaginaries to inspire and inform the Mexico Team’s ongoing work.
With Josep Bohigas, Pablo Caballero, Gabriela Rendón, Miguel Robles-Durán, Silvia Emanuelli, Coordinator of Latin America at Habitat International Alliance (HIC-LA), and Joana Moreno, Mexico City’s Institute for Democratic and Prospective Planning.
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Tools for Resurgent Cities: Disseminating Local Knowledges
17.00 - 17.45
The Resurgent Cities project has developed concrete tools for social transformation through community action and territorial engagement. Each city—Mexico City, Quito, and Rotterdam—generated site-specific strategies rooted in local cultures, power structures, and struggles. This roundtable presents three such tools: a framework for dignified housing in Mexico City, a manual for cultural self-management in Quito (Yuyay manual gestión cultural comunitaria), and a strategy for disseminating grassroots knowledges in Rotterdam. Together, they propose new ways of reclaiming urban space and activating political agency. We will explore how these tools can circulate across contexts and support broader movements for housing, cultural sovereignty, and community-led urban transformation.
With Emiliano Gandolfi, Ana Rodriguez, Luz Tandayamo, Maria Benalcazar, Sandra Lopez, Gabriela Rendón, Miguel Robles-Durán, Annet van Otterloo, Janneke Absil, Jeanne van Heeswijk. Waste Simmers: Closing Soup and Borrel at the Resource
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Recycling Station
Monday May 26th, 17.45 - 19.00
The Grondstoffenstation, the resource station located at the Afrikaanderplein open air market next to the Gemaal op Zuid, is entirely built from recycled and sustainable materials. There, members of the Cooperative recycle over 700 tonnes of market waste a year. The station creates local jobs, provides a podium for cultural activations, contributes to biodiversity, collects rainwater, and offers free fruits and vegetables for food banks and individuals. Commissioned by the Cooperative and designed and built by Superuse Studios and residents, the Grondstoffenstation works on creating a social and sustainable circular local economy. In 2024 the station was rewarded with the Rotterdam Architecture Prize for being ‘a rebellious presence that embodies systems thinking, optimism and future orientation.’
The rooftop garden and the tribune of the station will set the stage for an afternoon borrel hosted by Ivan Richardson and Bernardo Bailey, the driving forces behind the station. Artist and gardener Kate Price will provide us with Waste Simmers drinks and refreshments. Rooftop tunes will be played by AMPFEMININE, a Rotterdam-bred DJ collective focused on amplifying high-energy rhythms & femme voices.
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DAY 2: TUESDAY, MAY 27th, 10.00 - 22.00 hrs
Walk in with Coffee and Tea
10.00 - 10.30
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Tweebosbuurt Tour and Brunch
10.30 - 12.00
Rotterdam's Tweebos neighborhood looks like a ghost town. Only rubble and ruins remain, after the residents were forced to leave to make way for luxury housing. They fought like lions against their displacement and their fight did not go unnoticed. Their struggle received attention nationally and internationally, with involvement even by the United Nations. The physical homes are no longer there, but the memories always remain. Mustapha Eaisaouiyen, one of the former residents, will tell you the stories of special people who resisted against their housing corporation and the municipality. He will guide you through the process and give context about the housing policy that had a big impact on many of Rotterdams’ residents.The tour will take place in two rounds of 45 minutes each. In the meantime, brunch will be provided at Gemaal op Zuid.
With Mustapha Eaisaouiyen.
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Trash, Cash, and Cultural Clash: A Role-Playing Rumble in Quito's Backyard
12.00 - 14.30
This workshop proposes a simulation exercise where diverse social actors must establish agreements for social, economic, and community coexistence. Participants will assume specific roles representing: the El Inga waste management company, Pifo residents as protectors of archaeological heritage, representatives from timber and energy industries, Quito Airport authorities, Quitumbe neighbors involved in ravine recovery, shopping center administrators, real estate investors, and municipal officials.
Through this dynamic, two representative cases of current reality will be analyzed: urban communities facing growing pressure from the real estate sector and rural populations resisting becoming dumping grounds for a city of three million inhabitants.
The program addresses cooperativism as an effective strategy for resistance and negotiation, examines the mechanisms through which neighborhood organization and participation generate local power, and studies the fundamental role of the community museum as a catalyst for territorial protection and strengthening of community identity.
This workshop is aimed at people interested in developing capabilities for making territorial conflicts visible and constructing alternatives that promote collective well-being in contexts of economic and social pressure on territories.
With Ana Rodriguez, Luz Tandayamo, Maria Benalcazar, Sandra Lopez.
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Building Heritage(s): Ecologies of Economic Solidarity Under Islamic Frameworks
14.40 - 17.10
Humanitarian aid and funding have been a global world building tool for the past century. Today these sources of funds are dwindling and ever more dependent on political will. Under these conditions, the need to cultivate alternative funding infrastructures is urgent. This requires identifying new partnerships, and redrawing networks and connections between stakeholders. To these ends, Urban Front, Megawra, Raw Material Company, and BIAS-AME propose alternative funding structures that connect existing economies of solidarity, particularly under Islamic frameworks to support community needs.
This workshop will explore how we might shape funding infrastructures towards cultural and ecological preservation, while simultaneously supporting the transformation of Islamic aid frameworks across the geographies of Dakar, Cairo, and Rotterdam. The workshop will identify historical moments when alternative funds emerged to support the workundertaken in these geographies with a focus on Muslim aid circles and traditions of community funding. We will use this exercise to identify potential stakeholders for future organizing, specifically where the work of Islamic scholarship and cultural organisations that are mobilising to collectivise with Muslim communities overlap. The workshop will pose questions that include: How might disparate actors come together? What might these dialogues tell us about the necessary composition of such working groups? What repositories of knowledge exist in recent and deep past histories that we might access? How might we create alternative frameworks for “need” outside of those classically relied upon by aid funding? What might these tell us about future potential trajectories for such work?
With Ola Hassanain, Salma Belal, May al-Ibrashy, Dr. Radhika Gupta, and Sara Bolgharin.
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RESURGENT CITIES: ACTIVATING THE LOCAL/ KEYNOTE SERIES
19.00 - 22.00 (walk in at 18.45) at De Hillevliet, Hillevliet 90
Resurgent Cities confronts the global crisis of neoliberal urban development wherdisplacement, gentrification, and speculative markets threaten communities. This keynote series, anchored by renowned geographer David Harvey, whose work has fueled decades of struggles for the Right to the City, brings together groundbreaking projects of grassroots resistance and radical imagination from across the globe.
Community organizers, neighborhood activists, city administrators, and preservation and housing advocates from Quito, Mexico City, and Cairo will share hyper-local tactics of defiance and repair from tenant-led battles for housing justice in Mexico City and grassroots cooperative infrastructures in Quito, to reimagining neighborhoods in Cairo via a powerful combination of cultural preservation and rebuilding of infrastructures. They prove that another urban future is not only necessary, but already in motion.
Together, these presentations amplify a transnational call: cities must be reclaimed and shaped by those who inhabit them. Join us as we chart collective strategies for self-determination in our cities—from policy to pavement—by forging cooperative economies, citizen-led governance and funding schemes, and social and cultural infrastructures rooted in justice.
With May al-Ibrashy, Davarian Baldwin, Silvia Emanuelli, David Harvey, Ola Hassanain, Jeanne van Heeswijk, Sandra Lopez, Annet van Otterloo, Miguel Robles-Durán, Ana Rodriguez, and Laura Raicovich.
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DAY 3: WEDNESDAY, MAY 28th, 17.30 - 22.00 hrs
During the day, there is time for closed meetings between Urban Front members and invited guests. The space of the Gemaal will be available for this, in the meantime it's also open house for the neighborhood, so the space will be shared with the community.
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Radical participation: Building Power from Below
18.00 - 22.00 (walk in at 17.30)
During this evening program we will dive into bottom-up infrastructures of collective decision making beyond performative participation.
The past 5 years, residents’ participation has resurfaced as a buzzword in urban planning and public administration discourse resulting in terms like “participation fatigue” that shows the ineffectiveness and extractive nature of the established participatory processes. In this evening we ask what actual participation can look like? What are the obstacles to true participation and how to overcome them? How to build local power in the neighbourhood?
Focusing on the neighbourhood of Afrikaanderwijk, we will discuss the economic, spatial and social impact of NPRZ’s (Nationaal Programma Rotterdam Zuid) policies in the area as well as the urgency to democratise the way decisions are made and implemented on the local level. In a series of presentations we will explore the potential of a Wijkbond (neighbourhood union); a hyperlocal and decentralised knowledge infrastructure that both collects and disseminates local knowledge as well as building autonomy and power from below. We will explore radical histories of participatory infrastructures and strategies for inclusive decision making from neighbourhood and labour unions in Europe and Uruguay.
The evening will end with an experiment in democratic assembly, discussing the role of the Wijkbond as a tool to radicalise participation and reclaim political power at the neighbourhood level.
The evening will start with a dinner* provided by the Wijkkeuken van Zuid.
* all donations welcome.
With Lila Athanasiadou, Pablo Caballero, Gijs Custers, Mustapha Eaisaouiyen, Tait Mandler, Annet van Otterloo and others.
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DAY 4: THURSDAY, MAY 29TH
On Thursday May 29th there will be an internal working session for core Urban Front members.
