Margit Mayer & Catharina Thörn 
Urban Uprisings 
Challenging Neoliberal Urbanism in Europe

This book analyses the waves of protests, from spontaneous uprisings to well-organized forms of collective action, which have shaken European cities over the last decade. It shows how analysing these protests in connection with the structural context of neoliberal urbanism and its crises is more productive than standard explanations. Processes of neoliberalisation have caused deeply segregated urban landscapes defined by deepening social inequality, rising unemployment, racism, securitization of urban spaces and welfare state withdrawal, particularly from poor peripheral areas, where tensions between marginalized youth and police often manifest in public spaces. Challenging a conventional distinction made in research on protest, the book integrates a structural analysis of processes of large scale urban transformation with analyses of the relationship between ‘riots’ and social movement action in nine countries: France, Greece, England, Germany, Spain, Poland, Denmark, Sweden and Turkey.      

Table of Content

Part I. Urban Uprisings, Social Movements and Neoliberal Urbanism.- Chapter 1. Re-Thinking Urban Social Movements, ‘Riots’ and Uprisings – An Introduction; Håkan Thörn, Margit Mayer and Catharina Thörn.- Chapter 2. Neoliberal Urbanism and Uprisings Across Europe; Margit Mayer.- Part II. Challenging Neoliberal Urbanism in Europe.- Chapter 3. Rage and Fire in the French Banlieues; Mustafa Dikeç.- Chapter 4. The Neoliberal State and the 2011 English Riots: A Class Analysis; Tom Slater.- Chapter 5. The Stockholm Uprising in Context: Urban Social Movements in the Rise and Demise of the Swedish Welfare State City; Ove Sernhede, Catharina Thörn and Håkan Thörn.- Chapter 6. Last Stand or Renewed Urban Activism: The 2007 Copenhagen Youth House Uprising; Anders Lund Hansen and René Karpantschof.- Chapter 7. Right to the City – and Beyond: The Topographies of Urban Social Movements in Hamburg; Peter Birke.- Chapter 8. Athens’ Spatial Contract and the Neoliberal Omni-Present; Antonis Vradis.- Chapter 9. Between Autonomy and Hybridization: Urban Struggles Within the 15M Movement in Madrid; Miguel A. Martínez López.- Chapter 10. Gezi Protests and Beyond: Urban Resistance in the Context of Neoliberal Urbanism in Istanbul; Gülçin Erdi Lelandais.- Chapter 11. Neoliberal Models of Post-Socialist Urban Transformation and the Emergence of Urban Social Movements in Poland; Dominika V. Polanska.- Chapter 12. Afterword: Spatialized social inequalities and urban collective action; Margit Mayer, Catharina Thörn and Håkan Thörn.       

About the author

Margit Mayer is Professor of Political Science at Freie Universität of Berlin, Germany, and Senior Fellow at the Center for Metropolitan Studies, Technical University Berlin, Germany. 





Catharina Thörn is Associate Professor in Cultural Studies at University of Gothenburg, Sweden.  





Håkan Thörn is Full Professor of Sociology at University of Gothenburg, Sweden.