Bart van der Steen

A collection of essays from different cities on squatting and autonomous movements in Europe covering the years from around the 1960s to 2012. Focus is on western europe with an essay on Poznan in Poland being the exception (and maybe one on Greece and one on Vienna depending on the defenition of western europe). There are two essays focused on England, one on London and one on Brighton, but for the rest there is only one essay per country.

Since the essays is written by different authors show more with different perspectives the focus is shifting between the essays. All essays are discussing squatting to some extent, but for some the focus is a bit more on the overall autonomous movement. This isn't very sursprising though. Amsterdam has a very rich historical squatters movement which has had it's very own dynamic. For other countries/cities the squatting movement isn't as rich and has a dynamic which can't be seperated from the dynamic of the wider autonomous movement.

If the book had been written by one author it would have been a more coherent narrative. But what you get instead with different authors for every essay is more of a street view from the several movements. The various approaches gives an insight on what it is that is important for the movements and how strong they are. That they have developed a classification of different squatter types in Amsterdam could for example only have happened there since a movement needs to have reached a certain threshold for that to happen.

One lesson I take away after reading the book is that the squatter movements could succeed in a time when the city centres wasn't very attractive for capital. In the 60s and 70s there were a lot of empty buildings in some cities and this made squatting comparatively easy. Today when city centres see a lot more capital investment and few empty buildings the repression is much swifter which makes it hard to build something lasting.

In the end it is a nice and easy to read historical introduction to some of the more important squatter movements in cities in Europe. If you want to read more and more in depth they end every chapter with some suggestions for further reading. show less

Very clearly a collection of academic writings, either for post-doctoral programs or for publication in academic journals. The inclusion of a forward, a prologue, AND an introduction gives you an idea of the pomposity with which this topic is approached. If you are in academia then you are looking to this book for research purposes, and I'm sure it will fit your needs. If you are a regular person interested in the topic of squats and squatting, this book will bore you to tears.