"Reclaiming Spaces" is dedicated to struggles which react to the process of dispossession and expropriation of inhabitants from their land, housing, infrastructure and / or public spaces. Struggles in most cases start at local levels by organizing the social and / or political defense of commons and public goods against privatization, financial speculation or corruption.

We want to build spaces and tools for exchanging some of these experiences with a focus on those factors which are transnational or global: Global financial investors and markets in real estates, the international institutions and arrangements backing them etc.

We want to contribute to a better common understanding of global forces behind the transformation of the human habitats. We want to support the development of improved international networking, practice orientated reflection and interventions. We are asking, if we can consider forms of appropriations, struggles, claims, methods and organizations which allow social actors to proceed from local defence struggles to trans-local pro-active offensives.

How can we reclaim our cities and land ?

Themes
At the moment we are focussing on struggles, interventions, claims and strategies which interfere with one or more of the following main themes:
- Social movements defending housing and other social rights related to settlements and space against forced evictions, demolitions, real estate violence etc.
- The role of real estate investments in financial globalisation vs. the consequences of financial globalisation for land and housing
- Privatisation of housing, spaces, infrastructure, planning
- Mega events and large construction / development projects as well as urban transformation plans as a consequence of globally competing cities and territories
- Housing and territorial policies in the European Union
- Self-managed and other social alternatives

18 September 2008, 09:30 - 12:30
Seminar: Reclaiming The City
Neo-liberal policies, financial globalisation and global city competition heavily affect urban life and struggles. Millions of people from lower classes get pushed out of their neighbourhoods and houses. Based on an exchange of recent experiences with struggles against neo-liberal urban transformations in Istanbul, Germany, and Russia we want to discuss options for internationalised resistance.

Participants so far (Speakers and Co-organizers):
- Şükrü Punduk (Sulukule platform, Istanbul is a leader of the local Roma community and organizer of cultural events)
- Pelin Tan (Sulukule platform, Istanbul is an urban researcher and activist supporting the survival struggle of Sulukule)
- Erdoğan Yıldız (from Gülensu neighborhood in Istanbul is a neighbourhood organizer and activist)
- Tan Morgül (is a critical journalist and activist from Istanbul) 
- Ulus Atayurt (is a critical journalist and activist from Istanbul)
- Knut Unger (Habitat Netz - Witten Tenants Association, is a tenants organizer and journalist from the Ruhr district in Germany)
- Karin Baumert (Initiative Bethanien Berlin and others, is an urban sociologist and activist in autonomous urban struggles with roots in eastern Berlin) 
- Carine Clement (from the “Soviets Regional Co-ordination Union of Russia” (SKS) lives in Moscow)
- Evgeny Kozlov (Movement of citizens’ initiatives, Saint-Peterburg)
- Andrey Konoval (Coordinating soviet of citizens’ actions, Izhevsk) 
- Vesna Tomse (is a sociologist, journalist and urban activist from Zurich, partly working in St. Petersburg, Russia)
- Sebastian Müller, INURA (Rhine-Ruhr, is a retired professor for urban sociology and theory of planning from Dortmund, Germany. Currently mainly working on international financial investment in the housing market he is even an activist in close relations to the tenants associations in the Ruhr District)
- Cesare Ottolini (Italy, is the coordinator of the International Alliance of Inhabitants - IAI)

Simultaneous Babel translation (probably, only 4 allowed): English, French, Turkish, Russian

20 September 2008, 09:30 - 12:30
Assembly of Urban Social Movements
This assembly, open to all activists for urban / housing / land rights (tenants union, cooperatives, social centres, homeless, etc.), should discuss concrete steps for improved international cooperation on urgent action, campaigns, advocacy, exchange and reflection.

It should try to fix the implementation of agreements built during the last period and the ESF meetings.

Let’s develop effective, targeted and transparent international networking! Let’s build a roadmap for unity of urban social movements and inhabitants organisations!

This assembly should focus on concrete proposals for international cooperation among different groups within the next years. This especially includes proposals which have been discussed in other related seminars before and proposals which had been developed in your and our networks. Based on this, we hope that we can build some agenda for an improved international co-work in our field.