Metropolitan Preoccupations

In this, the first book-length study of the cultural and politicalgeography of squatting in Berlin, Alexander Vasudevan links theeveryday practices of squatters in the city to wider and enduringquestions about the relationship between space, culture, andprotest. * Focuses on the everyday and makeshift practices of squatters intheir attempt to exist beyond dominant power relations and redefinewhat it means to live in the city * Offers a fresh critical perspective that builds on recentdebates about the "right to the city" and the role ofgrassroots activism in the making of alternative urbanisms * Examines the implications of urban squatting for how we think,research and inhabit the city as a site of radical socialtransformation * Challenges existing scholarship on the New Left in Germany bydeveloping a critical geographical reading of theanti-authoritarian revolt and the complex geographies of connectionand solidarity that emerged in its wake * Draws on extensive field work conducted in Berlin and elsewherein Germany