Take over the City
The Eagle Inn, Salford, M3 7DW
Monday 16th November 2026 7:30PM
GMTU x STAT presents a launch for Neil Gray’s new book, ‘Take Over The City: Spatial Composition in Italian Autonomy’.
About the Book
—
“Take Over the City provides the first comprehensive spatial analysis of Italian operaismo and the extraordinary urban struggles of 1970s Italy.”
The book argues that these innovative urban struggles carry important lessons for contemporary forms of organization and social conflict in the sphere of social reproduction. They drew attention to, and acted within, a tendency that has only become more entrenched since the 1970s: the centrality of urbanization and real estate to national political economies. If urbanisation has become increasingly central for capital accumulation processes, it follows that urban struggle must become increasingly central to anti capitalist struggle. The struggles to ‘Take Over the City’ in 1970s Italy provide an important marker of how this might be done in the current era.
About the Author
—
“Neil Gray is a working class autodidact based in Glasgow, Scotland. He is a former editor for Variant magazine and his writing and research have appeared in numerous magazines and academic journals. He is a long-term housing and anti-gentrification activist and is the editor of Rent and its Discontents: A Century of Housing Struggle (2018).”
About the Book
—
“Take Over the City provides the first comprehensive spatial analysis of Italian operaismo and the extraordinary urban struggles of 1970s Italy.”
The book argues that these innovative urban struggles carry important lessons for contemporary forms of organization and social conflict in the sphere of social reproduction. They drew attention to, and acted within, a tendency that has only become more entrenched since the 1970s: the centrality of urbanization and real estate to national political economies. If urbanisation has become increasingly central for capital accumulation processes, it follows that urban struggle must become increasingly central to anti capitalist struggle. The struggles to ‘Take Over the City’ in 1970s Italy provide an important marker of how this might be done in the current era.
About the Author
—
“Neil Gray is a working class autodidact based in Glasgow, Scotland. He is a former editor for Variant magazine and his writing and research have appeared in numerous magazines and academic journals. He is a long-term housing and anti-gentrification activist and is the editor of Rent and its Discontents: A Century of Housing Struggle (2018).”
Event Details
Starts at 7:30PM
