Topos

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REBELS OF URBANISM

EDITORIAL

THE PARTICIPATORY LIE • Participation has become urbanism’s favourite moral alibi. No masterplan without a workshop. No redevelopment without sticky notes. No displacement without a listening session. We tell ourselves that co-creation equals democracy – that the presence of citizens in a room automatically redistributes power. But what if the opposite is true? What if many of today’s participatory processes are not tools of transformation, but instruments of pacification? Carefully moderated arenas where anger is translated into Post-its, dissent into data, and resistance into valuable input? In an era that celebrates inclusion as performance, the most dangerous question is also the simplest: who still decides?

The Anatomy of Silence

Wellington • Nestled on the northern shore of the cook strait, which separates New Zealand’s North and South Islands, Wellington is not only the country’s political capital but also its cultural centre. In December 2024, the city made headlines as the site of Maori protests against the proposed Treaty Principles Bill. This article puts into perspective how these demonstrations fit into Wellington’s long history of rebellion, which has shaped the streets of the city as a space where culture is produced and identity formed.

ÚMENOR’S CODE • Exit the state, enter the future. Peter Thiel is disrupting the urban monopoly with a vision of sovereign cities and technological autarky. As the legendary investor who saw the potential of Facebook when it was just a campus project and the architect who built the 'seers' of Palantir, Thiel has made a career of finding the 'contrarian truth.' His success is built on the rare ability to move from 0 to 1 - creating unique monopolies rather than competing in stagnant markets. Now, the ultimate venture capitalist is applying this disruptive logic to civilization itself. The rebellion of the 0 to 1 mind starts here.

“YOU CANNOT STOP LIFE“ • Wladimir Klitschko is part of a city that refuses to stand still under siege. As a member of Ukraine’s Territorial Defence, he is prepared to serve actively in the war, joining his brother Vitali Klitschko, the mayor of Kyiv, in defending the capital while also acting abroad as an advocate for military and humanitarian support. In this conversation, he reflects on how Kyiv continues to function as a global metropolis under constant attack, how communication and digital infrastructure have become tools of survival, and why “urban rebellion” in today’s Kyiv is not a metaphor, but a daily practice of resilience, adaptation, and collective courage.

THE CITY AND THE CAPITAL • David Harvey is a neo-Marxist urban theoretician and anthropologist. He committed his life to investigating the fundamental operations of capital and its relationship with the built environment – leaving us with the question: How rebellious can science be? (To which Harvey would answer: Yes.)

RUNNING ON REBELLION (AND WINNING) • Zohran Mamdani didn’t just win on election night, he tapped into something. The chants of Housing is a human right could have come from any tenant rally over the past five or more years. This time, though, New York City had finally voted like it believed its chant.

"REBELLION HAPPENS IN THE CRACKS" • Victor Cano–Ciborro explores the city through the lens of its most overlooked inhabitants. From street vendors in Ahmedabad to rappers in the Parisian banlieues, he studies how bodies—human and non-human—produce, contest, and transform urban space. In his work, “rebellion” is not...