Against fire and ICE: the lifehouse as community defence

Many neighbourhoods and communities today face multiple catastrophes at once. Climate emergency and violent authoritarianism often compound each other.

This talk starts from the premise that the measures a community takes to defend itself against climate-system collapse are also useful for surviving authoritarian rule. The same room that might cool elderly neighbours during a heat wave can host a legal briefing. A neighbourhood communications network built to hold its own against grid failure can continue operating when official channels become unreliable or hostile. The principle is what professional emergency managers calls “all-hazards preparedness” — but grounded in the understanding that some hazards wear badges. In this event, we’ll examine how communities develop the capacity to respond to complex interlocking crises. And by exploring the idea of the lifehouse, we will ask how that collective capacity can be made durable.

Meet our speaker and discussants

Adam Greenfield is a London-based writer, urbanist and host of the Lifepod podcast. His most recent book is Lifehouse: Taking care of ourselves in a world on Fire (Verso, 2024).

Gargi Bhattacharyya is Director of the Sarah Parker Remind Centre for the Study of Racism and Racialisation at UCL. They are the author of a number of books including: Rethinking Racial Capitalism (Rowan and Littlefield, 2018), The Future of Racial Capitalism (Polity, 2023) and the multi-authored Empire's Endgame (Pluto, 2021).

Dubravka Sekulić is an spatial practitioner, theorist and educator. Her work connects spatial knowledges and political emancipation, thinking with solidarities and struggles from below. She is writing Minor Planning: Spatial politics for a liberated future. With Christina Leigh Geros, she is co-leading of a new Environmental Architecture and Urban Design MA at the Royal College of Art.

David Madden is Associate Professor of Sociology and Director of the Cities Programme at LSE. He is the author, with Peter Marcuse, of In Defense of Housing (Verso, second ed. 2024).

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