So you'd like to see daily photographs taken in San Francisco and the surrounding Bay Area? You can start with What I'm Seeing and supplement your viewing with the following sites. [more inside]
posted by whir on Jun 12, 2008 - 10 comments

Three days of rioting and protest across Denmark, fueled by an influx of supporters from outside the country, was the result of the Danish police's sudden eviction of long-standing squat Ungdomshuset ("Youth House"). It was the last such social centre in Denmark, whose self-governed municipality of Christiana also began as a squat (though its future remains in question).

Squatting, the act of taking over abandoned property (sometimes surreptitiously as a way to secure housing for the homeless, sometimes publically as a way to exert political pressure) has a long history, and often meets with intense repression, though has sometimes been instrumental in city-building. In New York City's early days, homesteading was how many neighbourhoods began, and the squat movement which birthed the now-legal ABC No Rio community centre is linked to the city's community gardens, as well as its independent arts culture through publications such as World War 3. (WW3's co-founder Seth Tobocman receives continued attention for his graphic novel War In The Neighbourhood.)

Demolition of Ungdomshuset has already begun.
posted by poweredbybeard on Mar 5, 2007 - 54 comments

Life in the nation of Frestonia. In 1977, Freston Road, a squatters' community in Notting Hill Dale, West London, attempted to secede from the United Kingdom, giving itself the name Frestonia. Photographer (and former Minister of State) Tony Sleep beautifully documented its citizens and setting. via
posted by soiled cowboy on Mar 18, 2006 - 11 comments

Xanadu Home of the Future sits rotting in Kissimmee, Florida. It was built in the early 80s by Roy Mason and combined a unique architectural approach with an environment controlled by Commodore computers. Squatters were probably not part of this future plan. You can buy this visionary piece of futures past today or you could buy one in Sedona. However, be aware that the Gatlinburg and Wisconsin Xanadus were not preserved.
posted by PHINC on Jun 10, 2005 - 26 comments

Slab City, CA "is not so sinister as it is a strange, forlorn quarter of America. It is a town that is not really a town, a former training grounds with nothing left but the concrete slabs where the barracks stood. [...] The land belongs to the state, but the state, like the law, does not bother, and so the Slabs have become a place to park free. More than 3,000 elderly people settle in for the winter, in a pattern that dates back at least 20 years." [NYT Reg Req]
posted by LondonYank on Dec 17, 2004 - 23 comments