Abstract
In a time increasingly defined by overlapping crises – from pandemics and extreme climate events to supply chain disruptions and political instability – Adam Greenfield's book offers a compelling and necessary shift in focus. Rather than placing hope in parliamentary politics, large-scale technological fixes, or deferred promises of a green transition, the book urges readers to confront a future marked by ongoing collapse. With a clear-eyed assessment of our precarious moment, Greenfield argues that political hope, effort and energy can no longer be invested in state institutions, which have persistently failed to meet urgent collective needs. Instead, the author calls for direct, community-led efforts oriented toward addressing our most immediate needs.
Greenfield grounds his arguments in the context of a world disrupted by the collapse of climate systems leading to what the author terms ‘the long emergency’. The author conceptualises this as a rupture in the ordinary that simultaneously destabilises capitalist power structures and institutions while also creating the conditions for the emergence of local forms of organising grounded in values such as solidarity, mutual care, self-provision and horizontal consensus-based decision-making. At a conceptual level, the book weaves together anarchist-inspired political thought – such as Bookchin's ‘libertarian municipalism’ and Öcalan's ‘democratic confederalism’ – with feminist theories of care and ecological perspectives, to articulate a concrete proposal for directly responding to interconnected crises.
Central to this vision is the concept of ‘Lifehouses’: neighbourhood-based institutions dedicated to meeting basic needs, fostering solidarity and building the collective power necessary to survive and thrive amid climate collapse. Drawing inspiration from historical and contemporary mutual aid efforts – including Occupy Sandy, the Black Panthers’ survival programs, the horizontal organising of the Occupy and square movements, grassroots medical clinics in Greece, Spain's new municipalism and the autonomous governance of Rojava – Greenfield offers a hopeful yet grounded blueprint for community-led transformation in the face of an uncertain and volatile future.
Organised into four chapters, the book progressively builds its argument, leading to the practical proposal embodied in the idea of ‘lifehouses’ Chapter 1, ‘The Long Emergency’, opens with a vivid portrayal of, not some distant dystopia, but a crisis unfolding now. Greenfield explains how global warming creates escalating, interconnected risks that worsen vulnerabilities worldwide. These effects compound existing social injustices, multiplying deprivation. The author highlights how extreme heat and its knock-on effects – drought, aquifer salinisation, sea-level rise and land subsidence – are making vast regions increasingly uninhabitable.
Greenfield anticipates mass internal and cross-border migrations on a scale unseen in modern times, for which political and social institutions are unprepared. The chapter concludes with a sharp critique of nation-states and global governance failures. Neoliberal austerity policies have orchestrated a retreat from social reproduction – a process Greenfield conceptualises as ‘organized abandonment’. The author calls for a decisive shift from state dependence toward self-organisation and community-led responses.
This leads into Chapter 2, ‘Mutual Care’, which explores the transformative potential of mutual aid during environmental crises. Drawing on his experience with Occupy Sandy – a grassroots response to Hurricane Sandy – Greenfield highlights that mutual aid prioritises autonomy from the state, collective action, dignity and blurs the lines between caregiver and recipient. Examples like Occupy Sandy and Common Ground's post-Katrina efforts demonstrate how decentralised networks often outperformed centralised aid organisations.
However, Greenfield cautions that mutual aid, though essential in acute emergencies, is not a comprehensive solution. These efforts often lack long-term sustainability and require reimagining to address prolonged crises. To address this, the author introduces ‘care’ as a more enduring framework linking mutual aid's grassroots ethos with the Black Panthers’ programmes and the Greek solidarity clinics. These examples showcase holistic, empowering care outside state structures. With climate emergencies intensifying, Greenfield calls for durable, self-organised care infrastructures lasting beyond immediate disasters.
Chapter 3, ‘Collective Power’, examines the limits of mutual aid and care initiatives described in Chapter 2. These programmes, the author argues, were not built as permanent structures but were devised to highlight state abandonment. Greenfield asks what happens when crisis becomes chronic and the state fails entirely. In exploring how to build durable, self-governed, caring systems, Greenfield draws on Bookchin's ‘libertarian municipalism’, advocating direct, assembly-based democracy rooted in local communities as a foundation for participatory, non-statist governance.
The author traces how this tradition inspired recent movements like new municipalism in austerity Spain. Initiatives such as Barcelona en Comú and Ahora Madrid initially harnessed grassroots energy and horizontal organising but struggled to sustain their radical democratic vision amid institutional constraints and electoral compromises. The chapter then turns to Rojava as a sustained example of horizontalism grounded in democratic federalism – a model directly inspired by Bookchin. In Rojava, governance was carried out through face-to-face democratic assemblies that operate from communes up to cantons, integrating feminism, pluralism, anti-statism and ecological care at every level.
Building on these experiences, the final chapter, ‘Beyond Hope’, presents Greenfield's proposal for enduring the long emergency: the Lifehouse. Conceived as locally organised, lifehouses would serve as neighbourhood centres within walking distance for urban residents. Organised under the mutual care, horizontal democracy and democratic confederalism principles, these hubs would offer essential services – providing climate shelter, charging devices during blackouts, purifying water, sharing tools, growing food and fostering social bonds. Urban lifehouses would occupy reclaimed spaces with low real estate values and run on microgrids powered by solar, wind and hydro energy. They would favour low-tech, organic, salvageable, open-source and mechanical systems over electronic or capital-heavy technologies. Lifehouses seek not only to ensure material survival but also to cultivate community, solidarity and emotional well-being in the face of systemic collapse.
Greenfield presents lifehouses as prefigurative acts – steps toward reclaiming life from market and state dominance. However, the author is transparent about their limits. They cannot fully shield communities from climate catastrophe nor replace urgent systemic transformations. Vulnerabilities will remain, including scarce resources, technological challenges and risks of violent repression. History shows that successful self-organisation will lead to backlash from states and reactionary forces as in the case of the Black Panthers or Rojava. The chapter ends with a sober warning that communities must prepare to defend these spaces and values.
This aspect of the book invites further reflection and raises questions that could help enrich Greenfield's vision. The author rightly anticipates that Lifehouses might attract state repression if they build meaningful power but offers limited guidance on how such spaces might defend themselves. His call to redirect our political energy beyond parliamentary politics raises a crucial question: who will then occupy those institutional spaces, and can parliamentary allies be leveraged to protect lifehouses from repression? Research on public-common partnerships (Milburn & Russell, 2020; Roth et al., 2023) offers a valuable framework for envisioning state institutions as facilitators of the commons – supporting them without compromising their autonomy.
Furthermore, some state efforts at the local level have reproduced experiences akin to lifehouses. For instance, years of investment in public infrastructures in Barcelona have produced a network of over 400 climate shelters to provide thermal comfort for vulnerable groups in public spaces such as libraries, schools and community centres, as well as in shaded outdoor environments, including parks and gardens (Amorim-Maia et al., 2024).
The process of reclaiming urban space for lifehouses calls for deeper exploration. Greenfield assumes that real estate in areas in need of lifehouses will depreciate during the long emergency, but this overlooks the demographic and class heterogeny of some neighbourhoods. In practice, existing commons and autonomous spaces – such as squats and social centres in Spain, Italy and Greece – are frequently violently evicted as rent gaps arise, leaving unresolved challenges around securing and defending space. In this sense, lessons from antieviction strategies and tactics (Ancelovici & Badimon, 2024) as well as political and methodological agendas recognising, supporting and amplifying forms of urban inhabitation that counter speculation can reinforce Greenfield's proposal (Ferreri et al., 2024).
While the book carefully outlines Lifehouses’ technological and infrastructural design, it is less explicit on the social processes needed to create and sustain them. The assumption that crisis will organically prompt widespread participation – necessary for Lifehouses to reproduce and remain truly democratic – risks underestimating how unevenly the long emergency will impact people, even within the same local context. Although Greenfield recognises the heavy workload involved and the risk of burnout – particularly for women, who disproportionately perform care work – his suggestions for long-term sustainability rely mainly on self-care appeals, which may feel insufficient to those already engaged in daily care labour. As I found in my research on housing commons (del Río, 2022, 2025) the time-intensive nature of self-management is not only a source of conflict, burnout and gender inequalities, but also creates exclusionary barriers for those with limited time availability and thus democratic deficits.
Finally, although Lifehouse compellingly frames self-organisation as a site of political awareness and resistance, it leaves open the crucial question of how such localised efforts might transition from emergency response toward broader, systemic transformation.
Beyond these open questions, this book is a timely and important call to collective action rooted in local actions. Adam Greenfield offers a grounded, practical and detailed vision of self-organisation founded on care, autonomy and interdependence. This is an inspiring book that urges readers to stop waiting for distant solutions and instead build an alternative future – starting right where we are.