While the discussion about the crisis concerns mainly its global or state dimensions, the adverse effects of the crisis are strongly experienced in local everyday realities. However, these realities vary in different countries and cities, with particular neighbourhoods being hit harder than others, where the withdrawal of the welfare state and the effects of increasing poverty and unemployment are much more visible. In this context, the local embodies both the negative effects of the crisis (such as poverty, insecurity or xenophobia), as well as a potential for the future (such as solidarity networks, grassroots organizations or local assemblies). However, these local potentialities do not exist in isolation; rather they are networked with other places, people and initiatives. Thus, even more than before, the local emerges now as a very privileged terrain for thinking and acting politically for the city and its residents.