[1] Following electoral success in a number of localities, by the early twentieth century discussion of municipal socialism took on a more practical character, as Edgard Milhaud, Professor of Political Economy at the University of Geneva.
[2] established Annales de la Régie Directe, an academic journal which set out to scientifically examine the initial steps towards transforming areas previously dominated by private enterprise into new forms of public service.
[1] This journal contributed to a growing network of municipal socialists in Europe and North America, in which three types of movements were united at a local level: trade unions particularly of municipally run public services such as gas, transport, sewage etc., consumer and industrial co-operatives, and other associations of consumers including tenants groups opposed to price and rent increases.
Municipal socialism has been used to describe public ownership of streetcar lines, waterworks, and other local utilities, as was favored by "Progressives" in the United States in the late 1890s/early 1900s.
[3] The term Sewer Socialism was also used to describe the pragmatic reformist policies of Emil Seidel, Daniel Hoan and Frank Zeidler, Milwaukee's three Socialist mayors in the 20th century.
These reforms included rendering gas and water supplies public services, controlled by the government, clearing slums and the introduction of a city park system.
Water supply is rapidly coming to be universally a matter of public provision, no fewer than 71 separate governing bodies obtaining loans for this purpose in the year 1885-86 alone.
In the neighbouring City of Maryborough, the municipal socialist movement advocated for the municipalisation of "water, lighting, transport, abbatoirs, markets, washhouses, and the conveyance of coffins to cemeteries [sic?]".
[14] The council notably rejected visits from the Governor of New South Wales, and criticised Britain for not supporting the Greek People's Liberation Army.
Spurious community groups, housing schemes, race relations and ethnic minority units for tiny privileged layers of black and Irish people were set up and paid for.