Urban Commons
Area: Community participation
Urban commons are shared resources in the city that are managed by their users in a collaborative and non-profit-oriented way. The concept is based on the idea that urban resources and services that represent fundamental rights in the city should be accessible to and governed by the urban dwellers, to support the social capital and the sustainability of the urban communities. Hence, their value lies mostly in the social benefit produced during their use and they are therefore different from commodities that follow traditional market principles of profit maximisation and private ownership (Dellenbaugh-Losse et al., 2015).
The concept of urban commons is an extrapolation in the urban context of the notion of commons which historically refers to natural resources available to all and not owned by any individual, such as air, water and land. The commons discourse became significantly popular thanks to the fundamental contribution of Elinor Ostrom (1990) and particularly after she was awarded the Nobel in Economics in 2009. Ostrom presented cases and design principals for the collective management of common resources by those that use and benefit from them, challenging the predominant negative connotations that had peaked with Garret Hardin’s (1968) Tragedy of the Commons where he analysed the impossible sustainability of common pool resources due to individual benefits.
During the last fifteen years, a vast body of academic literature on urban commons has been produced, linking the notion to other urban theories, such as the right to the city (Harvey, 2008; Lefebvre, 1996), biopolitics (Angelis & Stavrides, 2009; Hardt & Negri, 2009; Linebaugh, 2008; Parr, 2015; Stavrides, 2015, 2016), peer-to-peer urbanism and sharing economy (Dellenbaugh-Losse et al., 2015; Iaione, 2015; Iaione et al., 2019; McLaren & Agyeman, 2015; Shareable, 2018).
The notion of the urban commons encompasses resources, people and social practices (Dellenbaugh-Losse et al., 2015):
Commons resources are urban assets of various types, characteristics and scales (Dellenbaugh-Losse et al., 2015). Examples of commons resources include physical spaces, such as community gardens, street furniture and playgrounds; intangible elements such as culture and public art; services such as safety; digital spaces, such as internet access. Urban commons literature and practices have attempted to determine several typological categorisations of the urban commons resources, the most notable being that of Hess (2008), who classified them as cultural, knowledge, markets, global, traditional, infrastructure, neighbourhood, medical and health commons.
The commoners are the group that uses and manages the urban commons resources. It is a self-defined and organically formed group of individuals whose role is to collectively negotiate the boundaries and the rules of the management of the commons resources (Dellenbaugh-Losse et al., 2015). In a neighbourhood setting, for example, the commoners may be individual residents, or community groups, cooperatives, NGOs and local authorities. De Angelis and Stavrides (2010) points out that commoners might include diverse groups or communities that are not necessarily homogenous.
Commoning refers to the collaborative participatory process of accessing, negotiating and governing the commons resources. The term was introduced by Peter Linebaugh (2008) and refers to the “social process that creates and reproduces the commons” (Angelis & Stavrides, 2010). Commoning is a form of public involvement for the public good (Lohmann, 2016). Commoning implies a commitment to solidarity and cooperation, to the creation of added value to the community, to democracy and inclusiveness and is connected to a hacking culture(Dellenbaugh-Losse et al., 2015). Hence, commoning practices can include various activities such as co-creation, capacity building and placemaking, support through learning, innovation, performing art, protest, urban gardening and commuting.
In contemporary societies in crisis, the urban commons theory is often used as a counter-movement to the commodification of urban life and as a response to complex issues, proving essential for the well-being of marginalised communities and for the provision of affordable and sustainable housing. Urban commons management conveys the re-appropriation of urban values (Borch & Kornberger, 2015) breaking silos of expertise and knowledge by adopting a collaborative approach to defining and solving the problems at stake. The practice of urban commons helps to build values of openness, experimentation, creativity, trust, solidarity and commitment within stakeholder groups.
References
Angelis, M. De, & Stavrides, S. (2009). Beyond Markets or States: Commoning as Collective Practice (a public interview). An Architektur, 23. https://www.e-flux.com/journal/17/67351/on-the-commons-a-public-interview-with-massimo-de-angelis-and-stavros-stavrides/
Borch, C., & Kornberger, M. (2015). Urban commons: Rethinking the city. Routledge.
Dellenbaugh-Losse, M., Zimmermann, N.-E., & De Vries, N. (2015). The Urban Commons Cookbook: Strategies and Insights for Creating and Maintaining Urban Commons.
Hardin, G. (1968). The Tragedy of the Commons. Source: Science, New Series, 162(3859), 1243–1248.
Hardt, M., & Negri, A. (2009). Commonwealth. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Harvey, D. (2008). The right to the city. New Left Review, 53(23), 40.
Hess, C. (2008). Mapping the New Commons. SSRN Electronic Journal, July.
Iaione, C. (2015). GOVERNING THE URBAN COMMONS.
Iaione, C., De Nictolis, E., & Suman, A. B. (2019). The Internet of Humans (IoH): Human Rights and Co-Governance to Achieve Tech Justice in the City. Law and Ethics of Human Rights, 13(2), 263–299.
Lefebvre, H. (1996). The Right to the City. In E. Lebas, Elizabeth, Kofman (Ed.), Writings on Cities (Vol. 53, Issue 2, p. 260). Mass, USA Blackwell Publishers.
Linebaugh, P. (2008). The Magna Carta Manifesto, Liberties and Commons for All. University of California Press.
Lohmann, R. A. (2016). The Ostroms’ Commons Revisited. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 45(4_suppl), 27-42S.
McLaren, D., & Agyeman, J. (2015). Sharing Cities: A Case for Truly Smart and Sustainable Cities. The MIT Press.
Ostrom, E. (1990). Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action. Cambridge University Press.
Parr, A. (2015). Urban Debt, Neoliberalism and the Politics of the Commons. Theory, Culture & Society, 32(3), 69–91.
Shareable. (2018). Sharing Cities: Activating the Urban Commons (Shareable (ed.)). Creative Commons.
Stavrides, S. (2015). Common Space as Threshold Space: Urban Commoning in Struggles to Re-appropriate Public Space. FOOTPRINT, 16(Spring 2015), 09–20.
Stavrides, S. (2016). Common Space: The City as Commons. Zed Books London.
Created on 14-10-2022 | Update on 18-10-2022
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