COMMONING IN THE PRACTICE OF URBAN GOVERNANCE. An experience from OBRAS project (original) (raw)

Practice and processes in the production of urban space: decentering perspectives

Estudos de Sociologia, 2022

This essay, which opens the dossier "Practices and Processes of Urban Space Production: Decentering Perspectives," takes this tension as a premise. The classical perspective that understood and analyzed the city as the ground for civil progress, the development of human potentialities—or as a stage for the reverberation of "modern" mistrusts and fears—overlooked a series of urban life experiences that have accumulated and evolved on the outskirts of global capitalism. On the one hand, these experiences are marked by the colonial past—hence by the effects of transatlantic slave trade, massive displacement of people, slavery, genocide, and racism—that historically interweaves "North-South" and "South-South". On the other, by the persistent legacies of this past, which obstruct the resolution of contemporary issues, such as segregation, inequalities, lack of infrastructure, problems in urban-environmental regulation and management, among others.

Urban Spaces' Commoning and its Impact on Planning. A Case Study of the Former Slaughterhouse Exchange Building in Milan.

Thanks to several foundational contributions (De Angelis 2010; Hardt and Negri 2009; Harvey 2012; Os-trom 1990), the topic of urban commons has recently gained much interest, even if there is room to further investigate the relationship between urban commons and planning (Dellenbaugh et al., 2015; Muller 2015). On 5 May 2012, the artists' collective M^C^O (henceforth Macao) drew public attention by squatting in the iconic Galfa Tower in Milan, a private property abandoned since 1996. Symbolically, it served to shine a light on the need for a radical change in urban policies regarding the reuse of abandoned sites in town (Valli 2015). In opposition to the current planning tools and resolutions adopted by the City Council of Milan, Macao's activists developed and proposed the Constituent City manifesto (Macao 2015). Starting from these premises, the paper interrogates the issue of how urban commoning can challenge conventional planning procedures and seeks to identify the mutual influences between these practices, local governance and planning tools. It draws on Macao's commoning actions and particularly on the case study of the former Slaughterhouse Exchange Building (henceforth SEB) in Milan, interpreted as a potential urban common. We conclude by offering a reflection on the roles that urban commoning practices and urban commons may have in defining innovative governance and planning processes.

Public policies and the city: producing inclusive urban spaces

RAP, 2018

Research on cities have received increased attention over the years. Urban spaces are, on the one hand, a significant target of speculative financial investments and commodification of life, generating dynamics that are very difficult to contain within the competencies of local governments. At the same time, cities are the central space of everyday life, where there is resistance at many levels seeking to defend the conditions of living and subsistence of the majority of citizens. This special issue presents exciting contributions to the debate on public policies and the city. The articles published approach cities as urban spaces of diversity and encounters; the arena of discursive and material struggles; contradictory embeddedness of commodification and resistance; the focus of institutional disputes between exclusion and participation; and finally, changing spaces that respond to the need for new management technologies at a local level. Drawing on various theoretical frameworks and rich empirical discussions, this special issue reclaims cities as central spaces of everyday life, which are particularly important for protection and emancipation in a global scenario of uncertainty. Políticas públicas e a cidade: produzindo espaços urbanos inclusivos Pesquisas sobre cidades têm recebido maior atenção ao longo dos anos. Os espaços urbanos são, por um lado, um grande alvo de investimentos financeiros especulativos e mercantilização da vida, gerando dinâmicas que são muito difíceis de conter dentro das competências dos governos locais. Mas, ao mesmo tempo, as cidades também são o espaço central da vida cotidiana, onde a resistência é travada em muitos níveis para defender as condições de vida e subsistência da maioria dos cidadãos. Esse número especial reúne importantes contribuições para o debate sobre políticas públicas e a cidade que trabalham cidades como espaços urbanos de diferença e encontro; arena das lutas discursivas e materiais; imersão contraditória de mercantilização e resistência; foco das disputas institucionais entre exclusão e participação; e espaço em constante transformação que responde à necessidade de novas tecnologias de gestão em nível local. Com base em arcabouços teóricos variados e discussões empíricas ricas, este número resgata então a noção de cidades como espaços centrais da vida cotidiana, que são particularmente importantes para proteção e emancipação em um cenário global de incerteza. Palavras-chave: cidades; políticas públicas; espaço urbano; direito à cidade; democracia. Las políticas públicas y la ciudad: produciendo espacios urbanos inclusivos La investigación sobre las ciudades ha recibido una mayor atención a lo largo de los años. Los espacios urbanos son, por un lado, un objetivo principal de las inversiones financieras especulativas y de la mercantilización de la vida, generando dinámicas que son muy difíciles de contener dentro de las competencias de los gobiernos locales. Pero, al mismo tiempo, las ciudades son también el espacio central de la vida cotidiana, donde la resistencia se desarrolla en muchos niveles para defender las condiciones de vida y subsistencia de la mayoría de los ciudadanos. Este número especial reúne importantes contribuciones al debate sobre las políticas públicas y la ciudad que hacen avanzar a las ciudades como espacios urbanos de diferencias y encuentros, como el campo de las luchas discursivas y materiales, una inserción contradictoria de la mercantilización y la resistencia, el foco de disputas institucionales entre exclusión y participación, y finalmente un espacio cambiante que responde a la necesidad de nuevas tecnologías de gestión a nivel local. Basándose en diversos marcos teóricos y abundantes discusiones empíricas, reivindica las ciudades como espacios centrales de la vida cotidiana, que son particularmente importantes para la protección y la emancipación en un escenario global de incertidumbre. Palabras clave: ciudades; políticas públicas; espacio urbano; derecho a la ciudad; democracia.

Urbanology and Commoning as Methods for Creating an Open City

The paper focuses on urbanology, described by architect Bogdan Bogdanović as a method for re-valorizing and creating symbolic capital of cities, especially public and common spaces. This theoretical approach can be applied to every city, but it is of particular importance to those that are changing due to major projects/events such as the Olympic Games and the European Capital of Culture. Urbanology favors democracy, allowing local communities to participate and decide upon development of cities, and can be related to participatory budgeting. The paper notes that this approach can have a more beneficial impact on cities than the concept of creative cities, comparing both concepts to the theory of " open work " by Umberto Eco, where a city is taken as an example of an open work. It concludes that Novi Sad should carry out the candidacy for the European Capital of Culture 2021 by focusing on urbanology, commoning practices and art in public spaces.

The right to the city. The city as common good. Between social politics and urban planning

This Cahier de la Faculté d’Architecture LaCambre-Horta aims to contribute to the scientific debate on the right to the city, exploring the variety of objects, processes, structures, and relations – both at the conceptual, abstract and theoretical level as well as at the practical, experiential, and material one – that this idea has inspired. The publication offers multiple analysis of the relations between this concept and its application in the urban planning domain, providing a number of examples on how the concept of the right to the city can give practical guidance on urban development. The focus is thus on policies, programmes and projects that aim to intervene in the diverse processes of urbanization and different forms of urban structures and urbanity present in the northern and southern countries, addressing issues of equity, rights, democracy, differences (socio-economic, cultural, etc.) and ecology. The publication aims to explore the socio-spatial relations embedded in alternative approaches – at policy, planning and design level – and emergent practices of urban regeneration, upgrading, development, and management activated by grassroots movements, government agencies or different actors/institutions. This is the reason why we decided to explore the idea of the right to the city within the dialectical confrontation of “social politics” and “urban planning”. The rationale of this Cahier rests on two main principles. First of all, cities are built on the basis of both semiotic and the material contributions, which means that both imaginaries and practices are fundamental in shaping the urban space, its physical form and technology, its socio-economic structure, the social and spatial relations, the subjectivities, the relations with nature, and the daily life reproduction. Second, as the neo-liberal hegemonic culture has emphasized the urban horizon and the city-level in all its physical, social and cultural aspects, the city is the place where oppositional discourses and practices take place. Alternative imaginaries can challenge prevailing worldviews, show the contradictions of the neo-liberal hegemonic project and propose various forms of alternative sets of norms, beliefs, ideals; while alternative practices emerge at various scales of contestation, springing from deprived and often marginalised local groups and places, but also as national projects: there is a need to analyse the variety of imaginaries and practices that in spite of, and because of, the hegemony of the neoliberal culture, are resilient or are emerging (see Boniburini infra).

Commoning the City, from Data to Physical Space: Evidence from Two Case Studies

Journal of Peer Production, 2018

This article describes the phenomenon of commoning the city. It is understood as the co-production of new resources and/or the process of reclaiming existing assets (public or private) as a commons. We report on two original case studies (in New York City and Berlin) where the constitution of a data commons has been the starting point of a wider process of commoning the urban physical space: vacant public land on the one hand, and public fruit trees and other urban edibles on the other hand. Commoning the city in the digital age is therefore described as a hybrid process spanning over from the digital to the physical urban space, online and onland. In contrast to the smart cities approach, it lays a more citizen-oriented narrative of the impact of digitalization on urban life. This article addresses the research questions: How does the hybrid commoning process of (1) data and the related (2) public space take place? What is the role of the grassroots providers of the collaborative mapping infrastructure? Methodologically, the case study analyses are structured following existing adaptations of the Institutional Analysis and Development to the specificities of knowledge/information commons by Frischmann, Madison et al. (2014). Results show that, beyond appearances, the commoning of data is mostly a means, attracting visibility and attention, for an end: the wider commoning of urban land. The true focus of the action arena resides around the self-governance of land and trees and the constitution of local communities. A trend in the evolution of the role of local authorities towards a more collaborative state is confirmed and seems partly explained by increasing financial austerity forcing local governments to rely more on local civic actors. Another reason is that data makes city government more porous to bottom-up action. However this requires good practice in opening urban data sets, the existence of local civic capacity, and active community organizing (much) beyond the digital world. We conclude by suggesting an analytical departure from the IAD framework and its naturalist conception that approaches the commons as a resource and, as a consequence, forces an artificial divide between the intangible and tangible dimensions of the commoning process. Subsequently, we recommend approaching the phenomenon we identified as ‘commoning the city’ as a living practice of collaboratively producing a shared experience of the place, where the intangible (data) and tangible (land), the human and non-human, are seen as a whole.

Contemporary City as a Subject of Research: A Multi-faceted Analysis

2018

The article presents a research proposal based on the analysis of three aspects of urban policy and the interaction of authorities with citizens. It points to public innovations as tools contributing to expanding the field of activity of city dwellers; the concept of e-politics and its importance for the development of bilateral communication between residents of the city and the institution of power; the issue of conflict as an indicator of civic interactions, establishing relationships and undertaking various forms of activity. This research addresses issues related to participatory management instruments, city development prospects and forms of co-deciding about it.