Collective urbanism? Challenges and opportunities for commons

Collective urbanism? Challenges and opportunities for commons in cities in past, present and future.

The commons have a rural origin, dating back to the collective resource use by farmers from the medieval period onwards, but have found their way to urban environments in the meanwhile. Urban centers offer plenty of opportunities to set up institutionalized forms of collective action, given their density of population and diversity of needs. In many cases, both in rural and urban contexts, scarcity of resources is an important incentive to start thinking as a ‘commoner’.

But that also brings challenges: how to cooperate, and to do so inclusively? And how to establish a solid, resilient organization that can also survive the challenges both the free market (in the form of for example gentrification) and governments (which consider such institutions sometimes as an easy and cheap solution for unresolved social issues) pose?