Session 3B - Building the right to the city through diverse spaces of commoning: which role for ruling frameworks?

This paper is based on the concept of "urban agriculture as activism" (Nagib, 2020) and will present crossing results of immersive research fields carried out between 2016 and 2022 in a large set of community gardens in three different contexts: Paris, France (n=131); São Paulo, Brazil (n=14); and Lausanne, Switzerland (n=15). Among the main methodological procedures, participant and non-participant observation, semi-structured interviews and extensive photographic production stand out.

That concept understands “activism” in a broad sense (Jasper, 2014, Souza & Rodrigues, 2004), allowing to include both the "guerrilla gardening" method (Reynolds, 2009) and a wider spectrum of citizen engagement in community gardening, which points to a series of demands and purposes, such as: (re)appropriation of public spaces; strengthening relations with local authorities; strengthening social and affective bonds between neighbours; promoting urban biodiversity through the introduction of edible plants in green public areas and creating environments for the pollinating insects; promoting the practices of agroecology and permaculture in urban areas; establishing a new contribution to the city-nature relationship.

The most significant difference between those three contexts, however, is the gardens' degree of institutionalization. In Paris and Lausanne, there are specific programs for them. While in Paris, the gardeners form associations and present the demand to the municipality to (re)occupy the public space, in Lausanne, in turn, the municipality takes the lead in the process of creating and organizing community gardens, in which each gardener receives a small plot upon registration and payment of an annual fee. In São Paulo, by contrast, there are no public policies for community gardens and the gardeners' collectives do not create formal associations as well, which is a local characteristic of this type of activism.

Despite the different degrees of institutionalization and socioeconomic particularities in each of those three contexts, the main results indicate that the gardeners' discourses and practices are similar and they aim to materialize the series of demands presented above, in the second paragraph. This “urban agriculture as activism” thus mobilizes groups of citizens who are reconfiguring the urban territorial arrangement – including in its political dimension –, in addition to inserting the community gardens in the debate on the right to the city (Cabannes, 2017, Nagib, 2021).

References

Cabannes, Y. (2017). Participatory Budgeting in Paris: Act, Reflect, Grow. In Cabannes, Y. (Ed.). Another city is possible with Participatory Budgeting. Montreal/New York/London, Black Rose Books, 179-203. https://budgetparticipatif.paris.fr/bp/plugins/download/YvesCabannes_PB_in_Paris.pdf.

Jasper, J. M. (2014). Protest: A cultural introduction to social movements. New York, Polity.

Nagib, G. (2020). L'espace politique de l’agriculture urbaine militante à São Paulo et à Paris. L'Espace Politique, 40, 1-25. http://journals.openedition.org/espacepolitique/7878.

______ (2021). L'agriculture urbaine militante et le droit à la ville à São Paulo. In Fuster-Farfán, X., Valdez, D., S., Wetter, Y. W. (Dir.). Habiter les villes latino-américaines. Débats, réflexions et enjeux de la recherche urbaine. Paris, L'Harmattan, 109-127.

Reynolds, R. (2009). On guerrilla gardening: A handbook for gardening without boundaries. London, Bloomsbury.

Souza, M. L., Rodrigues, G. B. (2004). Planejamento urbano e ativismos sociais. São Paulo, UNESP.

The advent of the urban commons as a response to the commodification of urban life (Foster & Iaione, 2016) and its excluding impact on the urban populations has consolidated a network of social actions, namely acts of commoning (Linebaugh, 2008) that produce and transform the city (Stavrides, 2015). While most of the commons-oriented initiatives largely depend upon horizontal relationships and values shared among active citizens, municipalities and public authorities also play a catalytic role in the level of citizen engagement with the commons through offering the appropriate institutional frameworks. 

One such instrument of public policy is the BIP/ZIP Program in Lisbon. Initiated in 2011 by the Department of Housing and Local Development of the Municipality of Lisbon, the program aims to promote quality of life and territorial cohesion in priority neighbourhoods by funding projects and interventions guided by partnerships among different stakeholders. Being the first participatory budget implemented at municipal level in a European capital (Falanga, 2019), BIP/ZIP has funded as of its 2021 edition 426 projects in 67 priority areas, addressing multiple urban issues and including diverse actors and activities.

In the example of BIP/ZIP, the study seeks to unravel the network of institutionally supported commoning activities that are performed in the neighbourhood scale and can in extrapolation portray the Right-to-the-City in the urban scale. 

Towards this goal, the research initially conceives a framework to classify commoning practices based on their socio-spatial focus. The underlying themes that have emerged, organise commoning activities that 1. prioritise the most disadvantaged, 2. promote social development, 3. have a strong spatial character, 4. practice togetherness and solidarity, 5. enhance the value of the neighbourhood and 6. expand the boundaries.

In parallel, the case study of BIP/ZIP is examined through the successful applications that correspond to the funded projects. These are seen as the dialogue between the grassroot commoning and institutional decision-making and hence define the negotiated Right-to-the-City in the local context. A data-driven approach is employed to firstly map the projects and compose an index that includes information on their attributes such as themes, objectives and activities and secondly organise them using qualitative coding (Saldana, 2021) into the six commoning categories. 

The produced taxonomy contributes to the conceptualisation of the BIP/ZIP projects as urban commons, identifying patterns and drawing meaningful conclusions on the definition of the Right-to-the-city for the city of Lisbon.

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References

Falanga, R. (2019). Measuring citizen participation in urban regeneration: a reflection on the construction of the participation index for the Bip/Zip programme in Lisbon. Urban Development Issues, 62(1), 47–60. https://doi.org/10.2478/udi-2019-0009

Foster, S. R., & Iaione, C. (2016). The City as a Commons. YALE LAW & POLICY REVIEW, 34(281), 281–349.

Linebaugh, P. (2008). The Magna Carta Manifesto, Liberties and Commons for All. University of California Press.

Saldana, J. (2021). The Coding Manual for Qualitative Researchers (4th ed.). SAGE Publications.

Stavrides, S. (2015). Common Space as Threshold Space: Urban Commoning in Struggles to Re-appropriate Public Space. FOOTPRINT, 16(Spring 2015), 09–20. 

The discussion and practice of ‘urban commons,’ acquires a particular importance in light of political, social and environmental challenges from the 21st century. Much of the literature on ‘urban commons’ arises from communal experiences from the global south, notably from practices of Latin American social movements from Brazil (Stavrides, 2016, De Angelis, 2017; Frederici, 2018). There, ‘urban commons’ do not seem to be an alternative model for the co-creation of cities, as some examples from the global north (Tonkiss,2012, Stavrides, 2021), but rather ‘a matter of a people’s survival and reclaiming equal access to urban space’ (Stavrides, 2021). However, the conceptualization of ‘urban commons,’ the awareness of ‘urban commonality’ practices, and institutions and regulations supporting ‘urban commons’ are not consolidated in such cities: marked by a weak basic urban infrastructure, difficult access to fundamental urban rights, and by a citizens’ skepticism in state, institutions and market actions. Such opposes with seminal governance experiences, as the ‘regulations and institutions for the governance of the commons’ (Labsus,2005-2022), such as the 'Patti di Collaborazioni', the 'Regolamento per l' Amministrazione Condivisa dei Beni Comuni,' the 'Bologna Regulation' (Arena, 2020) and the ‘Co-Cities’ (Foster & Iaione, 2020), in Italy. This paper focuses on the role of citizens, architects and urbanists and State in the creation of a city for the common good in Latin America, based on the case of  ‘Vila Itororó,’ a public space in São Paulo which serves citizens with co-creation labs, spaces for communal activities and community actions as well as the the case of the 'Ocupação 9 de Julho', a squatting settlement that is collectively managed by the social movement 'Movimento dos Sem Teto do Centro de São Paulo' (MSTC). The methodology  analyses documents from ‘Instituto Pedra,’ responsible for the process of revitalization of Vila Itororó, as well as documents from the 'Movimento dos Sem Teto do Centro,' to find links between the instruments used by that institute and by that social movement, and the concept of the common good. The aim is to show possibilities of governing the commons in urban contexts characterized by a scarcity of resources, regulatory frameworks and infrastructures, discussing urban commons in the Global South and contextualizing them with Global North practices.

References: 

Arena, Gregorio (2021). I custodi della bellezza: Prendersi cura dei beni comuni. Un patto per l'Italia fra cittadini e istituizioni. Milano: Touring Club Italiano.

De Angelis, Massimo (2017). Omnia Sunt Communia: On the Commons and the transformation to post capitalism. London: Zed Books. 

Frederici, Silvia (2018). Re-Enchanting the World: Feminism and the Politics of the Commons. Oakland: PM Press. 

Foster, Sheila & Iaione, Christian (2020). 'The City as a Commons.' Yale Law & Policy Review 34(2):281.

LABSUS (2022). Laboratorio per la Sussidiaretà. Available online at: https://www.labsus.org/ 

Stavrides, Stavros (2016).Common Space: The City as Commons. London: Zed Books.

Stravrides, Stavros (2021). 'Urban Commons: A Politics of Urban Potenciality.' FAUENCONTROS, Faculdade de Arquitetura e Urbanismo de São Paulo.Available online at:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=rUwjCPTLh2k

Tonkiss, Fran (2012). 'Informality and Its Discontents.' Informalize! Zurich, Ruby Press.

 The power of dust: The role of iconic contemporary ruins for the future of urban life form – Case study of Bangkok.

Introduction

The last three decades have oriented cities towards privatizing urban development for the sake of progress and led to prolific and uncontrolled construction of malls, luxury hotels, and condominiums across the world. In Bangkok, citizens lose their access to the land, occupied by amenities they cannot afford to use anymore (Moore, 2019). Such renewal deeply affects people also because it dispossesses them of a sense of place and of identity, keys to ‘the right to the city’ (Lefebvre, 1968). The direct consequences of such development strategy contributed to repetitive financial crisis and the creation of a new paradox in developing cities: contemporary ruins. Contemporary ruins are these recent privately led projects that were meant to become the icons of urban progress but ended up losing their primary function. Assumed to be “urban failures” and abandoned (Cairns et. al, 2014), they have the potential to address social justice again, also because they can be claimed by people for public alternative purposes. Previous infamous examples of these structures in Caracas (Torre de David), in Bera (Grand Hotel) or in Johannesburg (Ponte City) have highlighted their role in times of housing crisis. Bangkok’s ruins are being claimed by locals, tourists, artists and organizations as needed social cultural spaces and new icons.

Methodology/Data collection

The study ought to understand how some contemporary ruins can address people’s right for democratic use of urban features (Harvey, 2008). In Bangkok, abandoned places are selected from field trips based on their strategic location in the city center. The diversity of their reuses is identified through onsite observations, attendance to onsite initiatives as well as media-based review study. Perception of their utility and their relevance for the future of Bangkokian is examined both from the point of view of locals living in the neighboring areas through semi- structured interviews and from interviews of key actors (tourists, artists, organizers, owners) directly involved with the buildings.

Discussion/Results/Conclusion

From social housing, public cultural spaces, the construction of a popular identity (Pohl, 2021) to political stand (Moreno, 2017), contemporary ruins have both material and immaterial roles to play in the making of modern cities. Though it was found that locals do not always perceive them as utilitarian features of urbanism, partly because of their relation to the private sectors, their restricted access and ruinated state, there is a crying need for space and a compelling effort of adaptability by other people to claim ownership over these places (Boonchaiyapruek, 2013). Cases such as New World Mall and Sathon Unique in Bangkok brought necessary perspective over the role of abandoned icons to fight for the right of the people to be part of modern development.

Boonchaiyapruek, P. (2013). Spatial culture and spatial capital in Bangkok: a study of adaptability and diversity in the urban transformation process. [Doctoral dissertation, University College London]. Urban Form and Society, UCL. https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1566916/7/Boonchaiyapruek_1566916_e- thesis.pdf.signature%20removed.pdf

Cairns, S. & Jacobs, J. (2014). Buildings Must Die: A Perverse View of Architecture. MIT Press.

Lefebvre, H. (1968). Le droit a la ville. Paris: Anthropos.

Moore, R. (2019). Condominium development and gentrification in Bangkok, Thailand: a study of housing pathways. [Doctoral dissertation, Sheffield Hallam University]. SHU. https://doi.org/10.7190/shu-thesis-00148

Moreno Tejada, J. (2017). The savage life of ruins: Resistant rhythms in a Bangkokian contact zone. Cogent Arts & Humanities, 4(1). http://doi.org/10.1080/23311983.2016.1243998

Pohl, L. (2021). Aura of decay: Fetishizing ruins with Benjamin and Lacan. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 47, 153-166. https://doi.org/10.1111/tran.12481