urban commons

Syllable breakdown

Dictionary meaning

shared urban resources — parks, streets, public libraries, community gardens, waterfronts, markets, and cultural spaces — that are held and managed collectively by urban residents rather than owned privately or controlled exclusively by the state; the concept draws on Elinor Ostrom's Nobel Prize-winning work on common-pool resource management to argue that communities can effectively govern shared spaces without either privatisation or top-down state control; urban commons are increasingly discussed in the context of the enclosure of public space by private development, the commercialisation of parks and public gathering places, and digital commons such as open data and community wifi networks; cities like Bologna have developed formal commoning agreements that recognise civic organisations as co-managers of public assets