the commons

The Commons are a set of resources and places that are accessible to all members of society (parks, libraries, air). When we say 'the commons' we are referring to things and places that are held collectively, not owned privately.
 

Stefan Gruber, a Carnegie Mellon professor of architecture and urbanism, sees cities as a prime site of struggle between capitalism and commons, and at the same time more accessible than most national or international policy venues.

Safouan Azouzi, a Tunisian scholar of the commons and participatory social design, discusses how cultural traditions in desert oases hold important socio-ecological lessons for the world.

In the second comic from Future Natures, created by Tim Zocco with Amber Huff, we explore maps, models and abstraction that can warp how we perceive and understand space, human nature, power and crisis and shape contestations over knowledge and struggles against enclosure.

The People Power Battery Collective in the Bay Area launched a program to provide backup power during emergencies and increase the general understanding of energy access, consumption, and needs.

Public evening in English as part of the international conference "Beyond Liberalism: Commons, Constitutionalism, and the Common Good."

How might the commons paradigm be applied to cities in a more focused, effective way?  To find some answers, I recently interviewed two leading thinkers and advocates for urban commons, Sheila R. Foster and Christian Iaione.

A crash course in the work of political economist Elinor Ostrom, who championed the commons and communal governance as practical frameworks.

Much of the discussion on open source's relevance to cooperatives has focused on open, permissive licenses that represent a 'digital commons' (possibly at risk of appropriation). But debate over licensing misses an essential and unique quality of open source: its democratic toolset which is much more sophisticated than resolutions and Annual General Meetings.

It is now abundantly clear that the world we have inherited is no longer working, And yet there are many hopeful signs of people imagining and building a different type of future.