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When on September 15, 2008 the financial conglomerate Lehman Brothers files for bankruptcy – and with that 'officially' sparks the international financial crisis – still few would anticipate the invasive effect this crisis would come to have on the professional and personal life of many across the world. Today, it's implosion remains a mere 'blip' in the universe of events that followed. On closer observation, this financial turmoil started out as a 'mortgage crisis', largely fuelled by unsustainable or speculative investments in real-estate in cities across the world. In the run-up to the boom-and-bust of 2008, some – among them architects, urban designers, spatial practitioners, artists, activists, but also economists and others – started preparing for what they understood as (the necessity) of a different world to come, beyond the broken neo-liberal dogma. Today, fragments of such a different reality are unfolding in front of us. Modest, but for real. STEALTH.unlimited (practice of Ana Džokić and Marc Neelen) is one of the protagonists in this field, pointing to the responsibilities and capacities of architecture in contemporary societies, and acts between the fields of architecture, art and activism. With "Upscaling, Training, Commoning", in 2011 they set on an expedition of sorts, to transform their practice. Following a decade of research addressing urgent cultural and urban issues ahead (resulting in publications, exhibitions, spatial interventions), now they use questions, doubts or limitations of such a practice as a lead towards direct long-term engagements with specific spatial process and/or communities. The resulting practice based exploration has been far away from a distant or objective research condition. It is subject to volatile political and economic situations, to conflicting interests or the engagements with(in) local communities encountered in the work. In this, three lines of exploration have been followed; that of the practice assuming new responsibilities, of the economies of engagement and disengagement, and that of the urban commons. The title "Upscaling, Training, Commoning" relates to the awareness that the relevant activities and approaches need to be nurtured, and that the imperfect contexts in which this take place can be seen as 'training grounds' to arrive to practices of commoning. Hence, upscaling, training, commoning describes a trajectory (to be) taken. The artistic research (PhD) "Upscaling, Training, Commoning" concludes with a set of six books, and includes comments on the trajectory taken since 2008 by: the writer Dougald Hine, the economist Martijn Jeroen van der Linden, architects Ana Méndez de Andés and Iva Marčetić. The concluding book, set to words by the writer Paul Currion, features a fictional narrative, looking what the future could possibly hold, in which collective action might enable citizens to navigate through difficult times to create a new political economy.

This article outlines how a radical practice of commoning-based collective design is developing new concepts of social practices, through a direct democratic common assembly method. A commoning-based approach implies that collective design is being developed with the underlining principles of broader commoning practices and living. This includes an anti-capitalist standpoint and a focus on fairness, equality, inclusion, sharing, self-limitation and self-organisation (Bollier and Helfrich, 2019). The underlining organizational principles are drawn from political theorist Cornelius Castoriadis's argument for an ethical and political project of social organisation, which is based upon self-governance through an ongoing process of common assemblies, and Murray Bookchin's conception of communalism, where "every productive enterprise falls under the purview of the local assembly … to meet the interests of the community as a whole" (Bookchin, 2015, pp. 17–18). Two art exhibitions, thematically centered on precarious living conditions, as well as two ongoing social projects, serve as case studies that provide a reflective critique in which I argue how this methodological approach opens a new field of discourse relating to social participation in communal projects. Within this argument, a new critical interplay between art and architectural practices emerges in terms of fulfilling a role within long-term social change.

Commoning represents a dynamic and emergent means of risk-reduction and livelihood provision which can address the shortcomings of both market and state-oriented economic systems -- increasingly relevant as climate change threatens human subsistence worldwide. This paper brings together international examples of responses to climate-related threats that are collective (not privatizing), to provide preliminary empirical evidence about how and in what circumstances people may develop equitable communal institutions rather than ones that worsen community fragmentation. The examples include traditional and new forms of commons which help to meet local subsistence needs and develop communities' social, political and economic resilience in the face of climate change, exploring how climate justice -- improving the local and global equity of climate change impacts and processes – can advance in parallel with commons development. ; This research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, FRN IDRC and SSHRC File Agreement No. 2017-0082

This article is a reply to 'The illusion of the digital commons', an idea introduced by Ossewaarde and Reijers. Their criticism challenges those of us arguing that digital commons are emancipatory, exhibiting post-capitalist dynamics. From the perspective of the digital commoner as well as that of the scholar who studies commoning practices, my thesis is that digital commoning is not grounded in a-political principles as the authors claim. But rather it introduces a political platform upon which various progressive movements are converging.

Conventional political thought and practice continue to be stifled by a dilemma of choosing between the ideal imaginaries of State and/or Market solutions. Widely presupposed as the only valid possibilities in both theory and practice, this stale dilemma covers up a real multitude of actually existing alternative approaches to governance practiced in civil society. State/Market approaches are identical in the way that they construct a 'spectator' role for communities, who are left to choose between their preferred set of rules and norms developed elsewhere. The concept of commoning governance offers an opportunity to break free of this stalemate. It creates a new role for citizens and their communities as 'sparring partners'; who although they operate within the limits of current State/Market institutions, create new norms and rules against and beyond them. In the paper, we first expand on our understanding of commoning governance: re-designing governance arrangements to serve the common good. That is here understood in terms of (radical) democracy, solidarity and sustainable ecological relationships. Second, we illustrate how commoning efforts on the ground contribute to the reclaiming of the democratic imaginary as a political arena by zooming in to a case study of the three cities involved in civic-led network of German Food Policy Councils. Finally, we reflect on the empirical barriers that communities of commoning endure, and call on policymakers, planners and scholars to interrogate their own normative understandings of citizenship and democracy, and begin to recognize theoretical and latent possibilities by enabling commoning with new or re-designed institutions of governance.

This paper considers the art-based practice, the Urban Dream Brokerage (UDB) which actively sought to produce spatial commons in New Zealand between 2013-2018. this paper will present three findings for practice following a brief description of the practice. Working with Michael Serres' ideas of pollution, I recognise the UDB as an ultimately temporary resistance to the forces of business, in a post 2008-GFC period. The Urban Dream Brokerage ran as a municipally-funded service for five years in New Zealand levering creators into temporary empty spaces at little or no financial cost, for public-facing projects in five towns and cities in New Zealand. 120 projects were 'brokered', lasting between two weeks and five years; with some of the projects and project-makers feeding into new and longer-term commoning projects. A range of creators operated with UDB:- community makers and artists whose work bordered with other practices – sci-art makers, theatre and performance makers, and designers. Projects were often framed as both artistic and social projects; they included a Citizen Water Lab, a Mood Bank, and a Hawaii Culture Centre. This paper is an overview to explore the mechanisms of the brokerage as well as offer what I hope are useful reflections for other urban activists and academics. I present three findings of the practice drawn from two sources: a focus group of UDB project makers, and written reflection on practice as the co-founder of the UDB. These findings, ascertained through a grounded theory analysis, work across three fields of political action within commoning practice: an economic examination of scarcity and commons in the city; a transactional analysis of the brokerage's negotiation with private property owners; and an emergence of death as that which afforded these common spaces.

This article is a reply to Kostakis' paper 'In Defense of Digital Commoning'. It welcomes the criticisms raised by Kostakis against our initial account of the Illusion of the Digital Commons. We argue that we can largely defend our initial account by (1) justifying our choice for discussing 'hybrid' forms of digital commoning, (2) explaining the strategy of our approach, and (3) offering an additional critique of the digital platform as a basis for political action.

Conventional political thought and practice continue to be stifled by a dilemma of choosing between the ideal imaginaries of State and/or Market solutions. Widely presupposed as the only valid possibilities in both theory and practice, this stale dilemma covers up a real multitude of actually existing alternative approaches to governance practiced in civil society. State/Market approaches are identical in the way that they construct a 'spectator' role for communities, who are left to choose between their preferred set of rules and norms developed elsewhere. The concept of commoning governance offers an opportunity to break free of this stalemate. It creates a new role for citizens and their communities as 'sparring partners'; who although they operate within the limits of current State/Market institutions, create new norms and rules against and beyond them. In the paper, we first expand on our understanding of commoning governance: re-designing governance arrangements to serve the common good. That is here understood in terms of (radical) democracy, solidarity and sustainable ecological relationships. Second, we illustrate how commoning efforts on the ground contribute to the reclaiming of the democratic imaginary as a political arena by zooming in to a case study of the three cities involved in civic-led network of German Food Policy Councils. Finally, we reflect on the empirical barriers that communities of commoning endure, and call on policymakers, planners and scholars to interrogate their own normative understandings of citizenship and democracy, and begin to recognize theoretical and latent possibilities by enabling commoning with new or re-designed institutions of governance.

The Covid-19 crisis has highlighted the 'precarity' of human life in general, and particularly that of certain groups in society. It has debunked the myth of the autonomous, self-sufficient individual, and shows the extent to which we always already live 'in common', thereby also emphasizing the necessity of commons (of care, nurture, and economic resources). This research explores what role commons, as an antidote to precarity and a form of resistance against governmental precarization, can play in the current situation. We start by analyzing the relationship between precarity and commons in light of the Covid-19 crisis. On the basis of participant observation in Naples (Italy) we will describe the commoning activities during the pandemic, their governmental invisibilization, and the way in which they could be institutionally recognized as a vital action of care and solidarity, also beyond the emergency. Finally, in the last part, we draw on the work of Roberto Esposito, and his use of the terms community and immunity, arguing that precisely because of the impossibility of fully immunizing ourselves from the virus (and from each other) we have to consider ourselves as part of a community, bound not by shared properties but by a shared obligation.

The commons are alternative social and economic practices for fostering community development and regeneration. While finance is increasingly criticized as a trigger for individualism, community currencies are one of the financial initiatives that aim to reorganize finance in the collective interest. We analyze to what extent these alternative systems allow finance to constitute common goods or 'commons'. To this end, we investigate the commoning practices through which resources are created, distributed, and consumed in a way that promotes new collectives. We analyze the extent to which community currencies can be considered as commons. Our findings suggest that community currencies have strong collective attributes such as community building, as well as the insertion of solidarity and cooperative values in money. Finally, we inquire into the limits and ambiguities of community currencies to represent an alternative to the capitalist economy.

The practice of urban commoning continues to tickle the imagination of activists and academics alike. Urban commoning's aesthetic dimension, yet, has not been fully understood. This contribution seeks to fill such gap and approaches aesthetics in the literal sense: That which presents itself to sense perception. The article thus asks: To what extent may commoning practices that are dedicated to the disclosure of unheard voices (hence having an aesthetic dimension) shift urban power relations? This contribution takes its cue in Jacques Rancière's theory of aesthetics and has the commoning experiment of Pension Almonde as its central case. Pension Almonde constituted a commons‐based, temporary occupation of a vacant social housing complex in Rotterdam, aimed specifically to undo the subordinate position of urban nomads and orphaned cultural initiatives. The article finally develops the distinction between a particular‐aesthetic dimension (making unheard voices merely perceptible) and a universal‐aesthetic dimension (shifting power relations) of urban commoning. Given the case's lack of collective agency and external resonance, urban power relations remained in place.