Commoning (in) the neighbourhood, righting the city

Abstract

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.