Housing as Commons

Experiences of the struggle for housing ignited by the lack of social and affordable housing have led to the establishing of shared and self-managed housing areas. In such a context it becomes crucially important to re-think the need to define common urban worlds from below. Here Penny Travlou and Stavros Stavridis trace contemporary practices of urban commoning through which people re-define housing economies. Connecting to a rich literature on the importance of commons and of practices of commoning for the creation of emancipated societies the authors discuss whether housing struggles and co-habitation experiences may contribute in crucial ways to the development of a commoning culture. The authors explore a variety of urban contexts through global case studies from across the Global North and South in search of concrete examples that illustrate the potentialities of urban commoning.