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Week3_Lecture_PresentationSlides_Winter2023.pdf

313U Urban Environmental

Issues

The Urban Commons & Access

Lecture The Urban Commons

& Access

Transition of The Commons

English Feudal System Marx Capitalist System Polanyi Market Society

The Commons

• Open field system

• Communal Use

• Centuries old farming traditions

Peasants

Subsistence Living & Harvesting from the Land

• Agriculture

• Raising Animals

• Hunting

• Foraging

Harvesting from the land which provided all or almost all the goods required live

The Monarch

• Owner of all the lands and everything in it

• Bestows land to his subjects

• Collected Taxes

• Provided food from stores during shortages

The Landed Gentry

• Enclosure Acts

• Fencing off areas

• Privatization of property

• Creation of Landlords

• Preventing Peasants from using the commons

Occupied land privatized land for ownership of property

Wait a Minute!!!

How does the landed gentry connect to gentrification?

• Gentrification was originally coined by Ruth Glass in 1964.

• Working-class industrial laborers were moving into modest dwellings near their places of employment and improving both the property and the surrounding areas.

• The individual actions carried out by this new population and class drove up property values leading to the displacement of lower-income, long- term residents of London.

From Farmers to Factory Worker

Changed Relationships to Land & Labor

Self Sufficient

• Agriculture

• Raising Animals

• Hunting

• Foraging

Wage Worker

• Freed from their lands

• Free to sell their labor

• No longer owned the means of their own production

• Dependent on factory wages to survive

The Struggle Over Land Use

Communal Access of Resources

Privatization of Resources

The Struggle Over Land Use

Communal Access of Resources

Privatization of Resources

This is also called a neoliberalization process

public goods privatized

What are Urban Commons?

The City as a Commons The city is a commons in the sense that it is a shared

resource that belongs to all of its inhabitants. As such,

the commons claim is importantly aligned with the idea

behind the “right to the city”—the right to be part of

the creation of the city, the right to be part of the

decision-making processes shaping the lives of city

inhabitants, and the power of inhabitants to shape

decisions about the collective resource in which we all

have a stake” (Foster 2018, 288).

The City as a Commons What are the possibilities of bringing more collaborative

governance tools to decisions about how city space and

common goods are used, who has access to them, and

how they are shared among a diverse urban population?”

(Foster 2018, 288).

“The commons has the potential to highlight the question

of how cities govern or manage resources to which city

inhabitants can lay claim to as common goods, without

privatizing them or exercising monopolistic public

regulatory control over them” (Foster 2018, 285).

Tragedy of the Commons

The Tragedy of the Urban Commons

“This tragedy of the city commons was the

story reflected in the decline of many open

spaces in U.S. cities in the 1970s and 80s in

which a potpourri of users and uses came into

conflict, leaving many streets, parks and other

open spaces unsafe, dirty, prone to criminal

activity, and virtually abandoned by most users”

(Foster 2018, 298).

Omstrom’s Common Pool Resource

“Ostrom’s groundbreaking work, on the other hand, demonstrated that there are options for commons management that are neither exclusively public nor exclusively private” (Foster 2018, 289).

“She defined a common pool resource as natural or manmade resource system “that is sufficiently large as to make it costly (but not impossible) to exclude potential beneficiaries from obtaining the joint benefits from its use” (Foster 2018, 289).

The “Comedy” of the Commons

Marked not by the impulse to rival each other to

consume the good but instead by the impulse to

get more of the public to participate (e.g. “the

more the merrier”), thus “reinforce[ing] the

solidarity and well-being of the whole

community and enhancing the value of the

resource and the activity taking place within it”

(Foster 2018, 293).

A Theory of Access

Access = The ability to benefit from a resource

“Access as the ability to benefit from things—including material objects, persons, institutions, and symbols.

By focusing on ability, rather than rights as in property theory, this formulation brings attention to a wider range of social relationships that can constrain or enable people to benefit from resources without focusing on property relations alone.” (Ribot & Peluso 2003, 1).

The Paradox of the Commons & Access

Depending on how urban spaces are governed and understood

as a shared resource, these spaces can both create access for

some while simultaneously creating barriers to access for others.

What are our commons today?

Are public infrastructures really for the public? Which publics with what abilities?

Do these public infrastructures provide access? Access for who?

Are today’s commons in danger of being privatized and/or gentrified?

If so, how?