geology discussion
AK5__
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?