Organizing the City – workshop on Urban Commons

The 15th and 16th of November 2012, around 15 scientists met at CBS for a workshop on Urban Commons: Organizing the City. By letting the discussion of cities revolve around the notion of the commons, the aim was to inspire a series of reflections on urban life which addresses issues of political and organizational importance by casting new light on how urban collectivity is composed, transformed and governed.

Different researchers presented their current research, one of them Fabrizio Panozzo from Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. He and his co-researcher Camilla Costa is doing a research on: planning, making, selling and consuming atmospheres in urban China.

Can we create atmospheres or is it just something that happens is one of their main questions. Panozzo and Costa draws on an assumption that there exist particular structures creating certain situations, arguing that atmosphere can be understood as metaphors, metaphors that can take you from one place to another.

Panozzo elaborated on the research about urban China explaining how creative cities also move to China creating the next great leap forward. Politically the concept of creativity is embodied in national and public plans aiming at a more creative China. One of the initiatives and the area of interest for Panozzo is the Chinese town Shenzhen where the south part of the city has been transformed from a sad industry area to a new creative area – the Loft – consisting of e.g. a Contemporary Art Terminal build in rusted iron, inspired by Europe. And as Panozzo underlines use of specific material can actually change the conception of the room.

Shenzhen came to grow extremely fast when it was chosen to be transformed “creative”.  However the study of Panozzo and Costa has found that even though the place is “cool” it produces a paradox as the empty spaces actually have become empty.  The new creative area is unused and after the effective work creating the place it seems like the situation is back to where it were in the first place and not a place that calls for interaction, change and flexibility.

The presentation by Fabrizio Panozzo resulted in great debates among the workshop team and questions as; what is the importance of the time dimension? How can we understand the business model? Has the university any role? And are we actually witness a ruling class asking for rule breaking?

Among the other researchers presenting at the workshop was Sophie Watson from the Open University with a talk on Urban Public space as a Space of Care: Reflection on Aristotle’s notion that “that which is common to the greatest number has the least care bestowed upon it” and Martina Löw from TU Darmstadt presenting her case on "Modes of urban collectivity".

Generally it seems evident that the notion of the commons is likely to generate interesting perspectives: How are the boundaries of the commons in an urban context defined? What processes regulate the use of the urban commons? What exclusionary processes are involved in such definitional and regulatory processes, and what organizational and political implications follow in the wake of such endeavours? What are the cognitive, symbolic, technological and material infrastructures that render the commons and citizens visible and hence constitute them as objects for governance, not just individually but also collectively? What conceptions of value(s) constitute the urban commons, and how do managerial technologies (such as branding) organize them?

The questions very many and generally the two-day workshop turned out very well. Nils Wåhlin, Associate Professor at Umeå University in Sweden expressed afterwards:“The workshop was really exciting with rich diversity among the presentations. However, in the end of the workshop topics came together showing interconnectedness. I really think that "unity by diversity" about urban commons was illuminated.”

And PhD fellow at CBS Rebecca Pinheiro-Croisel said:Wonderful workshop! Several conceptual fields have been opened. The richness and diversity of the work presented is a very interesting contribution to urban planning.

CBS Public-Private Platform were happy to support the Urban Governance cluster with the workshop and are looking forward to follow the interesting work presented by the different researchers and not least the future activities of the cluster.