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Home / Built Environment, Volume 46, Number 1

Reclaiming the City as Commons. Learning from Latin American Housing Movements

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Author: Stavrides, Stavros

Source: Built Environment, Volume 46, Number 1, Spring 2020, pp. 139-153(15)

Publisher: Alexandrine Press

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2148/benv.46.1.139

This paper explores a renewed problematization of contemporary metropolises' dynamics in the light of speci fic efforts to reclaim the city as commons. Building on Lefebvre's theorizations of the city's virtuality and comparing it to contemporary approaches to the urban condition that emphasize the potentialities of contemporary city-life, it suggests that urban commoning is unleashing the power of collective creativity and collaboration. Struggles to appropriate the city as a crucial milieu for sharing transforms parts of city and produces new patterns of urban living. Examples from Latin American urban movements focused on establishing emancipatory housing conditions are used to illustrate the transformative capabilities of urban commoning.

Keywords: COMMONING; LATIN AMERICA; URBAN MOVEMENTS; URBAN POTENTIALITY

Document Type: Research Article

Publication date: 01 March 2020

More about this publication?

  • Built Environment is published quarterly in March, June, September and December. With an emphasis on crossing disciplinary boundaries and providing global perspective, each issue focuses on a single subject of contemporary interest to practitioners, academics and students working in a wide range of disciplines. Issues are guest-edited by established international experts who not only commission contributions, but also oversee the peer-reviewing process in collaboration with the Editors.

    Subject areas include: architecture; conservation; economic development; environmental planning; health; housing; regeneration; social issues; spatial planning; sustainability; urban design; and transport. All issues include reviews of recent publications.

    The journal is abstracted in Geo Abstracts, Sage Urban Studies Abstracts, and Journal of Planning Literature, and is indexed in the Avery Index to Architectural Publications.

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