Borchi, Alice

Having long symbolised the inefficiency of shared ownership, the commons are re-emerging as an effective principle of social and cultural struggle against neoliberalism (). Our focus in this article, shifts from examining the internal dynamics of commons- organizing to understanding the sociopolitical context in which they emerge and the policy infrastructure that enables (or not) their existence and sustainability. We adopt a multi-case study approach to analyse the origins of the spread of commons vocabulary and practice in community-run cultural spaces in Naples, Marseille and Athens and discuss their relationship with policy. The choice of the cities is not accidental. First and foremost, our knowledge is grounded in previous fieldwork conducted within our respective geographies, where our understanding of the local context and language proficiency enables us to engage effectively with practitioners and relevant policy documents for our research. Secondly, while the selected cases (L'Asilo, Friche Belle de Mai, Communitism) may not be directly comparable, they are exemplary within their respective contexts. We identify three different policy attitudes towards the commons: conflict and dialogue, multiple avenues for policy co-development, and indifference that reveal fundamental issues related to the relationship between the commons and state authorities, such as antagonism, cooptation and mutual avoidance. We suggest that a pathway based on mutual trust, independence and adopting cultural rights can enable new collaborations between policymakers and activists.

INDICATIVE BIBLIOGRAPHY
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In July 2024 the urban commons of Làbas released an instagram post which defined the space a "climate shelter"; climate shelters are spaces designed to protect people from extreme weather phenomena, namely urban heatwaves, during the warm season. The space, in fact, now offers publicly accessible shaded spaces and, above all, free showers to vulnerable people. A few months later, in early October 2024, an article by the Italian newspaper "La Repubblica" was dedicated to another major urban commons of Bologna, TPO, which had installed monitoring devices to measure particulate matter pollution in the air. Research on the commons has for a long time focused on natural commons; at the beginning of the XXI century, a new emphasis was placed on the urban dimension as a political arena for the right to the city. Today, the climate crisis is severely impacting human health and the well-being of urban and rural environments; the urban commons are, therefore, redesigning their function and scope to also feature green infrastructures and nature-based solutions for climate resilience. This bridges the unnatural gap created in commons theory between the natural and the urban: starting from case studies which display innovative actions to safeguard the health of vulnerable people, the paper will problematize commons conceptualization and the related taxonomies, highlighting the role of the commons in fostering climate resilience in urban environments. The Italian context provides an ideal backdrop to explore tensions in different approaches, both institutional and grassroots ones, as Italy is a country that is extremely vulnerable to the impact of climate change; furthermore, it presents a high level of urban sprawl, making it necessary to devise new solutions to the planning and management of spaces, at the interface between urban and rural dimensions, able to safeguard human health against the climate crisis.