Khonsari, Torange

Scholarly material on the boundary of the commons-based on its access regimes and institutional design are still minimal. This has been a point of contention by geographers such as David Harvey (Harvey, 2011), critiquing Ostrom for stating that Commons have boundaries (Ostrom, 2015). Some of the problems with such critique lie in the imprecision in the conceptualisation of commons that vary in different disciplines, where communal conception (resources open to all) is used interchangeably with the distributive conception (interest-based communities). The communal conception positions the sociability within the commons as an abstract notion of ‘the crowd’ and their right to access public goods where their interest are framed as universal statistics. Cohen frames communal commons as having obligations within institutional systems such as policy and law (Vrousalis, 2015) which is close to public good logic. Distributive conception (Hussain, 2018) articulates the commons as an environment where its members are interest-based (have clear common ground) and are engaged in direct interpersonal relations. The latter offers an environment for discussion and deliberation in the articulation of needs, resources, and self-governing regimes. As such, distributive commons will have various insides and outsides. As a paradigm that sits outside the open to all conception and private enclosure, how do we design the boundaries of the such commons? This paper will start by theoretically defining the difference between the communal and distributive commons to set the context for the discussion on boundaries. It positions the boundary as an institutional threshold with various boundary conditions that requires consideration in organisational design and governance. Although a larger set of considerations will be presented the following four elements will be discussed in detail: 1) Social access regimes, 2) Resource sharing practices, 3) Knowledge, and 4) boundaries as barriers to co-option by state or market.

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This paper uses the project ‘Creative Archway Commons’ which is a community-led initiative in partnership with local government in London (London Borough of Islington). The project is embedded in a neighbourhood in North London and aimed at delivery of a community-led creative enterprise zone (CEZ) in its town centre. CEZs are designated by the Mayor of London and aspire to be grassroots led. However, they are seldom that due to its lack of financing and knowledge in practice models. The paper will demonstrate how it tackled these two obstacles through a partnership between London Borough of Islington, London Metropolitan University and the Architectural Association. The new knowledge that emerged relates to both pedagogy of teaching and the mobilisation of the classroom as a common resource and the methodology of such grassroots delivery. The major project findings included: 1) high land rental value making grassroots creative organisations homeless, 2) culture of competition over resources between grassroots organisations, 3) lack of knowledge about governmental procedures and 4) power relationships that were constructive and destructive. The paper will present how each one of these obstacles were addressed using innovative and creative solutions beyond local government’s imagination. The talk will be structured, where each applied solution is mapped against an overall diagrams that aligns with principles of State Reinforced Self-Governance (SRSG), and has been presented to the local government as Commons-Public Partnership model within neighbourhoods. All this work has its theoretical backbone from various relational theories that range from; relational leadership, relational power, relational ethics, relational epistemology, and interpersonal conflict and sanctions. The work also includes the use of new technologies such as blockchain, metaverse and innovative use of NFTs, framing the neighbourhood as a nexus of political decision-making.

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