Urban wastelands are spaces in a state of latency (withdrawal of activity, evident abandonment), have become a recurrent focus in debates on urban commons since the 2010s. These spaces, including vacant lots and abandoned interstitial areas, serve as crucial refuges for urban socio-biodiversity. Nevertheless, they offer valuable resources: absence of known ownership, broken barriers allowing easy access, vegetation-covered soils, more-than-human presences, and remnants of past activities... Such resources make urban wastelands conducive to diverse social practices, ranging from walking and conviviality to informal economies and even illicit activities. The indeterminate status of the land, its unclear ownership, and its uncertain future foster diverse urban experiences often framed as expressions of free commons. When a development project is planned or moves into an operational phase, mobilizations sometimes arise to defend urban wastelands. These collective actions involve local residents, environmental associations, and broader activist groups. In these moments, tensions turn into social mobilizations to protect the space and resist to its transformation.
This communication inquiries two cases of “defended wastelands” to interrogate the notion of commoning through urban wastelands. We focus on the everyday urban and social stakes of these mobilizations, considering how they (re)define both the governance of urban commons (Ostrom, 1990) and the ontology of « urbanized natures » (Angelo, 2021). This proposal draws on the experiences and insights of urban researchers with various levels of activist engagement. We focus on two mobilizations in Montreal (Canada) and Paris (France). We cross-analyze these mobilizations, considering (1) how they generate everyday practices and governance through urban commons (Iaione, 2019) ; (2) how these commons in the making are not merely a ressource but are mostly defined by processes of commoning (Starvides, 2016 ; De Angelis, 2017) by collective mobilization. Our main contribution underlines the importance of urban wastelands indeterminacy in these struggles. Following the struggle of public squares, the struggle for urban wastelands reveals the function of these ambiguous spaces in expanding agency within global cities as a commoning resources for urban populations.
