Riding on the so-called “Deliberative Wave”(OECD, 2020), wealthy Western democracies, like the country of Luxembourg, are increasingly experimenting with the use of deliberative mini-publics (DMPs) such as Citizen’ Assemblies (CA) in state-led policy-making processes at various levels of public government. These spaces can be considered “invited spaces” (Miraftab, 2004) of participation controlled by the state and are often promoted as an exclusive prerogative, not to say duty, of citizenship. As a counter-practice, “invented spaces” of participation operate outside the official governance structures of the state, often within spaces that we might identify as the commons and are more directly connected with the everyday lives of people and their communities. While scholarship on “insurgency” (Holston, 1998, 2008; Miraftab, 2004, 2009; Sandercock & Lyssiotis, 2003) has emphasized the movement between “invited” and “invented” spaces, they have been inadequate in considering the ways in which these spaces are more fluidly shaping each other. So, the question is: How do invited and invented spaces co-constitute each other across commons-public thresholds? And what does that suggest for imagining public-commons partnerships? In this paper I argue that public-commons partnerships can be considered within a “commons-public-entanglement” as formalisations of everyday encounters with the law with(-in) the commons. Thinking with Lefebvre’s everydayness (Lefebvre et al., 2014/1947) and de Certeau’s tactics of the everyday (de Certeau, 1984/1974), I propose that the notion of “everyday law”, as it has been explored more extensively within the more transdisciplinary branches of legal geography (See Kymäläinen, 2024), might offer a helpful lens to understand public-commons relationships, and I discuss the potential need of a methodological shift informed by post humanist and new materialist philosophies for the study of the commons-public-entanglement. I present the arguments through a set of examples from the context of Southern Luxembourg, focusing on civil society organisations and unregistered community initiatives that actively engage with the regeneration of the socio-ecological fabric of the region in the context of its historical industrial extractive mining and steel production landscapes and current neoliberal state-led transition agenda.
This paper compares three sites of major urban regeneration in London and the role in this process of the associated community organisations (Paddington Development Trust, People's Empowerment Association for Custom House and Royal Docks Communities Voice). Local statecraft and grassroots organising tactics developed to address issues of power, politics and development at a neighbourhood scale arising in the context of an increasingly dominant speculative city logic are examined. The impact of government policy change over the last three decades on such community based initiatives is then explored: From the Single Regeneration Budget (SRB) direct funding to improve the quality of life for people in deprived areas via direct funding provide financial resources to local authorities, community organisations, and other stakeholders, to the current Opportunity Area Planning Frameworks (OAPFs) that seek to provide certainty to the development process and for investment and build consensus between public and private stakeholders. How successfully formal and informal neighbourhood and community groups responded to such policy contexts in terms of gaining power and funding as recognised, situated and legitimate civic political bodies is questioned. In conclusion the underlying trajectory of regeneration into one of a public land value extraction process through disposal and development consent in a quasi public private partnership arrangement is problematised to strip away conventional understandings of this ‘speculative city’ model with resultant insights used to inform a reframing into one that recognises the potential role of localised commons practices, asset stewardship and governance structures in mediating and directing both market and state power in collaborating on creating just and sustainable place making outcomes.
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in urban development’. International Journal
The shift from monocratic systems of government to those of representative democracy has led to the emergence of theories based on the application of systems theory (Von Bertalanffy, 1969; McLoughlin, 1969, Luhmann, 1984) in the construction of public policy and planning approaches. In this framework, different social components perform a specific function and relate to other components. Among these functional differentiations, that between the state and citizenship takes on particular relevance. If one follows the logic of complex systems (Maturana and Varela, 1985 ; Von Foerster 1984; Atlan 1979), applied to the sciences of politics and territory (Cavallaro, 1995), the separation between the functions of systems can be overcome and one can move toward models of participatory and deliberative democracy, in which state-apparatus and citizenship are parts of the same element.
The commons approach (Ostrom, 2006), and especially the urban commons approach, definitely moves in this direction, which allows the apparatus state and the citizen-state to co-govern: co-decide and co-manage.
The paper analyzes in depth the Italian situation - with particular reference to Turin (Segapeli 2022; 2024) -, where cities are moving toward forms of participatory democracy in the governance of commons (City regulations) that design new roles for formal and informal neighborhood groups and associations, according to experimental collaborative patterns and new forms of governance. Admittedly, the state legislative framework, with its proliferation of codes and regulations on administrative procedures and accountability and safety, still remains structured according to an authoritative model (the state authorizing, granting, sanctioning), which holds back momentum for change. Whereas the urban commons approach needs appropriate forms of governance in which the translation from the ineluctability to the universe of the possibles is achievable, that is, from the single all-embracing vision (the state) to the variety of scenarios produced by the multitude.
