Scielo RSS http://scielo.pt/rss.php?pid=2182-303020240003&lang=en vol. au24 num. lang. en http://scielo.pt/img/en/fbpelogp.gif http://scielo.pt http://scielo.pt/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S2182-30302024000300001&lng=en&nrm=iso&tlng=en http://scielo.pt/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S2182-30302024000300010&lng=en&nrm=iso&tlng=en Abstract This paper argues that the rhythms of life in precarious urban areas of inner-city Johannesburg are characterised by a series of chronic shocks involving fire, police raids, immigration raids and evictions. Against the backdrop of such shocks, inner-city residents, particularly the residents of unlawful occupations, attempt to form bonds of care and support among themselves. Based on long-term fieldwork, over several periods, in the area between 2010 and 2023, the paper shows that these everyday rhythms of commoning - the affective labour of forming social relations in the interstices of the state ensemble and real estate markets - are in constant play with forms of uncommoning - emergent fissures and divisions in the city. However, forms of major shock radically corrode the bases of commoning practices and dissemble everyday rhythms. In this paper, I develop the concept of ‘uncommon rhythms’ to indicate both everyday divisions and divergences and the recurrent, but unpredictable, forms of shock that shape life among precarious communities in the inner-city. I argue that secure accommodation and spaces of retreat are a necessary precondition for sustaining commoning practices. http://scielo.pt/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S2182-30302024000300024&lng=en&nrm=iso&tlng=en Abstract Access to quality and affordable housing is a growing challenge, and civil society has responded with participatory and self-managed housing experiences. Housing cooperatives in Switzerland belong to this phenomenon. Polanyi’s double movement theory and Ostrom’s work on the commons are employed to investigate the motivations and practices of self-managed cooperative housing members in Geneva and Zurich. Following the case study methodology, findings show that the main motivation of cooperative members is to decommodify housing. Common practices include sharing and solidarity-based practices, mutual learning, flexibility for member entry and exit, and general assembly decisions about financial and environmental sustainability. Groups build common practices to access funding, knowledge and solidarity through multi-stakeholder networks, in particular non-profit architects. As trust in self-managed practices increases, they are able to engage in sustainable innovation. Adoption and replication make their housing experiences scalable, configuring a model in concept and practice. As a result of the increase in experience and reputation, members of housing cooperatives become advocates of affordable housing in Swiss referenda. Ostrom’s notion of commons, bundle of rights and nesting can provide valuable contributions in urban sociology research on the commons, necessary for building decommodified affordable housing. http://scielo.pt/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S2182-30302024000300049&lng=en&nrm=iso&tlng=en Abstract Reflecting on the categories of owners and users and the way these categories have influenced (or not) livelihoods, this paper questions how values affect the planning and implementation of communal living. The focus of this paper is on the ‘value’ of living in certain places, the kinds of appropriations made by those who live there (or not), as well as the organisational processes that are necessary to achieve basic services and then ‘be part’ of the city, beyond the possession of private property. The importance of individual property is linked to a framework of valuation that is supported by public policy, and that permeates most of the actions in contemporary society. Based on the experience of neighbourhood organizations inside informal settlements and housing cooperatives in the northeast of Montevideo, the paper focuses on what issues are important to people. Many of these organisations struggle every single day to ensure a better life for people who live there, trying to improve their quality of life. Interesting experiments in grass-roots solidarity have been carried out to better it, but in many cases, people seem not to care about property ownership. http://scielo.pt/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S2182-30302024000300063&lng=en&nrm=iso&tlng=en Abstract Informal land and building occupations form a significant part of Southern urbanism, emerging as central features of city-making in places defined by colonial histories and dispossession. They transgress normalised property and legal regimes and thereby open the possibility for alternative relations connected to shared practices of use and being in common. Drawing on long-term engaged research in Bogotá, Colombia and Cape Town, South Africa, this paper traces the origins and dynamic trajectories of two occupations, paying particular attention to the ways occupiers engage state logics transversally to assemble material infrastructures and advance citizenship claims. In comparing these situated practices relationally, we identify three modalities of transversal engagement that shape their presents and futures: 1) direct co-design; 2) aspirational co-design, and 3) anticipatory counter-design. Whilst the potentiality and outcomes of these are uncertain, we argue they are important contributors to contesting racialised regimes of dispossession and reimagining more just and equitable urban futures. http://scielo.pt/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S2182-30302024000300080&lng=en&nrm=iso&tlng=en Abstract This paper explores the occupation movement that took place during the so-called ‘Ongoing Revolutionary Process’ (PREC), from 1974 to 1976. We focus on the specific case of the 2 de Maio neighbourhood in Lisbon, where 25 under-construction housing blocks were occupied in May 1974. We juxtapose these occupations with the occupations of council housing dwellings in Lisbon today, linking their characteristics as well as the socio-political context in which they occur. Methodologically the article draws from the notions of radical memory work and community-based, participatory action research. The analysis reveals that the specific traits of the PREC occupation movement, driven by housing precarity and promoted collectively by the dwellers of lower socio-economic classes, played a vital role in the way they have endured through time. Yet, in particular, the response of the state actors, influenced by the specific political context of the PREC, as well as the wide support received by other actors, was fundamental to enable their permanence and subsequent regularisation. This paper contributes to the debates on the potential of occupations to promote access to housing, highlighting the roles that state actors and the political environment play in terms of legitimising occupations. http://scielo.pt/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S2182-30302024000300101&lng=en&nrm=iso&tlng=en Abstract This paper explores the occupation movement that took place during the so-called ‘Ongoing Revolutionary Process’ (PREC), from 1974 to 1976. We focus on the specific case of the 2 de Maio neighbourhood in Lisbon, where 25 under-construction housing blocks were occupied in May 1974. We juxtapose these occupations with the occupations of council housing dwellings in Lisbon today, linking their characteristics as well as the socio-political context in which they occur. Methodologically the article draws from the notions of radical memory work and community-based, participatory action research. The analysis reveals that the specific traits of the PREC occupation movement, driven by housing precarity and promoted collectively by the dwellers of lower socio-economic classes, played a vital role in the way they have endured through time. Yet, in particular, the response of the state actors, influenced by the specific political context of the PREC, as well as the wide support received by other actors, was fundamental to enable their permanence and subsequent regularisation. This paper contributes to the debates on the potential of occupations to promote access to housing, highlighting the roles that state actors and the political environment play in terms of legitimising occupations. http://scielo.pt/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S2182-30302024000300106&lng=en&nrm=iso&tlng=en Abstract Manoel Ribeiro, an architect and urban planner from Rio de Janeiro, discusses in this interview the importance of intervening sensitively from within the Brazilian favelas, highlighting the need to respect local practices and the existing culture. The role of the architect is valued, involving them ethically with communities, appreciating their traditional knowledge and the dynamics of each territory through ‘immersive’ processes. Ribeiro shares lived experiences from a process of active listening spanning more than five decades, recognizing the potential of informal and precarious solutions, with strategies for overcoming challenges. Flexibility, adaptability, and sustainability are key to his work, as he believes architecture must be sensitive to the dynamic and constantly transforming reality of informality, not only regarding physical structures but also in supporting the strengthening of social and cultural relationships within these spaces. http://scielo.pt/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S2182-30302024000300115&lng=en&nrm=iso&tlng=en Abstract In this visual essay we draw on photographs from several urban locations across Northern and Southern geographies, particularly focused on the research contexts that are explored within the papers in this Special Issue, to explore the manifold meanings, divergent practices, and variegated outcomes of urban commoning (Garcia-Lopez et al., 2021; Eidelman and Safransky, 2021; Stavrides, 2016). By pursuing a visual comparative method, which included collectively selecting and discussing photographs from our research contexts, we engaged in a careful dialogue through which we made sense of the images (Rose, 2008). We deliberated on what they represent, how they relate to each other, and what aspects of the (un)commoning they illuminate. Through this process, we identified four emerging themes that we believe highlight critical aspects of the commons, while at the same time holding our different contexts in place and together: (1) Precarity, violence, demolition; (2) Defiance, hope & the city as text; (3) Advancing socio-spatial relations; (4) Commoning as Human - non-human relations. Inevitably, there are many ways to interpret and categorise these images, since each photograph has multiple meanings and illustrates various facets of the commoning processes and practice. Nonetheless, through this method, we have been able to establish links between various places and geographies, highlighting the multiplicity and overlaps of common use practices.