Experiences of the struggle for housing, ignited by the lack of social and affordable housing, have led to the establishing of shared and self-managed housing areas. In such a context, it becomes crucially important to re-think the need to define common urban worlds “from below”. Here, Penny Travlou and Stavros Stavridis trace contemporary practices of urban commoning through which people re-define housing economies. Connecting to a rich literature on the importance of commons and of practices of commoning for the creation of emancipated societies, the authors discuss whether housing struggles and co-habitation experiences may contribute in crucial ways to the development of a commoning culture. The authors explore a variety of urban contexts through global case studies from across the Global North and South, in search of concrete examples that illustrate the potentialities of urban commoning.
Dr Penny Travlou is Senior Lecturer in Cultural Geography and Theory at the Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, University of Edinburgh. Her research is interdisciplinary focusing on social justice, the commons, collaborative practices, emerging networks, feminist methodologies, critical landscape theory, epistemologies of the South and ethnography.
She is also the Co-Director of the Feminist Autonomous Centre for Research in Athens, a non-profit independent research organisation that focuses on feminist and queer studies, participatory education and activism.
