Urban Commons - Rethinking the City (Hardcover)

This book rethinks the city by examining its various forms of collectivity their atmospheres, modes of exclusion and self-organization, as well as how they are governed on the basis of a critical discussion of the notion of urban commons. The idea of the commons has received surprisingly little attention in urban theory, given that the city may well be conceived as a shared resource. Consequently, the proposed book aims to rethink what a city might be by studying how the notion of the commons opens up new understandings of what urban collectivities are, by addressing a range of questions about urban diversity, urban governance, urban belonging, urban sexuality, urban subcultures, urban emergencies, and urban creativity; but also by discussing in more methodological terms how one might study the urban commons. In these respects, the rethinking of the city undertaken in this book has an irreducibly critical edge, as the notion of the commons delivers new insights about how collective urban life is formed and governed. "