The City as a Commons | Call for Papers

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November 6-7th, 2015 | Bologna, Italy

Inspired by the recently implemented Bologna Regulation on Collaboration for the Care and Regeneration of the Urban Commons, as well as by other commons-based experiments in cities around Italy by the LabGov project (e.g. Co-Mantova, Co-Battipaglia and Co-Palermo), the 1st IASC Thematic Conference on the Urban Commons will bring together leading scholars, researchers, policymakers, practitioners and social innovators to take stock of the developments in the interdisciplinary study of the urban commons and related questions of urban governance. Although the urban commons has increasingly appeared as a topic of scholarly inquiry, there has yet to be sustained attention to the research questions, methodologies, and disciplinary approaches necessary to more fully conceptualize and develop the idea of the “urban commons” and the new challenges and facets it introduces into the ongoing study of the commons in diverse fields. The conference will seek to better understand the idea of urban commons at different scales, under what circumstances and contexts urban commons emerge, what contributes to their durability and effectiveness, and what undermines them. The conference will stress the importance of an “urban commons narrative” for urban infrastructure, urban welfare, and urban development. Additionally, the conference will focus on questions of urban governance and will explore different frameworks for governing common urban resources, and the city, in a collaborative manner.

The conference will highlight six thematic questions, which are:

Conceiving the urban commons
Mapping the urban commons
The urban commons and democratic innovation
The collaborative/sharing economy as the basis of a commons-based urban economy
Social innovation as the basis for a commons-based urban welfare
Designing and governing the city as a commons

These thematic areas will be examined through two full days of plenary panels, keynote presentations, and parallel sessions with selected papers from the call for papers. The conference will conclude with a roundtable discussion intended to reflect on the methods and future directions for urban commons research. The Conference Organizers invite paper submissions in any of the six thematic areas.

Abstract submission deadline: August 10th, 2015
Full paper presentation deadline: October 12th, 2015

All the info in the conference site.