Sheila R. Foster - Ostrom in the City: Conceptualizing the (New) Urban Commons

10/05/2020 Colloquium Series Speaker Sheila R. Foster Ostrom in the City: Conceptualizing the (New) Urban Commons: This talk is based on a chapter of my forthcoming MIT Press book (with Christian Iaione) entitled "Co-Cities: Empowering Equitable and Self-Sustaining Communities through Land and Resource Stewardship." Chapter Two, the urban commons, is the subject of the workshop. This chapter argues that while some urban commons, such as parks and urban gardens, share much in common with the natural resource commons that were the subject of Ostrom’s work, many facets of collectively governed urban resources are notably distinct. We demonstrate why Ostrom’s principles do not translate precisely in the city the way they do in nature. Ostrom’s framework needs to be translated to the reality of urban environments which are often crowded, congested, socially diverse, economically complex, and heavily regulated. As such, we highlight some characteristics of “constructed” urban commons that are not captured well in Ostrom’s design principles for user-governed natural resource commons. We identify three elements that are key to the creation of many urban commons and that are not always present in collectively managed natural resource commons - the role of central authorities, or the state, in enabling the creation and sustainability of urban common; legal and property experimentalism, or adaptation; and social and economic “pooling.”.