Creating New Economies Through the Urban Commons

Abstract

O ur economy has left deep scars in cities. As globalization has advanced, cities have become sites of acute oppression. The global free market has made soul-searing, societyrending levels of inequality, racism, pollution, and social isolation the daily lived experience of billions of city dwellers. Governments often exacerbate this oppression by seeking out global investors who, like parasites, extract resources from cities without giving anything in return. Both the free market and the state are failing city residents. This weighty oppression in cities has led many residents to seek community by emphasizing differences. As German sociologist and philosopher Jürgen Habermas theorized, systems of advanced capitalism tear apart social relations. People respond to these systems by forming groups based upon differences, rather than commonalities with others. They marginally differentiate themselves based on gender, age, skin color, neighborhood, or religious affiliation. This form of community building expresses a longing for solidarity while precluding the possibility of broadbased solidarity. These conditions now extend to the majority of the world’s population. For the first time in world history, the majority of people live in cities. In 1950, only 30% of the world population lived in cities. That number has steadily and rapidly risen across the last half decade. Today, more than 50% of people live in cities. As populations migrate to cities, cities become more oppressive, and responses to oppression tend to preclude solidarity. However, it is heartening to find people in cities across the world also building a new economy based on sharing. This is a personal solution based on collective power. It counters an old impersonal economy that individualizes social relations and alienates people. Sharing Cities: Activating the Urban Commons, a new book by a nonprofit called Shareable, brings to light efforts by groups in cities across the world to instantiate this new economy. This article is largely an adaptation of Sharing Cities. It argues that it is imperative for resilient new city economies to be based upon a political economy distinct from that of capitalism and neoliberalism. This is a commonsbased political economy, where the commons is a way communities work together to manage and obtain resources as opposed to receiving resources via the free market or from the state. The commons is a viable postcapitalist way forward.