The role of architects in initiating, sustaining and defending urban commons in mass housing estates: R-Urban in Grand Ensembles

Abstract

This paper addresses aspects concerning the emergence of urban commons in mass housing estates in France. At a critical moment of societal crisis due to resources depletion and planetary Climate Change, urban commons can contribute and offer solutions to the complex process of transition towards more resilient forms of governance at different scales. In the context of mass housing estates built five decades ago, enabling the emergence of commons can be a resilient alternative to the current urban regeneration approaches. This process needs agencies and actors, and architects can play an important role. In order to provide an example in this sense, we take the case of R-Urban, a project initiated by atelier d'architecture autogérée as a commons-based network of civic resilience implemented in Parisian suburbs. The network consists of resilience hubs located in mass housing estates, which are collectively managed by inhabitants. The hubs function as forms of urban commons, constituting an alternative to the publicly funded équipments collectifs of the Grand Ensembles, the major mass housing program of a welfare government that started in the late 1950s and 1960s. As opposed to these équipments, the R-Urban hubs are self-managed, being run and funded mainly with civic contribution. The architects are not anymore top-down experts commissioned by the State, but have successively acted as initiators, designers, and co-managers of the project, sustaining the emergence of those urban commons through diverse local alliances. However, in a political context in which the welfare principles have been replaced by market principles (often sustained by the State), keeping this role for architects is a challenge.