Towards a Different City: Reclaiming and reinventing the city through urban commoning

As part of the cycle “Towards a Different City”, organized by the Ministry of Space, on Thursday, November 22nd at 6pm at the Center for Cultural Decontamination, a discussion will be held with Stavros Stavrides on the topic “Reclaiming and reinventing the city through urban commoning”.

In today’s cities, practices of collective improvisation and collective inventiveness create common spaces in which people not only express their needs but also develop forms of life in commons. In everyday struggles for a decent life, solidarity becomes a creative force. In this context, common spaces are both an explicit scope of urban commoning and one of its most important shaping factors. This presentation will explore the ways in which the production of common spaces in contemporary metropolises shapes urban communities of sharing and struggle oriented towards possible different urban futures. Examples from Europe and Latin America will be offered in an effort to study such practices which treat the city as a collective work in the making (echoing Lefebvre’s often misunderstood call to reclaim the “right to the city”).

Stavros Stavrides is an architect and an activist. He currently works as the Professor of Architectural Design and Theory at the School of Architecture, National Technical University of Athens Greece, where he teaches graduate and postgraduate courses. He has published numerous articles on spatial theory, as well as several books, the most recent being “Towards the City of Thresholds” (in English, 2010, in Spanish and Turkish 2016) and “Common Space” (in English, 2016). His research is currently focused on forms of emancipating spatial practices and spaces of commoning.