Abstract
The role of urban commons is an issue of growing concern for all those involved in the re/generation of our cities, from both a theoretical and an operational point of view. However, their evaluation does not seem to have received equal attention to that for economic and environmental issues. This article, adopting a theoretical-methodological perspective, investigates the possibility to evaluate the effects that architectural and urban projects have on the quality of urban commons and which kind of evaluative approach should be suitable. After a short introduction, the contributors face and specify the question of which are the distinctive characteristics of common goods, and significantly their relational nature. This is followed by an explanation of a community-based concept of urban commons which requires a commonly shared governance model and a new evaluation approach. The further step argues the need to define the “value content” of urban commons according to their communitarian-relational nature. This means that their value does not merely depend on technical-functional and economical aspects, but must consider their community-relational quality and consequently the adoption of collaborative decision-making and governance. In this context, the contributors suggest an evaluation approach that should be firstly, open to the participation of all stakeholders (the community, the “professional authors”, local government, etc.); secondly, able to grasp the community aspects; and thirdly, build spaces for dialogue and relationship between all the actors in the search for shared solutions.
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Notes
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Remarkably Foster and Iaione [10, p. 307–8] argue: «… an urban resource … claimed and utilized as a commons can be rooted in the “social function of property” principle found in many constitutions around the world. … an owner cannot always do what she wants with her property; rather she is obligated to make it productive, which may include putting it at the service of the community … require individuals to sacrifice some property rights in order to put property to its productive and socially functional use».
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ACTUALLY, this identification of common goods does not encompass many types of open-access resources (like language, information, knowledge, internet content, scientific literature, etc.) in which increased use does not create rivalry but rather enhanced utility or value for the public. In this case, instead of the “tragedy of the commons”, the network effect determines the “comedy (or cornucopia) of the commons” that is: «more value is created as more people use the resource and join the social community. The operative principle is “the more, the merrier”» (Bollier [6] p. 34).
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In other words, the summative logic (according to which the total sum may remain positive even though some addendum decreases up to zero provided that such decrease is compensated by an increase of some other addenda), should give way to a multiplicative one, according to which the annulment of even a single factor cannot be compensated since it makes the entire product equal to zero.
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The authors wish to thank Prof. Steve Curwell for his critical suggestions on preparing the manuscript.
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Bentivegna, V., Berni, M. (2024). The Evaluation of Urban Commons, a Few Theoretical-Methodological Considerations. In: Giuffrida, S., Trovato, M.R., Rosato, P., Fattinnanzi, E., Oppio, A., Chiodo, S. (eds) Science of Valuations. Green Energy and Technology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-53709-7_11
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