Common Wealth

Common Wealth Verena Lenna

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Common Wealth Verena Lenna

Project presented for the Atlantis Program Academic year: 2010-2011 Urbanisms & Inclusions 1: Sint-Jans-Molenbeek/Brussels Research coordinated by Prof. Bruno De Meulder Katholieke Universiteit Leuven Faculty of Engineering Department of Architecture, Urbanism and Planning [ASRO]

Permission for Use of Content: The author herewith permits that the present dissertation be made available for consultation; parts of it may be copied, strictly for personal use.

Every other use is subject to strict copyright reservations. Particular reference is made to the obligation of explicitly mentioning the source when quoting the present dissertation’s results.

Leuven, 2011

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acknowledgements

The research developed for this project gave me the opportunity to grow on many levels. For several aspects that cannot be explained in these lines, I feel that the theme treated will leave an important trace, in my professional, but also personal growth.

For this reason, first of all I would like to thank Professor Bruno De Meulder for the opportunity to join the Atlantis Program, as starting point of my exploration ; for having constantly supported the advancement of the research with appreciable open mind and with his refined culture; for believing in the freedom and autonomy of any research, thus spreading a crucial, but unfortunately rare message.

Special thanks to Mathieu Van Criekingen, researcher at the Free University of Brussels, for having immediately provided his availability and scientific support; to Geert De Pau for having shared with me the complexity of the exceptional work of the Maison de Quartier Bonnevie.

The exceptional possibility to visit Parsons The New School of Design would not have been the same without Miodrag Mitrasinovic, Associate Professor of Design Studies and Brian McGrath, Associate Professor of Urban Design. Their thoughtful presence and the completeness of the academic program they prepared for the students of K U Leuven has transformed the week in New York City in a meaningful and enriching experience, in a very short period of time giving us the possibility to come in contact with different approaches and to benefit from the precision of their suggestions for the research.

Being in a new academic context, in particular I appreciated the human qualities, the understanding and the respect showed to me in any situation, helping me in feeling comfortable and supported to do my best. I would like to thank my colleagues and friends for sharing with me their ideas and daily helping me in any possible form.

The experience of this research in all its richness is dedicated to my family whose love is an invaluable resource.

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Urbanisms of Inclusion I Atlantis Program Bruno De Meulder, Miodrag Mitrasinovic, Brian McGrath

THE REVOLUTION OF THE COMMONS

The right to the city Tactics of resistance Commons, Community, Commoning The phantom of the tragedy Open Communities making the city From activism to action: architecture reclaiming the Commons

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NEW DEVELOPMENT ISSUES IN MOLENBEEK

COMMON DESIGNS

Molenbeek 2049: the Common Wealth

Some criteria

Molenbeek 2011: problems, potentials, challenges

The landscape of secondaritĂŠ

On the traces of the Commons: community based planning

Designing space: categories, typologies, grammar

Setting the Common Wealth

Designing processes

The (r)evolutionary scale of the Commons

Against the neoliberal dynamics of space: rethinking the role of the architect

From the concept to the design

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The revolution of the Commons

The right to the city Tactics of resistance Commons, Community, Commoning The phantom of the tragedy Open Communities making the city From activism to action: architecture reclaiming the Commons

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The right to the city

Martha Rosler’s ‘If You Lived Here Still…”. Originally shown in New York in 1989 the project explores housing systems, gentrification, bureaucratic complicity, and homelessness

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Leaving the city as a consequence of exclusion is still considered a loss. Until when the capitalistic logic of organization of the work and reproduction of labour forces will continue to prevail and especially if a compact urban system in the territory polarizes energies, material and immaterial resources of the surrounding environment, leaving the city will mean to be in a disadvantaged position as far as job opportunities and their variety is concerned.

It will mean being far from what are considered forms of contemporary culture, far from the glossy and trendy system of alternatives organized to regenerate the working class and to soften the daily rhythm of work engendering a false sense of participation and life, having fewer chances to meet the right person in the right moment. It will mean contributing to the accelerated process of social polarization progressively transforming the city in a sum of politically correct enclaves for rich people, as Manhattan is showing.

Leaving the city as an act of disobedience implies awareness about the neoliberal spatial dynamics in course and of their relevance and influence on the life of an individual. It means having or inventing the possibility to live in a different economical and spatial system, characterized by a certain degree of auto-organization and self-sufficiency, reflecting the system of values which motivated the departure. It means choosing a different setting for the daily life, spending more time in the public transport systems, using technologies to create proximity, being the “alternative� to the eyes of curious citizens. It means considering as the maximum freedom the absence of the distracting devices orchestrated by the urban spectacle. But also in this case, leaving the city will mean

confirming the spatial polarization above mentioned and, at least while remaining in the minority, supporting the same contested neoliberal dynamic at a social, spatial and economic level.

Resisting in the city as a revolutionary act means to create the conditions for disruption inside the city, in a spatial, social and economical terms, practicing a new model. If the city is the spatial artifact currently responding to a logics of reproduction of labour forces and surplus production , the revolution must start from the space as a tool, not only as a setting for action, subtracting it to the speculative logics of the capital. Disobedience is accompanied in this case by the sabotage of the prevailing system: contesting the spatial dynamic in course, the alternative proposed is potentially viral and able to undermine the mechanism of reproduction of social and spatial injustice in the city, subtracting growing amounts of space to the production of surplus as a prerogative of the neoliberal urban context, retrieving these as a form of Commons.

Leaving the city is a renounce: the renounce to the opportunity of using it to change our society, according to what we need to become, to intervene on the current economical and social logics, at the origin of the failures which are under our eyes. Aim of Common Wealth is to explore and to introduce the Commons as a concept on which realistic and feasible social, spatial and economic alternatives can be practiced, revolutionary because able to arrest and undermine the logic of capital on the same field of battle: using space as the support of different social and economical models, interfering with the system established by the capital, dismantling its enclaves.

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Tactics of resistance

There are a number of important aspects that can be used to describe true commons.

The first is that the commons cannot be commodified – and if they are – they cease to be commons. The second aspect is that unlike private property, the commons is inclusive rather than exclusive — its nature is to share ownership as widely, rather than as narrowly, as possible.

The third aspect is that the assets in commons are meant to be preserved regardless of their return of capital. Just as we receive them as shared gifts, so we have a duty to pass them on to future generations in at least the same condition as we received them. If we can add to their value, so much the better, but at a minimum we must not degrade them, and we certainly have no right to destroy them1.

Commons surround us and we become aware of their importance when privatizations and legal restrictions reduce their availability or accessibility, from pirated materials to water and energy. The concept of Commons has been at the center of the attention in a number of previous circumstances, and a lot of social and spatial models can be recognized as based on the idea of sharing resources at the same time preserving them, in the context of socio-economical models having in the spatial organization of a community an important support.

Considering the present economical conjuncture and dealing with the contemporary urban condition, characterized by issues of sustainability and social and spatial polarization there are two main reasons why, the concept of Commons should be finally considered not just in terms of idealistic alternative but of realistic, feasible opportunity.

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The first reason is the revolutionary potential contained in the notion of Commons and ready to be released in the city, starting from the space as the crucial resource.

The concept of Commons describes a condition in which resources are not appropriated by an individual: this can guide the imagination and the planning efforts towards a new model of society, especially in these days showing the failure of capitalism at any possible level. Among all the forms of Commons, space is maybe the more strategic and the primary on which capitalism continues to base the production of surplus, the city being the main spatial device through and in which commons are enclosed, controlled in enclaves, commodified responding to the logic of production and reproduction of the labour force.

But at the same time the city is a relational realm, as spatial artifact deriving from the act of inhabiting and thus the domain in which new commons are continuously produced in the daily, in the form of social, cultural and creative resources.

This is why the space is a crucial form of Commons, to be reclaimed as a key resource not only to resist, but also to invert the spatial dynamics determined by the arrogance of the capital. Space retrieved as a form of Commons at the same time is subtracted from neoliberal dynamics and gained to imagine and experiment new economical and social models.

The other reason is related to the evidence of the actions and the facts increasingly happening in many parts of the world, where the need to react and to resist to the dynamics of urban exclusion is determining grassroots initiatives reclaiming the role of the community in the

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management of the space and of the city as a right.

At the core of very different initiatives the concept is clear: the space of the city belongs to the citizens who are progressively more aware and able to manage it, reclaiming it as an inalienable resource. Thus architects and urban planners – among other actors – should be called to take into consideration the growing amount of these initiatives, for ethical, political and professional reasons.

Implied in these bottom-up, often auto-organized actions, dictated by states of emergency, it is possible to read a different model of society, in which space is no more a speculative asset, but it is the framework for other economies, characterized by a different degree of participation and involvement of the inhabitants, reaffirming that basic, complex relationship between the subject and its space as the domain of action and construction of identity.

Most importantly, going through these experiences, it is possible to read and to become aware of the complexity of the concept of commons, of the layering of figures and processes, overcoming superficial and simplistic interpretations, easily criticizable 2, based on the idea of an extended, uncontrolled accessibility to resources.

The emergency of new patterns relating space, economy and social construction has to be welcomed as a positive signal of action and critical attitude, but given the difficult urban and economical conjuncture in which they manifest and operate, a reflection is required, for an higher level of awareness about the complexity of the processes to install and the issues to consider, the possible consequences at a bigger urban scale, the actors to involve and the forms

of its sustainability.

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Commons, Community, Commoning

In the perspective of a real intervention, as the beginning of a spatial, social and economical revolution, the concept of Commons thus needs to be better articulated in order to take in consideration the multiplicity of aspects implied in its organization and sustainability. In this direction, a more articulated definition of Commons proposed

by Massimo De Angelis3 seems to trigger the right approach. According to De Angelis three elements need to be considered: Pooled Resources, Community, and Commoning.

Commons are not simply resources we share— conceptualizing the commons involves three things at the same time. First, all commons involve some sort of common pool of resources, understood as non-commodified means of fulfilling people’s needs. Second, the commons are necessarily created and sustained by communities— this of course is a very problematic term and topic, but nonetheless we have to think about it. Communities are sets of commoners who share these resources and who define for themselves the rules according to which they are accessed and used. Communities, however, do not necessarily have to be bound to a locality, they could also operate through translocal spaces. They also need not be understood as “homogeneous” in their cultural and material features. In addition to these two elements—the pool of resources and the set of communities—the third and most important element in terms of conceptualizing the commons is the verb “to common”—the social process that creates and reproduces the commons.

dependent, each one determining the existence of the others.

The definition proposed by De Angelis is particularly useful going beyond the identification of the Commons and highlighting two important levels on which the conditions of their existence and preservation are determined. These two levels concern actors and processes involved in social construction, rational and meaningful management of resources and generation of new commons, sociospatial responsibility in the framework of the city as a complex system, implying issues such as geographical scale and network construction.

Relating the availability and accessibility to resources not simply to their status-quo but also to the role played by actors and the processes they engender becomes crucial for the awareness and the feasibility of the planning effort.

These three elements are evidently strongly related and 10

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The phantom of the tragedy

Examining these two levels the aim is to highlight opportunities and problematic issues to be considered in a project for the practice of commons.

The first level stresses the importance of the actors involved in the daily for the sustainability of any kind of project based on the concept of Commons. In particular, the role assigned to the Community represents also an effective reaction to the tragedy of Commons prefigured

by Hardin as a state of unregulated accessibility to resources inspired by the law of maximization of profits.

The voluntary aspect of the coagulation of a Community in relation to a given system of resources regulates the possibility of its reproduction and of its rational use: this regulatory function is performed not only through the organization of the activities, of the rhythms and the definition of some basic rules; but also and especially through the system of values on which the community is based and constructs its identity, each entering member being responsible of an aware choice.

Precisely, as a basic condition, the shared agreement on the concept of Commons and on their crucial role to create the basis for the sustainability of a project of cohabitation is centered on two capital values, whose loss represents one of the more critical issues of the present economical conjuncture: trust and belief, thus suggesting another direction towards which models based on the concept of Commons could provide a fundamental contribution to the repair of our society.

Moreover, going through the before mentioned grassroots experiences, it is clear how far from unregulated situations the new auto-organized initiatives are conceived. The shared and direct administration and accessibility to

resources simply cut those mediation levels which creating a distance from the context of interest, engender possibilities of speculation and gentrification. The regulatory aspect not only is recognized, but every decision is taken involving the whole Community and, in a good number of cases, only unanimously.

In the perspective of proposing a project, it is of critical importance to remember that in community based projects regulation is more the consequence of this bottom-up legitimized, meaningful and shared balance then the result of a policy of control. For this reason the activities and the regulations organized and established by the community, besides creating a rhythm, should develop also the relational realm in which sense and identity can be built, for the individual as well for the collectivity, where differences in terms of gender, age , skills and aspirations could be not only respected but optimized in a proactive approach and in the perspective of an holistic balance of energies and motivations.

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Open Communities making the city

Also enclaves are community based: the consideration of De Angelis and Stavros4 about the connotation of the word community and the risks of isolation and autarchy related to its construction provide a crucial suggestion, to be considered both in the organization of activities and of space.

As far as the activities are concerned, a premise needs to be made about the actors called to organize these as well as the levels of social construction in a project for the practice of the commons. A given community has to be considered as the first and most important actor not only for the sustainability of the project in which it is involved, but also in the decisional and planning process necessary to organize its functioning. This in order to maintain that degree of proximity between a project and the interested actors that only can guarantee its sustainability, based on the participation of the single individuals and on aware behaviors for the preservation of the common resources.

Thus, if the term design could be used in reference to the domain of activities, that would have to be meant in the sense of a participatory process, in which eventually external figures should be called in order to provide a technical support.

This observation has to be read as a critique towards a vast range of hybrid and experimental practices, in which architecture, art and activism overlap intervening in a given context often with a mediating approach, finally resulting in the production of images and representations which merge in the daily production of spectacles, but rarely in effective interventions. This theme about the appropriation of immaterial and processual layers of the planning course by the architects, planners and creative

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actors will be discussed further in the next pages.

Respecting the autonomous and participative definition of activities by the interested community, with the architect or planner playing the role of the technical support in this process, the only general consideration that it seems possible to propose in the context of this project5 , is a sort of recommendation and is about the critical need for a community to maintain not only an interior balance, but also to create the opportunities for a continuous exchange of individuals, experiences, services, goods with the rest of the city. The risk to avoid is to become as exclusive and thematic as any other enclave of the neoliberal urban environment.

From a spatial point of view, the logic of openness and viral development is as well required. Reclaiming the space as a form of commons should not be limited to an act of anarchitecture6, changing the function of some isolated buildings or sites and installing an alternative socio-economical system. The real subversive power can be fully developed only interfering with the practices of the whole city. If the enclave corresponds to the efforts of the capital for the production of surplus, corroding these must mean developing secondarity as a democratic, nondiscriminating form of accessibility to the space, described by the heterogeneity of its users. It must mean creating unproductive voids where spontaneous creativity and commoning replace speculation and commodification. It means imagining how the definition and the rhythm of the public space could be changed by the practice and by the simple presence of zones of reclaimed commons and which kind of new flows could interest the whole city.

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The question of the openness and heterogeneity of community of course implicates a matter of scale. The scale of a project is also a measure of the space of its influence: in the perspective of changing the city in terms of interlinked social, economical and spatial practices, a project based on the revolutionary potential of the Commons cannot be limited to the proximity of spaces where new forms of living together are defined. Certainly the scale and the dimensions of a daily life, made of bodily rhythms and practical needs is the starting level where sustainability is built, based on the value of the individuals and their actions. But as just mentioned, avoiding the risk of a gated community is crucial in order to unleash its disruptive power. Imagining a differentiation among several community based projects, each one being defined by cultural, spatial and economical specificities, their presence in the city could be imagined in terms of a rhyzomatic development, engendering secondarity and a network of connections as an interfering rhythm in the speed of the neoliberal city.

Thus conceiving a community based project in an urban context would also mean imagining how the surrounding space would be affected and how new connections could be designed.

crucial in founding a new form of management of these resources. This would imply matters of representativeness and power that it is not possible to discuss in this text.

However, having in mind all these issues at the moment of the project could be useful for a revolutionary approach, in order to conceive the practice of the commons not just as an isolated solution, but as an opportunity to remake the city.

The other scalar issue is more related to the system of flows feeding the growth of a city as a complex system.

The complexity of the aspects related to the management of water, energy, people and goods in movement clearly go beyond the dimension at which community based projects can be sustainably defined. But at the same time, evidently the concept of Commons could be even more 13

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Gentrification in Brussels

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The third element proposed by De Angelis makes reference to the immaterial level at which not only existing commons are protected and reproduced, but also new commons are created as a result of the relational encounter and the social construction happening in the daily organization of activities, where creativity and culture play a crucial role at an individual and at a collective level. This third element suggested by De Angelis implies the relevance of a relational realm to engender synergies enabling the inhabitants to tackle daily challenges but also to produce culture, as the result of the encounter of diversities. It is quiet intuitive to say that the city is one of the most favorable environments in this sense, at least until when its spontaneous heterogeneity will not be erased by the invasion of thematic enclaves.

Besides, if on one hand the city is organized as the most suitable spatial configuration for the reproduction of the labour force, on the other hand the process of commoning can engender new solidarities and new possibilities for the individuals to cooperate if not subversively at least to retrieve the space for their identity: commoning happens in the everyday 7.

The bad news is that also these practices can be and actually are commodified, for example via spectacularization and different forms of labeling the immaterial layers in order to reify them and to sell them as any other kind of merchandise. The forms in which contemporary art and culture are organized and put on scene for the citizens are the most evident declaration that everything is done to keep authentic creativity out of the daily, that culture is stolen from their original authors in order to feed enclaves of production and distribution,

of course at service of the capital. Even the illusion of postproduction has fallen in the logics of the show system, contributing to its generalization. The ambiguity of the contemporary artistic activism has to be read in this direction: even the more subversive initiative sooner or later will be put on the screen of a white box – post industrial sites are better recycled as perfect settings for these spectacles then for housing - with the worst imaginable effects in terms of perception of reality and its urgencies.

How to avoid that also the new commons, fruit of daily exchanges, conflicts and truthful cooperation could become part of the regime of the surplus? How to defend from commodification the domains of individual creativity and social construction? How to reclaim these not only as spaces of regeneration of the workforce but more and more as spaces of resistance and tools to transform the neoliberal city ?

Part of the solution comes from recognizing that any unnecessary mediation over processes, any form of communication and reification of these gives the possibility to install commodification. And this issue leads our reflection to the role of architects, urban planners, artists, other so called creative people recently interested more to intervene at an immaterial level than at a practical one, contributing to the dematerialization and the falsification of the reality and its urgencies: glossy images describe thematic landscapes where even tragedies seem to be part of a dramatic orchestration, everything being under control; and infrastructural interventions are more often designed to support the space of flows and the dream to erase distances then to support democratic mobility.

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On the contrary, the problems of the city continue to be related to the heaviness of the matter, to the slowness of infrastructures, to the inertial aspects of the environment.

These are the prior levels on which architecture and urban planning should intervene. Processes and the relational aspects related to a planning course certainly are crucial, responsible of failures and success as much as material aspects could be, and need coordination. But other actors must have an authorial role in supporting a bottom up procedure centered on the communities directly interested by the interventions. Object of my critique are those interventions which more than solving a problem propos temporary adjustments, maybe effective in drawing the attention and engender involvement, but anyway far from solving practical issues and certainly contributing via dematerialization to the maintenance of the status quo.

Together with a critique on the role of architects in the dematerialization of the city, it is crucial to reclaim architecture as a tool for action. Architecture can play a pivotal role at an urban level, as the same phenomena of exclusion seem to demonstrate. Gentrification in fact is not simply related to speculation on the availability of space. Value is created on the bases of architectural interventions: it is related to issues of perception and quality of the space in the daily, expressed in terms of meaningful spaces, tactile values and fluidity of the movements.

If architecture can contribute to create enclaves of homogeneity, enclosing the space, in the opposite direction it can be the opportunity to excavate the city from the inside, inspired by an anarchitectural spirit,

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opening voids and rediscovering its secondarity as an opportunity to practice different social and economical models, contesting the neoliberal use of space.

As a project for Molenbeek, thus on the base of site specific conditions, Common Wealth will be the pretext to begin an exploration about the design issues related to the practice of Commons.

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1 Barnes P., op.cit.

2 With reference to the well known text of Hardin The tragedy of Commons, in which a state of unregulated accessibility to Commons will condemn it to its failure, given the tendency of individuals to maximize profits.

3 De Angelis M., Stavrides S. op. cit.

4 De Angelis M., Stavrides S. op. cit.

5 Being a design based research and not a proposal for a real intervention, the implied degree of simulation cannot authorize to more specific indications.

6 With reference to the work of Gordon Matta Clark and to the participation to the homonymous exhibition in 1974 at Green Street in New York. In The Eiffel Tower and Other Mythologies Roland Barthes synthesized that ‘Architecture is always dream and function, expression of a utopia and instrument of a convenience’. The work of Gordon Matta Clark was deeply influenced in a reactive sense by this concept and by the functionalist approach in architecture.

7 Negri T., Hardt M., op. cit.

8 Bourriaud N., op. cit.

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New development issues in Molenbeek

Molenbeek Fieldwork 2049: East-Baltimore the Common Wealth Molenbeek Testimonials 2011: problems, East-Baltimore potentials, challenges On the East-Baltimore traces of the Commons: Stakeholders: community programsbased planning Setting East-Baltimore the CommonStakeholders: Wealth physical presence The (r)evolutionary East-Baltimorescale Stakeholders: of the Commons physical presence From East-Baltimore the concept to Stakeholders: the design physical presence

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Molenbeek 2049: the Common Wealth

Matthew Ritchie, The Evening Line. A holo-tectonic structural system that is simultaneously generating itself and presenting the conditions for its own reassembly. Not an enclosure, but an opening of space, a semasiographic conversion of place into language. The Evening Line is a collaboration with Aranda\Lasch & Arup AGU, commissioned by Thyssen Bornemisza Art Contemporary.

Installation View : Venice Architecture Biennale 2008

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A

very long, but rich day waited for Samira. The Community was growing, year after year the activities multiplied involving citizens from the whole Brussels and sometimes even from other countries. The Press used to call it Common Wealth, with this definition meaning the whole strip between Rue de L’Indépendance and Rue de Delaunoy. But actually these were three distinct Communities, each one corresponding to the historical blocks years ago functioning for manufacturing and logistics. Nonetheless with that definition, the journalists captured the essence of this environment and the deep purpose of its inhabitants: to create the economical and social conditions for wealth – in the broad sense of the word – in the daily, on the basis of values such as trust and solidarity and made through concrete actions for the growth of the Community as a whole.

This didn’t mean not having a personal plan, but simply completing and giving more sense to this because of its value and contribution in the context of the Community. So, for example that day Samira was going to spend the afternoon with the most young inhabitants in order to involve them in the daily routine of the Community: from the educational support to the children to the activities for managing the educational workshops, more and more attracting schools from the whole Brussels. And then there where the laundries, the kitchens, the gyms: of course the accessibility to these was free, but the help of everybody was needed to keep them functioning.

Fortunately, Samira was not alone: through the years a number of people, at the beginning just temporary guests, decided to stay, in exchange of their contribution to the mainly auto –organized programs. And since ecological sustainability and food and energy self sufficiency where among the priorities, the rhythm was quite intense, but pleasant, since everybody was there first of all because of a free decision and a deep sharing of the basic principles. Managing all these activities Samira not only enjoyed the atmosphere, but also took pride in tackling the issues related to the most fragile individuals and families asking for the help of the Community.

Thanks to the number of volunteers, the Community every year could help a growing number of people, providing housing solutions and social support: but expanding, more resources, more space, more people were needed, challenging spatial, economical, political and social conditions. At the beginning the Communities and their approach in supporting immigrants, young families and entrepreneurial activities were not very welcomed, especially by private actors. But the economical crises of 2011 as suspected was not a crises and new forms of economy begun to spread, in the city and everywhere, based on exchange and networking solidarity, changing the rhythms and the use of the urban space. The communities of Common Wealth were part of this discourse and their success finally was recognized and actively supported also by Brussels Capital Region, the European Union and a growing number of private donators.

Potentially there were no limits to the expansion of the Common Wealth, especially if based on auto-organized and basically self sufficient units as the three Communities of Rue de L’Indépendance were. Growing the only crucial aspect would have been not losing sight of the original values of cohabitation and the pivotal role of human beings.

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Matthew Ritchie, The Evening Line.

A logic of fractal, polycentric development. The concept of Commons would enable contraction and expansion at the same time: contraction at the daily dimension of the Community as founding and acting subject. Expansion at a metropolitan or regional level of organization at which different community based projects could be represented and coordinated, engendering the synergies required by an urban system as a complex entity.

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The setting of Common Wealth is based on a medium term projection, about 15 or 20 years, imagined for Molenbeek according to its current economical and social trends.

The project emerging from the daily routine of the different actors is based on the concept of Commons, meant both in terms of spatial organization and in terms of practices.

Opening the mind to unseen possibilities a vision could be a tool to look at reality with different eyes and give shape to our needs. Deconstructing the image and measuring its distance from reality means unveiling the limits and the potential hidden in the actual circumstances, decoding the necessary steps in order to realize the project.

considerations, but further elements can be specified on the bases of an existing urban context.

Why should Molenbeek reach the Common Wealth? This question hides another, more general question: why the Commons? Accordingly the answer has to be organized in two parts.

In a first part it would be important to explicit the elements of the site specific condition of Molenbeek that would find an interesting evolution in the depicted scene. This means highlighting how problems and resources could be considered as challenges and tools in order to improve the urban condition of Molenbeek and its role as part of Brussels Capital Region. The framework thus traced will lead to understand on which basis the hypothetical setting of Common Wealth has been built, which are the stressed elements and why.

The second part will question the relevance of the concept of Commons and the related designs in supporting effective models not just for Molenbeek and Brussels Capital Region, but for the contemporary city in general.

Part of this answer is implied in the previous conceptual 23

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Molenbeek 2011: problems, potentials, challenges

proportion of the population older than 5 years old having moved between 1996 and 2001 ( % ) > 56,6 48,5 - 56,5 44,1 - 48,4 40,0 - 44,0 34,2 - 39,9 < 34,2 < 200 inhabitants

Geographical mobility

The inflow predominantly consists of young people who are often single and who will mostly rent accommodation. The outflow is dominated by slightly older age groups. More often than not, this involves households with children. The limited availability of affordable (and relatively comfortable) private housing is the most important motivation for moving out of the capital city. Within the BrusselsCapital Region, the relocation intensity also differs substantially according to the district.

Source: INS, Enquete socio-économique générale 2001et Registre National

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Trust is needed. Only on this bases, in dealing with the contemporary city a different perspective can be imagined, considering the complexity of reality as a resource and problems as part of the contemporary evolution of inhabited environments, as part of the solution.

A synergic approach, new terminology, different scales of intervention, different human values and economic models are required as basic tools we should adopt first of all to change our lens, to imagine a different , but possible future.

In the framework of a city which is already facing the future on many levels, Molenbeek is still described in terms of problematic issues. What if we could revert the point of view considering them as challenges and resources, requiring to re-imagine not just this municipality but the whole Brussels?

Molenbeek and specifically conceived for this segment of the population could specify the role of this municipality as a large educational district, providing vocational schools, workshop and supporting many forms of site specific apprenticeship for the whole metropolitan area.

Besides, for BCR this could be the occasion to focus and to develop a new range of possibilities concerning low qualified professional profiles, thus diversifying and expanding the accessibility to the job opportunities.

This could be possible for example looking at different undeveloped or emerging sectors and considering the economical and social role of models centered on different values, producing different forms of wealth, such as voluntary service, permanent education, contemporary forms of solidarity, participative and creative practices, etc.

Young and unemployed Molenbeek is a municipality of 88.181 inhabitants, whit an high percentage of immigrants, for a great part coming from Morocco. The young inhabitants represent the most sensitive layer of the society to the increasing unemployment rates, currently amounting at 40%1 for this segment. This aspect becomes particularly critical considering the low educational level of these citizens and the scarce occupational policy developed by BCR to advantage low skilled workers2.

This aspect could actually be interpreted as an important potential for the municipality, an opportunity to propose a different approach in dealing with this crucial and frequent issue in contemporary urban contexts.

The development of educational programs based in

Gentrification vs rejuvenation The latest researches concerning downtown areas in Brussels reveal a reduced accessibility of housing for low income family units. This phenomenon is occurring in parallel with an initial form of gentrification, progressively changing the spatial character of these areas; and with the replacement of original low income individuals or families with new categories of inhabitants. If previously these parts of the city were occupied by blue collars, thus contributing to arrest its depopulation, today a renewed interest is expressed not only by real estate investors, but also by young, educated households, attracted by the relational potential characterizing a central urban position. Given the clear social connotation of these urban migrations, the word gentrification seems more 25

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Public property

Public property

Public property is property which is dedicated to the use of the public. It is a subset of state property. The term may be used either to describe the use to which the property is put, or to describe the character of its ownership (owned collectively by the population of a state ).

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proposed term rejuvenation3. Definitions are crucial and the risk of neglecting the relevance of this phenomenon in terms of social exclusion has to be carefully considered at the moment of naming processes.

To avoid misunderstandings about the real nature of the described change and its consequences is even more crucial in the light of the specifications of the Regional Plan of Development: interventions of urban renewal are suggested to attract wealthy family units in the city centre thus increasing the mixitĂŠ, engendering integration, improving the environmental urban quality.

If a soft gentrification4 could certainly help in terms of a redistribution of resources and integration of different groups of the population, at the same time adequate measures are required in order to control speculative processes inevitably leading to the exclusion of disadvantaged citizens.

A final consideration: both the unemployment rates and the initial, gentrification trends in Molenbeek risk to be seriously dramatized by the progressive disappearance of manufacturing and logistics activities5 , historically representing the main trait of the economical profile of the Municipality The decline of these activities or their migration in more peripheral parts of the metropolitan region on one hand subtracts employment opportunities, especially for low skilled workers; on the other engenders a relevant availability of space, both buildings and vacant sites. If this could certainly trigger speculative processes, at the same time it could also represent a spatial potential for new forms of utilization, new social and economical models advantaging the weakest categories of the society.

A great potential: the spaces of participation The municipalities of Brussels are characterized by the presence of a fine network of associations and actors supporting the daily social construction, both in terms of relational practices and of practical needs. The diversification of these actors is related to the variety of domains in which they operate: educational activities for children and young citizens; programs for women; initiatives for young people; participative forms of urban planning; a variety of social services, etc. A long list could be compiled of practices oriented at promoting integration, at least on the level of daily cohabitation.

Among these, the Maisons de Quartier are defined as centers of care and first help, exchange and permanent education, having the aim to engender communication, creative practices and other forms of solidarity, acting against any form of social exclusion. Working through participative models, these organizations involve inhabitants of any category with a wide variety of projects.

Among the others In Molenbeek it is worthy to mention the Maison de Quartier Bonnevie, having been involved in the research for Common Wealth and as main actor proposed for the hypothetical implementation of the project. Bonnevie is a non-profit organization, founded in 1977 following the massive demolition for the construction of the subway in the heart of Molenbeek. Since then the association is mainly focused on participated forms of urban renovation for low income individuals and families, aiming at representing the main collective claims of the inhabitants at a political level.

A more exhaustive research could be interesting to trace 27

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the history of these organizations, revealing their role in the process of daily transformation of Brussels, between resistance and participative practices. However In the perspective of the present analysis, it is important to stress the role of these actors in creating the basis for participative practices; in supporting the development of forms of solidarity specifically centered on the needs of the inhabitants; in contributing to the daily construction of open and inclusive forms of cohabitation.

In terms of values, the network of these associations and the procedures through which they operate define the bases for an economy of gift and of sharing which, as previously seen, are the main traits of the concept of Commons. Thus, in the perspective of a real intervention this could provide not only a cultural and behavioral background for the introduction of any project based on the concept of Commons, but also a repertory of actors, procedures and tactics, already experimented on the level of the interaction with the inhabitants.

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Private property

Private property

The process by which public property is transformed into private property is termed enclosure. Depending on the nature of the property, an owner of property has the right to consume, sell, rent, mortgage, transfer, exchange or destroy it, or to exclude others from doing these things.

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On the traces of the Commons: community based planning

l’Espoir, completed in June 2010, will be the first social passive building in Belgium. This project gave Bonnevie a valuable experience regarding the participation of disadvantaged residents in the realization of a construction project.

From the positive experience of l’Espoir, Bonnevie’s team went on the lookout for new formulas enabling them to reproduce it. This brought them into contact with other Brussels organizations who also were interested in the formula of Community Land Trust. After a study visit to the USA in September 2009, Bonnevie is one of the lead organisations in spreading the CLTmodel in Belgium. source: http://experimentcity.net/english-partners/buurthuis-bonnevie

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Among the causes of exclusion, gentrification works at two levels. The interventions to improve the environmental urban quality on one hand increase the value of real estate goods, creating the bases for speculative investments and preventing the accessibility for the weakest elements of the society; on a perceptive level they alter the original character of the city, thus engendering a non- familiar, cold atmosphere and jeopardizing any eventual network of daily solidarity especially important to support low income family units. It is important to underline that gentrification is not universally considered as a negative transformation.

Interventions of urban renaissance are often proposed to improve the quality of the urban environment attracting people with different economical and social backgrounds; but they actually lead to unsustainable conditions for the most fragile parts of our society.

In parallel with a site specific research on the signals of gentrification in Molenbeek, a collection of case studies has provided a comparative framework in order to understand which kind of actions and reactions are being developed to arrest the enclosure of the city in enclaves for rich and for poor. Not surprisingly, the majority of the actions are developed at grassroots level, involving the intervention of artist and activists and organized on the bases of the concept of Commons, both in spatial and in socio-economical terms.

It is not by chance that the concept of Commons is the point of arrival of a research focusing on the role of participatory processes in the resistance to gentrification.

Besides, the available literature, the projects and the researches currently in progress reveal that other

alternative models of society have been and are inspired by the idea of sharing, of providing equal opportunities and open accessibility to the resources6 .

The power of the concept of Commons is that it enlightens some interesting alternatives to the models currently polarized between private and public.

Among the others, the comparative case of New York City is particularly interesting, starting from the ambiguous role of creative and artistic practices in the speculative transformations of the city. Blurring the initial purpose of subversive practices of reclamation oriented to neglected urban spaces, artistic activism has finally engendered important phenomena of gentrification, meaningfully related to the history of the system of contemporary art, the role of the gallery, the museum, the spaces of production and of consumption.

Today in New York a high number of auto-organized initiatives reacting to gentrification has been developed mainly at grassroots level.

The relevance of this resistance has been recently brought to light by Tom Angotti in his book New York for sale, where some experiences of community based projects are collected, reflecting on the potentials and limits of a participated form of project in relation to the urban planning and the complexities of the city .

In the preface Peter Marcuse writes: Community planning is not simply one level of planning among the others, although it is that too. Many problems of communities come from the outside and need action at a broader level â&#x20AC;&#x201C; from city to national to global â&#x20AC;&#x201C; to get at the causes. And one can plan at the scale of the 31

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from the top down. One can feed community-level data into a technically oriented city planning department and find a community plan coming back down. That doesn’t deserve to be called community planning, and Angotti wouldn’t admit it as such. He would insist on the based in the concept community-based. This is the tricky concept […] It certainly means more than some minimal level of community participation in which the Community simply provides information to an outside planner. It means planning that has his bases in the interests and desires and fears of the community and that allows the planner to identify with the community in her or his work. So a professional planner can be working for a city department or a local community board on the same project. Whether the outcome is community-based will depend largely on that planner’s relationship with the community in which the planner is based7.

Among the variety of tools and strategies put into action by this kind of projects, the formula of Community Land Trust is still in an experimental phase, having been originally conceived for less urbanized situations and in relation to entrepreneurial activities than for more compact urban contests. But its application seems particularly promising and hopefully at the beginning of a new chapter in the story

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of housing and spatial equity. Robert Swann, founder of the first community land trust in Albany, Georgia, in 1972 defined it as follows: The community land trust constitutes a social mechanism which has as its purpose the resolution of the fundamental questions of allocation, continuity and exchange.

The community land trust is a legal entity, a quasi-public body, chartered to hold land in stewardship for all mankind present and future while protecting the legitimate userights of its residents.

The community Land trust is not primarily concerned with common ownership. Rather its concern is for ownership for the common good, which may or may not be combined with common ownership 8.

Main traits of the Community Land Trust system can be here resumed in these terms: the separation between the ownership of the land and of the building; a financial support for the purchase, retrieved at the moment of the resale; the recovery of a great part of the capital gain in the case the house should be sold; the participation of inhabitants , the neighborhood, and public power in the management of the trust ; the development of social, economical and cultural activities according to the needs of the inhabitants.

In Europe the experiences based on the Community Land Trust formula are still in an initial phase. Maybe not surprisingly, Brussels is among the few European cases in which it has been experimented. It is exactly the Maison de Quartier Bonnevie to have adopted this scheme to realize in Molenbeek a participative project of social housing, called Espoir.

This coincidence defines a very realistic condition to propose Common Wealth as a project based on the Community Land Trust model as explained in the next pages. In general, considering the framework emerging from these potentials and critical aspects, Molenbeek seems to be an interesting case study for a project based on the concept of Commons, both considering the specific issues of this municipality and its role inscribed in the urban dynamics of BCR.

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Setting the Common Wealth

The space of labour

available buildings

sheds in use for manufacturing or logistics

The cultural common, Hardt and Negri write, “is dynamic, involving both the product of labor and the means of future production. This common is not only the earth we share but also the languages we create, the social practices we establish, the modes of sociality that define our relationships, and so forth…the metropolis as a factory for the production of the common.”

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In this framework a hypothesis has been built, supporting a spatial and socio economical setting for the development of Common Wealth, as a project concerning space and a program of activities assuring its sustainability. Two main levels converge in the definition of this hypothetical condition: a spatial potential based on the definition of the space as a form of Commons; an economical strategy assuring a sustainable reclamation of this space in a process of progressive expansion of the Community.

For the practice of Commons: a spatial potential.

Out of the dilemma public vs private, the concept of Commons suggests an interesting alternative in terms of accessibility and availability of resources, proposing a new logic of utilization but also new dynamics of reproduction.

If space represents the main resource through which urban exclusion is produced, then intervening within a disruptive purpose as mentioned before implies the individuation of some break points: in other words the identification of those spatial availabilities in which the revolution can start.

In this perspective mapping has a crucial role, giving the possibility to visualize this spatial potential of intervention, becoming aware of the spatial ambiguity hidden in everyday practices where the distinction between public and private is never so clear.

If public property corresponds to a spatial condition of unlimited accessibility, as in the case of streets and squares and is identified as a subset of state property; for private property an individual subject is the owner and a process of enclosure limits accessibility â&#x20AC;&#x201C; and availability â&#x20AC;&#x201C; for productive reasons in the broader sense of the

adjective.

Mapping the space of public property and of private property anyway some uncertain states of accessibility emerge, providing an interesting margin of intervention.

Gardens, courts, parking lots, vacant sites, churches, schools, the space of labor9 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; and the list could maybe be incomplete - are uncertain and ambiguous spatial domains, more easily responding to the daily practices of a community than of a larger public. Not completely public, but not exactly private.

Overlapping the maps of the mentioned spatial categories, the result is the representation of the space in which the distinction between public and private is ambiguous enough to provide an unprecedented opportunity to retrieve the space as a form of Commons; to practice the Common Wealth.

In the light of this availability, an economic strategy is required, able to support the formation and the sustainable expansion of a community, at the same time providing a disruptive alternative for the whole city.

For the practice of Commons: from real estate to common resources The economic strategy required by Common Wealth is based on the Community Land Trust model and could have a potential leading actor in the Maisons de Quartier, given their present role in the perspective of a participated, urban development. The mentioned project Espoir, realized by Bonnevie according to the CLT scheme, confirms the feasibility of this hypothesis.

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Vacant sites

vacant sites

Vacant sites even when private, seem to invite to occupation . But even if accessible, they can be exclusive for some categories because of the lack of spatial infrastructures and user interfaces.

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Gardens and courts

accessible interior courts

non-accessible interior courts

Gardens and courts are not always completely exclusive. Working as filters between private and public, they define hybrid conditions of accessibility to the green resources.

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The spatial potential for an extended accessibility to Commons in Molenbeek,

Overlapping the previous maps, the space corresponding to these margins of uncertain or undefined accessibility to Commons provides an unexpected opportunity, an availability of resources, both in terms of space and social practices to be reconceived, inviting us to rethink the polarity between private and public, between the exclusionary and the open, towards a new degree of inclusion.

The strategy is based on a concept of progressive accumulation of real estate goods transformed in common resources. Starting from the initial founds normally provided to the Maison de Quartier by the Municipality or by BCR, the first real estate goods, available surfaces or buildings, could be acquired giving the possibility on one hand to realize housing projects for low income family units or individuals; on the other to support the development of activities able to increase the basic funding of the Community: farming, space rental for workshops and start up of entrepreneurial activities, site based educational programs, forms of temporary hosting for students, tourists, young mothers, other transitory situations, etc.

Because of the uniqueness of the spaces these activities should aim at involving the whole city, thus reinforcing the role of Molenbeek in a metropolitan perspective and thus having more possibilities to receive additional economic 39

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supports â&#x20AC;&#x201C; from the European Union, from private subjects and interested actors in the form of donations for example. Besides, developing a profitable exchange of different services among inhabitants of the community, temporary visitors and external subjects, in the medium term this alternative model, more based on solidarity then on monetary value could finally disrupt and jeopardize the prevailing neoliberal logic starting from the daily cohabitation level. Year after year, project after project the reclaimed space and its activities would consolidate the power of the Community and its role in the metropolitan framework.

The strip between Rue de Lâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;IndĂŠpendance and Rue de Delaunoy, scene of Common Wealth.

This strip seems very interesting, connecting the entry point of the Municipality on the Canal as a window system; with the lines of the railway referring to the West Station, as a neglected landscape for recreation

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The (r)evolutionary scale of the Commons

The scene depicted in the story implies the identification of some important issues of development to tackle, related not only to Molenbeek as a specific municipality but also to its role within Brussels Capital Region as a whole urban system. Besides, given the frequency of urban situations comparable to the landscape in Molenbeek, the project Common Wealth could provide not only an interesting contribution in relation to this municipality and Brussels, but also the opportunity to implement a pilot project: a site specific experiment highlighting the proactive and synergic approach introduced by the concept of commons at the base of a new sustainability of the city.

A part from the ideological reasons in praise of a practice of Commons; a part from the potentials available in Molenbeek in terms of space, actors and strategies of economical resistance, the other reasons supporting an urban project based on the practice of Commons emphasize the value of the implied scale in relation to the specific urban issues of Brussels. Molenbeek is characterized by the presence of some critical aspects which are certainly related to the economical and social specificities of the municipality, but which at the same time are part and represent more general dynamics interesting the whole city.

The need to redefine the rules and the values of cohabitation, from space to the economical system, both at an individual and at an urban scale, pushes in the direction of ecological 10 awareness and behaviors not only as a reaction to a current state of crises, but as a positive acknowledgement of the evolutionary shift implied in the corresponding values and forms of solidarity11 .

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The scale on which the practice of Commons is based implies this evolution and supports this ecological logic: on this basis we can and we must imagine a sustainable model for the future urban condition.

This reflection can be better explained specifying some of the critical issues characterizing Brussels â&#x20AC;&#x201C; and frequent in the contemporary urban condition - and highlighting the main contributions that a project based on the concept of Commons could bring.

Reclaiming space against gentrification The first level of contribution of course is related to gentrification and other forms of enclosures dividing the city. Reclaiming available spaces in the city has the aim is to support community based projects and arrest speculative trends, advantaging low income family units.

As previously explained, the acquired space, besides from being used for social housing interventions, is subtracted to the process of production of value, thus contributing to respect the original urban character and of the site. If infrastructuring new solidarities will be a critical resource for the future of Brussels, the scale implied in the logic of Common wealth is certainly a good point of departure.

Educational opportunities in the Commons In Brussels as in many other cities, a high number of immigrants often corresponds to young individuals with inadequate professional training and counting high rates of school dropouts. This picture could be darkened by the decrease of manufacturing and logistics activities,

thus diminishing the possibilities for not highly qualified job positions; and by a difficult integration keeping young citizens far from other opportunities outside the community of belonging. In a project based on the concept of Commons, given the prevailing logic of solidarity and exchange, educational services for young and disadvantaged subjects could profitably be organized. Besides, as in the case of Common Wealth, in order to avoid the risk of isolation related to Community based projects, the program of activities and the actors involved could be open to the whole city, thus encouraging new weak links and extending the basin of solidarity and economical support.

Economy of solidarity If Brussels needs to improve and support the development of practices of solidarity in consideration of the issues related to its demographic evolution - from social and spatial inequities to integration - the social and economical model tested in the project for Molenbeek can represent an interesting pilot project. Educational programs, temporary forms of cohabitation supporting low income situations; work opportunities based on schemes of exchange; activities conceived for the participation to the life of the community and in general for a contribution to the society; commoning as a process multiplying resources: the alternative model proposed by Common Wealth has in the disruption of the logic of the capital a crucial objective, designing and organizing part of the wide range of alternatives related to an economy of solidarity.

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From real estate to common resources

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The economical and social system proposed in order to reclaim the space of the strip for Common Wealth, establishing a sustainable model of cohabitation for the development of the involved communities.

Ecology of solidarity The scale of a Commons based project, the spatial categories involved in the design and the consequent alteration of the use of the city improve the level of ecological awareness and encourage new behaviors.

From different mobility schemes to the treatment of wastes; from the utilization of resources to the food production: founded on solidarity and self-sufficiency and maximized by auto-organizational schemes economy and ecology concur, installing sustainability at a level of daily practices, thus providing a precious example in consideration of the ecological concerns of Brussels Capital Region.

Cosmopolitism without frictions The demographic trends in Brussels are in contrast with the level of actual integration of the new inhabitants, for a number of reasons that it is not possible to resume in the present text. A part from engendering conflicts, this entails the loss of critical opportunities for the growth of the city, for example considering the amount of young individuals as main segment of the new citizens.

The spatial, economic and social logics characterizing the practice of Commons promote integration and the social construction on one hand directly creating the relational conditions for the cultural encounter within the community; on the other hand reinforcing the so called strong links, thus creating the basis for the development of the weak links. The strength of the relation with the Community encourages the individual to explore the city and its opportunities. In this sense the Community provides a point of reference, not a long term shelter for the weakest: this means encouraging and supporting a 45

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The strip interested by the project Common Wealth could provide the opportunity to intervene at two different spatial levels: the first related to Molenbeek, creating a secondary system of paths, renewing the accessibility of existing gardens, courts and parks. The second level would stress the spatial role of this municipality in relation to the rest of Brussels.

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variety of projects â&#x20AC;&#x201C; individual or familiar, entrepreneurial or explorative; pushing immigrants and young citizens toward an autonomous effort, involving the whole city in this process of growth.

The implied approach to the city thus would respond to logic of complementary of roles for different urban parts, each one bringing a unique contribution to the development of the metropolitan system.

Expanding the contraction.

In relation to the model for the future development of Brussels, polarized between contraction at municipal level or expansion at metropolitan scale12, implying themes such as the redistribution of the economical resources, participation and political power, a model based on the concept of Commons could engender the encounter of the extremes, assuring the sustainability of the whole city at the scale of a Community, as a prior condition engendered at the level of the primary spatial and organizational subset on which daily cohabitation is built.

The concept of Commons would enable contraction and expansion at the same time: contraction at the daily dimension of the Community as founding and acting subject, in close relation with other administrative subjects; working on the base of a logic of proximity and secondarity not only in spatial terms; involving inhabitants through different participatory schemes in a bottom up engendered design of the city.

Expansion at a metropolitan or regional level of organization at which different community based projects could be represented and coordinated, engendering the synergies required by an urban system as a complex entity, working at a different scale, needing a continuous exchange of resources and information with the surrounding environment.

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From the concept to the design

The previous paragraph has highlighted some of the specific contribution projects based on the concept of Commons could bring considering the main questions characterizing Brussels as a specific case, but more in general the contemporary urban condition.

These elements are strictly related to the role the concept of the Commons plays in terms of scale at the level of cohabitation, conditioning both the spatial organization and the implied relational processes. Spatial categories such as proximity, secondarity and continuity in fact establish the underlying condition for commoning as a process engendering resources, based on solidarity and ecological awareness.

In other words, the concept of Commons, the implied values and spatial organization provide a unique opportunity, defining the field and suggesting the rules of the game at which the sustainability of the contemporary city must be regained.

the next chapter: the practice of Commons is space based but implies an effective organization concerning the activities and the actors involved. In this perspective design is supposed to propose actors, strategies and spatial interventions in order to retrieve space as a form of Commons, as a main objective for the Common Wealth.

Thus, in the perspective of designing a feasible project, the three elements provided in the definition of Massimo De Angelis â&#x20AC;&#x201C; commons, community and commoning become particularly enlightening. Their implicit degree of interdependence clearly becomes a synonym of sustainability, implying the definition of solidarities and ecological behaviors. This suggests an important criterion, here just mentioned and discussed further in

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1 Rea A., Nagels C., Christiaens J., op. cit.

2 Vandermotten Chr., Leclercq E., Cassiers T., Wayens B., op. cit.

3 Van Criekingen M., op. cit.

4 Kesteloot Chr., Loopmans M., op. cit.

5 Vandermotten Chr., Leclercq E., Cassiers T., Wayens B., op. cit.

6From garden cities to convents; but especially meaningful is the contemporary peer-to-peer computing and networking architecture, where peers are equally privileged, equipotent participants in the application. This logic is not just related to technology but it describes also emerging social practices, in that case being defined as a specific form of relational dynamics.

7 Angotti, T. op.cit pg X 8 Swann R, op. cit. pg 10.

9According to Negri “The common is something that escapes any Marxian positive definition of what is produced. For me, and I am a Marxist and stay a Marxist, the common is abstract labour: i.e. that ensemble of products and energies of work that gets appropriated by capital and thus becomes common. Basically, it is the result of the law of value. It is capitalism that creates the common”. If the space of labor is a space of production of Commons, then “The question on the common is how to take the common away from exploitation?”. In occasion of Seminar Public Sphere, labour, multitude: Strategies of resistance in Empire organised by Officine Precarie in Pisa with Toni Negri and Paolo Virno. Coordinator: Marco Bascetta.[5th February 2003] 10 The word is used in its broader sense, thus including also relational, behavioral, economical, spiritual and other immaterial layers implied in the definition of the environment of a complex system, from human beings to cities.

11 In the theory of complex systems – as cities are and human beings are, as elementary components of these - the evolutionary shift from one level to the other correspond to a jump of the awareness of the system and of its organizational form answering to a variation in the environment.

12 Kesteloot Chr., Loopmans M., op. cit.

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Common designs New development issues in Molenbeek

Some criteria The landscape of secondaritĂŠ Designing space: categories, typologies, grammar Designing processes Against the neoliberal dynamics of space: rethinking the role of the architect

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Some criteria

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Projects based on the concept of commons can provide a crucial answer to some of main issues of the contemporary city which could be resumed in terms of growing social and spatial inequities, ecologically unsustainable behavior patterns, intensification of the process of urbanization. As observed in the previous pages in fact the scale of this kind of projects and the relevance of the three elements implied in the definition of commons, engender an high level of sustainability, based on the synergy among forms of cohabitation , social construction and economical modeling. Undermining the exclusionary logics of the capital, the concept of commons suggests new opportunities and challenges for the organization of an urban system.

Introducing some design issues it is important to be aware that a project for the practice of Commons is not just about a formal intervention in space: it is a project in which space has a double disruptive power, at the same time it is a commons, object of reclamation, subtracted to the speculative system; and it is a resource to support a community, subject of resistance, through commoning able to jeopardize the logic of the capital.

The role of design is thus two times crucial. On one hand it has to democratize the use of space, erasing enclosures, improving accessibility, introducing new practices. On the other it becomes essential to support and to organize the new economies of solidarity as alternatives to the logic of speculation and production of value.

As a guiding criterion it is important to consider that an economy of solidarity must be based on the coordination of space and practices as a pivotal node. Also in

consideration of a disruptive aim towards the prevailing economic system, these two levels have to be conceived as strictly interdependent and as open processes, in terms of an uninterrupted adaptation to the evolving needs of the community.

If it is true that the relation between space and program should be at the origin of any kind of spatial intervention, I would say of any inhabiting gesture, a proactive articulation of these becomes even more unavoidable when sustainability is established at the level of the relational realm: where the community is the subject and constructs itself articulating space through activities.

As a confirmation, if in the neoliberal model space responds to the needs of the individual articulating the relation private-public, exploiting dynamics of exclusion as a strategy to isolate the weak and strengthen the powerful; in an economy of solidarity space has to respond to the needs of the community and wealth comes from the unity and the relational realm built in the daily: human beings grow, contribute and expand starting from the strong links established within the community of reference.

Thus the challenge is to understand which are the spatial categories corresponding to the practice of commons: any proposal should keep into consideration the previous criterion, suggesting an holistic approach in which space and activities are conceived as responding both to individual needs inscribed in the communal project and to the needs of the community as a new collective actor.

I would complete this concept underlining that the relational realm engendering the process of commoning requires a spatial design that we can define as specific and political. Specific, cannot be referred to the dialectic 53

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cannot be referred to the dialectic of private /public and its corresponding designs, being these related to an individualistic logic. Political since any spatial intervention based on the concept of commons corresponds to socioeconomical choices, at the same time implying issues of participation, representativeness and resistance to the dominating economic system.

Respecting this premise, nonetheless I would treat separately the themes concerning the design of space and those related to the design of activities, each domain clearly maintaining its specificity in terms of processes, actors and challenges.

The three blocks along Rue Delaunoy

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The landscape of secondaritĂŠ

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The decrease of logistics and manufacturing activities will leave empty and available for gentrifying interventions a good number of sheds and buildings, dislocated in different parts of BCR and of Molenbeek. In the map describing the spatial potential to be retrieved as a Commons and for commoning ( fig. xx ), the strip inbetween Rue de lâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;IndĂŠpendance and Rue Delaunoy is currently characterized by a concentration of partially available sheds1 and, considering the mentioned projections, a relevant increase of this availability has to be supposed for the future. According to the proposed, extreme working hypothesis, for the year 2049 Common Wealth will have reclaimed also the currently active sheds, obviously as a result of a progressive process of abandonment and reclamation.

Among others configurations, this strip seems very interesting, connecting the entry point of the Municipality on the Canal as a window system; with the lines of the railway referring to the West Station, as a neglected landscape for recreation.

The dimension of the buildings and their spatial organization design a compact wall crossing the municipality, almost paradigmatically representing an enclave of production.

Intervening with a disruptive aim, based on the concept of Commons becomes in this case particularly effective: exactly reverting an initial situation of enclosed space for the capital in a shared space for the community.

Developing the project, the research concerns the spatial categories, typologies and the spatial grammar involved in this transformation and responding to the organization of a contemporary form of Commons, having in space not simply a retrieved resource but also a tool to support

different economic and social logics.

If continuity, secondarity, proximity â&#x20AC;&#x201C; as it will be motivated in the spatial analysis - define a spatial paradigm, the architectural character of the buildings interested by the project, the temporary progression of the intervention and the quantification of surfaces corresponding to the different programs will specify the conditions to which formal choices will have to respond.

Starting from the canal, three blocks consecutively aligned along the strip will be redefined according to the proposed activities but in the framework of the same spatial and socio-economical discourse. Al the three blocks are characterized by the agglomeration of quiet different buildings and spatial compositions, resulting in specific spatial characters. In consideration of the intervention proposed by the project, the position in relation to the block system, the architectonical materials used, the typologies of sheds clearly condition the design choices, in terms of programs, quantities and architectonical solutions.

Besides, it is important to remember that according to the proposed economical scheme based on the Community Land Trust, the space of the strip could be reclaimed only through a number of years, thus implying a progressive development of the project. The spatial consequence of this phasing is a fragmented character which if on one side does not allow a landscape sculptural gesture interesting the whole strip, at the same time could be an interesting approach to develop secondarity in terms of non monumental intervention, better oriented at valorizing the character of the original buildings.

Referring to the graphic contents of these pages for a 57

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Referring to the graphic contents of these pages for a detailed description and a more effective representation of spaces and the related programs, words will provide a framework for the spatial analytic tools pointed out in the next paragraph, making explicit how architecture has been transformed.

Buidings and sheds of the strip are transformed and converted responding to the spatial needs required by the the program of activities for commoning ( violet ), the housing needs (yellow) and the improvement of the quality of public space ( green ).

From a first level of research on the existing volumes, depending on the architectonical character and on the possibilities of

The first block is characterized by a very compact composition of sheds, quite homogeneous in height, a part from a prominent building facing the Ninoofsesteenweg.

The project proposes a temporary housing unit for individuals, a housing project for families, spaces for farming and gardening activities on the flat rooftops, a market. The initial compactness has been disrupted projecting in the inner part of the block the rotation of the mentioned shed looking at the Canal. This movement, reducing the productive surfaces, opens two courts: the first is adjacent to the market and creates a place for social interaction, enabling the meeting of the inhabitants of the community with other citizens eventually interested to buy the organic vegetables produced by the community. The second is more related to the housing units and leads to the corner of the block where the intersection with public space is redefined, erasing the original margins and the rigidity of the crossroads. Other smaller voids excavate perimeter buildings improving the transversal permeability of the block and conveying legibility to the volumes of the central sheds.

intervention, an hypothesis has been explored in order to quantify the availability of surfaces ( square meters ) responding to the different functions.

The second block presents a more heterogeneous configuration. Residential buildings are concentrated on the shorter sides, sheds are quiet different in

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10339

5270

3401

2798

17553

3892

5688

4016

2693

1483

1425

1342

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The landscape of secondaritĂŠ

typology and materials and a rectangular parking lot for logistics divides the block in two parts. In the project this space is reclaimed as a public space, engendering continuity with the surrounding green spaces, creating a transversal, secondary path. At the same time it is an arrival point for the two narrow passages crossing the block in a longitudinal sense. Besides it defines the façade system where small studios and housing units are organized, available to support the start up of individual, entrepreneurial activities.

The sheds of the third block are few but monolithic volumes, a part from a distinctive towering one, characterized by homogeneous height and rooftop typologies. Residential buildings interest both the corners and more central parts of the block. Also in this case compactness is jeopardized starting from the perimeter of the block: the design proposes both a transversal and a longitudinal path, meeting in correspondence of an interior court.

The compact homogeneity of the previous sheds is

redesigned by this void, not only creating a space for encounter but also inventing the façade systems of two buildings: a residential unit for families and a building organizing studios, collective workshops, spaces for educational programs and housing solution for starting entrepreneurial projects.

The transformation of the blocks is mainly determined by the design of new voids in the form of courts and new paths or by the spatial articulation of the existing ones.

These interventions at the expenses of the productive spaces accomplish multiple functions, in different ways all converging towards the reclamation of the space as a form of commons: directly improving accessibility and availability of space as a public realm; supporting the organization of different activities at the origin of new solidarities and economical models; bringing light in the compactness of the block, thus enabling the design of housing projects.

Secondary paths dismantle the initial wall, guiding through 61

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a progression of spaces characterized by different articulations of private, public and common spheres.

The spatial characterizations and the rhythms engendered in the strip inevitably affect also the surrounding public space. Rue de Delaunoy together with its side streets are redesigned on one hand by the activation of transversal connections, valorizing existing public spaces and courts; on the other hand by the faรงades systems of the three blocks, since different interfacing devices are realized in order to mediate the spatial presence of the renewed buildings, in this way amplifying also their socio-

economical role. So for example in the housing unit of the first block public, private and common sphere converge2 , creating the conditions to virally expand the process of commoning to the surrounding public space. Rue de Delaunoy becomes pedestrian in consideration of the activities, of the rhythms and of the needs of the interested communities, in this way at the same time providing a safest cycle track and improving the quality of the public space where social construction spontaneously happens.

Sustainability is engendered at the level of everyday practices and tactics of resistance.

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Designing space: categories, typologies, grammar

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Giving answer to some site specific conditions, the project developed in Molenbeek at the same time has provided the possibility to explore some design issues related to any project based on the concept of commons.

Going through the description of the specific intervention for Molenbeek, the effort will be to infer more general aspects related to the design of contemporary Commons, highlighting potentials and challenges related to this kind of project.

Three main levels of analysis can be proposed: spatial categories, typologies and spatial grammar. For each one of these the strict relation between practices and spatial organization will emerge.

Spatial categories More than an alternative in time of crisis, projects based on the concept of Commons must be considered as new ecological and economical devices. In between private and public, spaces for commoning correspond to a new organizational level3, where the individual project naturally expands and makes sense. Supporting the evolution of the relational realm as a basic condition of commoning thus means to rethink spatial categories in two directions, corresponding to two different scales. On one hand concerning the organization of the commons by itself, as a self organized unit in which the relation between private and public is inscribed: the categories used for the individual-centered space, between public and private need to be reconsidered, these now making sense as part of a collective project.

On the other hand these categories concern the relation of Commons with the rest of the city.

If the space of neoliberalization is enclosed, exclusive, domesticated and organized for the commodification of any possible resource produced by the city as inhabited environment, then a different level of inclusion must be possible, through a disruptive spatial action developing a continuous accessibility and democratic, spontaneous forms of utilization supporting the commoning and based on the economy of gift and solidarity. This means for example affordable housing, an alternative, capillary mobility system allowing less expensive and effective solutions, based on safe and pleasant cycle tracks and pedestrian paths; spaces for individual and collective creativity, where significance and identity can be spontaneously built in the daily as part of the social construction; activities and programs interfering with the capitalistic logic of speculation, virally contaminating the city from the daily scale of cohabitation to the urban scale.

Far from being exhaustive and with reference to this project, three main categories could be introduced to describe and to orient the spatial approach needed to develop a practice of Commons, to be implemented at the two previously mentioned scales.

Categories of continuity and proximity could go in direction of inclusion engendering new accessibility and new solidarities as a condition for a more democratic and diversified use of space, in terms of housing, mobility and creative use of the space. If the space of the capital is made of productive enclaves, the space for commoning has to include voids subtracted from the neoliberal properties, where a non-productive approach could inspire and engender the development of other 65

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1st block

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Ghada and Mathias, Quatre Vents.

Ghada and Mathias met four years ago, both working as volunteers for the Community IndĂŠpendance. Today they live together and they will soon have a baby. Needing a new house they had the support of a new Community, Quatre-Vents, having recently realized interesting housing solutions for couples and new families. In exchange of this help, they contribute with voluntary donations and they are organizing a very good educational program for the young inhabitants of the Community, but also of the rest of Brussels: a part from the activities of the workshops, they want to help these young citizens to orient in the school choice, according to their motivations. Next year for the first time they will collaborate with a school for an exchange of one week for some interested students.

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economies, based on collective and individual creativity, regulated by logics of gift and contribution.

More than a category, the concept of secondarité introduced by Jean Rémy suggests a pivotal approach, resuming practices and spatial concepts inspired by tactics more than strategies, based on a democratic possibility of choice and characterized by an antispectacular dimension. If what is primary serves the capital and could be described as fast, gentrified, expensive, spectacular; secondarity could describe or support alternative and disruptive practices introducing a different rhythm in the city, respecting the original character of a space, providing sustainable options.

Typologies Convents and garden cities are well known archetypes organized to support communal forms of life. Their history, perhaps in the framework of some considerations about the founding ideological issues, confirms the crucial role attributed to space in developing alternative forms of cohabitation and economies. The challenge is about the interpretation of these archetypes in the perspective of the contemporary conjuncture, intervening in a given urban environment with the aim not only to arrest gentrification and other speculative logics, but also to introduce a new social and economical model, as a device disrupting the capitalistic exploitation of space. In this perspective it is clear that to every kind of economical and social alternative proposed should correspond a specific organization of space and typologies, implying the consideration of relevant aspects: the development of a relational realm, the articulation of the relation between individuals and the

community, the formal solutions for the organization of the introduced activities and the architectonical and urban preexistences.

As cohabitation projects, Commons are structured by the intersection of three main layers, each of these combining a program with the correspondent spatial solution. The first layer is defined by characterizing activities, this expression referring to a prevailing domain of activities in which the community specializes, defining its identity and at the same time engendering forms of exchange – services and goods – with the surrounding inhabited environment; the second layer groups spaces and activities for a sustainable self-sufficiency of the community, self-sufficiency being purpose and foundational value in any kind of commonal organization: from education to basic activities related to daily life, from gardening to waste and energy management, etc.

Finally the third layer corresponds to a more private realm and contains housing solutions and spaces for work corresponding to the different kinds of members belonging to the community: families and individuals, entrepreneurs and students, temporary guests, etc.

Spatial grammar The social and spatial mix characterizing any project based on Commons is motivated by an objective of sustainable self-sufficiency very often deeply originated by subversive purposes against the economical, social and spatial territory of belonging.

The variety of practices and processes through which the commoning happens has in space a fundamental support, whose design becomes even more crucial when 69

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Amir, Lâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Elephant de Molenbeek.

Amir is a young entrepreneur of Moroccan origin. He moved in Brussels two years ago to realize the dream of his life: becoming a tailor. The opportunity came thanks to a friend, living in Molenbeek since 2035 and working for a logistics firm. When the firm moved, Maison de Quartier Bonnevie acquired the building and helped a new community to grow. Informed by his friend, Amir found a crucial help arriving at the Community Lâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Elephant of Molenbeek. The Community today hosts him in a very comfortable studio apartment, which besides, gives him the possibility to work sharing the tools of a common workshop with other young entrepreneurs. This means working and creating new relationships every single day, in very cozy atmosphere. His contribution to the community is also very gratifying: every week he shares with some women the basic techniques of tailoring and they come from the whole Brussels to know the secrets of the tradition he represents.

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Rue Delaunoy becomes pedestrian in consideration of the activities, of the rhythms and of the needs of the interested communities, in this way at the same time providing a safest cycle track and improving the quality of the public space where social construction spontaneously happens.

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to the interfaces in-between different realms of activity and thus regulating crucial transitions for the sustainability of the community: the spatial margins separating the private from the common sphere for example have to take in charge at the same time privacy issues as well as forms of commonal life. Individual needs continue to be important even if updated and completed because of the belonging to the community. The delicate balance between the “me” and the “us” is the parameter able to confirm or deny the shift to the superior organizational level in complex systems4.

Seemingly critical is the passage from the space of the Commons to the surrounding urban environment. This relation is characterized by a kind of paradoxical tension between two poles: self-sufficiency and subversion.

Disobeying the existing order through self-sufficient schemes could lead to a degree of isolation contradicting any disruptive will. A subversive plan, on the contrary, needs to put into action spatial, economical and social interferences undermining the contested system. This can happen only if a community based project does not repeat the enclave logic, thus trying to develop forms of exchange and interaction virally affecting the surrounding environment.

The spatial grammar thus engendered is certainly based on the previous described categories and typological choices, as preliminary conditions related to the program of activities and spatial preexistences. But juxtaposing proportions and engendering rhythms through a given landscape defines a holistic environmental quality conditioning the social construction at a perceptive level.

As gentrification proceeds not only through logics of value but also at a perceptive level, exclusion being caused by unfamiliar or fake appearances, also secondarity in urban practices could be encouraged or repressed at level of perception. Inviting to creative practices, engendering participation and sustainable choices in the public realm, at the same time respecting individual and communal needs, should be part of the responsibilities of the spatial grammar of resistance related to any Commons based project.

Mediating, filtering, controlling are all functions that the design of interfaces needs to take in charge, thus regulating different domains of activity of a community, interesting not only the space directly occupied by the commons but also the surrounding environment.

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Nadine, IndĂŠpendance.

Nadine finished her studies in Biology in Brussels and she felt the need to stop for a while, in order to better plan her future and test her level of self sufficiency. When she moved to IndĂŠpendance, everybody welcomed her, remembering her precious contribution to the farming activities of the Community. During the years of the University in fact she participated to some educational workshops organized by the Community to spread some basic principles of gardening and farming. Today she is involved in these but among the teachers. Besides, the Community asked her to innovate some of their farming techniques: thanks to her help they will be funded by the European Community.

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Designing processes

Secondarity has been increased within each block and through them, in terms of common, accessible spaces, working at different spatial and social levels: free surfaces for creative practices; interior paths through the buildings as an alternative to the gray streets of the neighborhood; livable places for the social construction.

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The role of design in relation to the practice of Commons is to imagine which kind of actors, strategies and processes would be required in order to engender commoning in sustainable terms and to retrieve space as a form of Commons, as a main objective against dynamics of exclusion. Any project based on the concept of Commons needs to deal with social and economical schemes producing inclusion and assuring the sustainability of the spatial hypothesis presented.

In this direction, Common Wealth has a fundamental part in the role played by actors: the Community Land Trust model on which the economical scheme proposed by the project is based has in the participation of the Community a main characteristic, from the decisional processes to the daily activities on which the community builds itself day after day. Given its previously mentioned interest in this model, Maison de Quartier Bonnevie is proposed as leader of the process, working in between the inhabitants of the municipality and the administrative levels of Brussels Capital Region.

In parallel, in order to involve the community at the same time building a relation of continuous exchange with the rest of the city, a number of activities and socio-economical devices are imagined, defining mechanisms alternative to the capitalistic system while supporting the expansion of the Commons.

A part from the activities regulating the daily life of the Community, a project proposing a progressive accumulation of buildings and surfaces to advantage a growing number of low income individuals or families, undermining speculative logics, should also identify the kind of processes and participatory moments at a political

level in order to interface the administrative levels with the inhabitants: on one side real estate agencies, the municipality, private actors involved in the administration of the local context, other Communities supporting the action and eventually building a network; on the other side inhabitants, sociologists, anthropologists, psychologists, economists, cultural mediators.

Unfortunately, the level of simulation required by the development of this project as a research and not as a real proposal of intervention has forced design to work in an imaginary condition â&#x20AC;&#x201C; although as realistic as possible â&#x20AC;&#x201C; in terms of actors and processes to manage and organize, creating quiet a top-bottom condition. But thinking to what could happen in a real context, as an architect or urban planner being involved in a project for the practice of commons, a more bottom-up, horizontal situation should be imagined, in which the presence of actors such as architects, sociologists, economists and so on - could be relevant to provide technical experience.

Satisfying immediate and specific needs of a community, creating the conditions for its sustainability they would have to support the interested inhabitants in the process of auto-organization of their activities.

Intervening with an aim of inclusion it is clear that the research by design process has to find in the site a regulatory tool not only concerning the space but also the social level, dealing with the specificities of the actors and the interested inhabitants. So, concerning the project Common Wealth, a verification of the proposal is possible meeting at least some of the actors involved to realize the spatial and social transformation proposed in the project, as happened with Bonnevie, 77

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In relation to the inhabitants, it would be crucial to understand the best forms and approaches to engender their participation, not as a temporary form of activation but as a permanent involvement. This could be feasible only starting from a deep understanding of their needs, cultural backgrounds, inhabitation forms, rhythms and so on. A sociological and anthropological research would be required, as well as a clearer idea about composition of the population, professional skills, interest for entrepreneurial activities, prevailing educational interests, and so on. In general, the limits of the research for this project cannot provide the possibility to seriously deepen the mentioned aspects related to the inhabitants.

For example, maybe worthy to mention, a very short research brings to light the existence in the Islamic culture of an institution similar to Community Land Trust, based on the concept of gift, rather recognized and developed with different degrees of complexity according to the social level involved. Waqf 5(endowment) is the word identifying this juridical institution, based on the concept of gift as the concept of Commons is6.

Of course this very superficial inquiry could represent only the first step of a more accurate research, to be developed through a relevant number of interviews and with the scientific support of experts. But concerning the more immediate questions related to the actual practice of Common Wealth, it suggests the presence of a favorable cultural background for the introduction of a socio-economical scheme based on the Community Land Trust model.

Finally, once again imagining to propose a similar intervention in a real situation, dealing with Commons as

a bottom-up, often grassroots engendered initiative, if on one hand a community forms and operates as a selfsufficient subject it is also true that its action in order to be effective, really founding a disruptive alternative for our society needs to be inscribed in a bigger scale of action, coordinated to other similar projects - belonging to the same urban context, or to other territories - and above all, put in relation to the urban system as a whole. Design should question also this aspect, suggesting leading actors and strategies of networking.

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Against the neoliberal dynamics of space: rethinking the role of the architect

Rethinking the role of the architect against the neoliberal dynamics of space Can we use the word design making reference to the need of imagining the processes, the actors and roles necessary to generate a new use of the city, a new model of society, a new accessibility to common resources?

In a hypothesis based project as this, the simulation of the reality plays a crucial role in the visionary process to which a project always introduces. Thus clearly, imagining economic activities and strategies, actors and forms of social activation is a substantial part of the design process, these representing the layer of significance and sustainability of the proposed spatial configuration.

In a real condition, if a coordination of programs and organization of resources and efforts could be necessary, my concern is about the distance the “design “ label could introduce between the “designing” subjects and the interested community, thus risking the mistake of introducing externalities, dematerializing and objectifying the concrete levels at which action is required, producing images instead of projects.

The level of mediation implied in this distance is often taken in charge by actors belonging to a domain of creative practices, such as designers, architects, artists, foundations, and so on. The intervention of these categories often means not only and simply the development of a necessary action, but also the introduction of an immaterial level of design, which can easily become object of marketing and commodification. It is precisely at this level that an urban problem could become spectacle, a page on the website of the avant-garde activist firm rather than a real issue in which real people are involved. A kind of

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socio-political and activist oriented form of tourism is thus fed, as a practice lessening urgencies and, what is worst, providing a false and reassuring solution to the problem.

On the other hand, where spontaneous and auto-organized initiatives are developed without additional mediations, speculations are not possible and conflicting aspects are even dramatized, maybe obliging the administrative level to take action.

responsible of the consequence that the inertia of matter can have in the forms of cohabitation, in a sort of curatorial approach previously denounced by Tafuri: In order to sustain metropolitan space architecture seems obliged to become a specter of itself7.

A comment has thus to be done in relation to the responsibilities of the actors involved in the design of these activities. In a real situation in which an architect or a urban planner could be called by a Community to redesign the space, using the tools of architecture and urban planning to support a the development of a different model of society, a crucial question emerges about the role of intellectuals and their responsibility in the processes of gentrification as spatial, site specific forms of neoliberalization.

In this perspective, the concept of Commoning and the role of the Community for the sustainability of the Commons are clearly based on the acknowledgement of the authorial voice of other actors, different from architects and urban planners, but at a certain degree environmentally aware, as many grassroots experiences are showing.

Also concerning this reflection, the project for Molenbeek can just represent the beginning of a more complete research: the critique goes to an ongoing dematerialization of the domains of intervention for architects and planners: more and more interested in managing relational realms and the immaterial flexibilities of the city, less and less 81

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1 According to the data provided by Société de Développement pour la Région de Bruxelles-Capitale.

2 Private corresponds to the single apartments; common is the space of commoning, where people share and participate to the structuring activities; public defines the spaces where accessibility is possible for any citizen and commoning becomes viral through different exchange forms.

3 With reference to cybernetic theories in Thomson E, Varela F, op. cit.

4 Human beings as cities are complex systems: in complex systems growth corresponds to a shift in the organizational form, towards a superior level of complexity at which elementary parts reinforce interconnections as a response to the environmental density.

5 Waqf - (Arabic, ‫فقو‬, pronounced Wahqf, plural: ‫فاقوا‬, awqahf; Turkish: vakif) is a Muslim religious endowment or the public body that manages the endowment in some cases, “the Waqf.” It may be land or a trust investment or any other kind of property. The basic regulations governing waqf trusts are laid down in Sha’ria law, but interpretation and implementation may vary in different Muslim societies.

6 Peter Barnes describes Commons as a set of assets that have two characteristics: they are all gifts, and they are all shared. A shared gift is one we receive as members of a community, as opposed to individually. Examples of such gifts include air, water, ecosystems, languages, music, holidays, money, law, mathematics, parks and the Internet. The concept of gift and the ethic and social bond created by an act of gratuitous giving create the conditions for new forms of solidarity, as a relevant starting point from which we can imagine to develop a renewed accessibility to Commons, re-affirming their inclusive nature.

7 Tafuri M., op.cit.

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Main bibliographical references

ANGOTTI, T.[ 2009 ], New York for Sale, Cambridge: MIT Press BARNES, P.[ 2006 ], Capitalism 3.0: A Guide to Reclaiming the Commons, San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers BOURRIAUD N., [ 2009 ], Postproduction: come l’arte riprogramma il mondo, Postmediabooks CHR. VANDERMOTTEN, E. LECLERCQ, T. CASSIERS, B. WAYENS [ 2009 ], The Brussels economy in Brussels Studies Synopsis no.7, Brussels: Brussels Studies.

DE ANGELIS M., STAVRIDES S. [ 2010 ] Beyond Markets or States: Commoning as Collective Practice in Anarchitektur no. 23, Berlin: DE CAUTER L., DE ROO R., VANHAESEBROUK ( eds ) [ 2011], Art and activism in the age of Globalization, Rotterdam : NAi Publishers DE MEULDER B., HEYNEN H., LOECKX A., VAN HERCK K., AAVERMAETE t., VERMEULEN P.[2000] Vacant city, Brussels’ Mont des Arts Reconsidered, Rotterdam: NAi Publishers DEBOOSERE P., EGGERICKX T., VAN HECKE E., WAYENS B. [ 2009 ], The population of Brussels : a demographic overview, in Brussels Studies Synopsis no.3, Brussels: Brussels Studies.

DONZELOT J., [ 2004 ], La mixité urbaine est-elle une politique ?, in Esprit, La ville à trois vitesses: gentrification, relégation, périurbanisation, no. 303, Paris HARDIN, G [1968 ] The Tragedy of the Commons in Science no. 3859; New York: American Association for the Advancement of Science.

HARDT M., NEGRI T. [2000] Empire, Harvard University Press HARVEY D. [ 2009 ], Spaces of hope, University of California Press KESTELOOT CHR., LOOPMANS M. [ 2009 ], Social Inequalities, in Brussels Studies Synopsis no.16, Brussels: Brussels Studies.

REMY J., VOYE L. [1981 ], Ville, ordre et violence : formes spatiales et transaction sociale, Paris: PUF SWANN R.[ 1972 ], The community Land Trust, a Guide to a New Model for Land Tenure in America, Cambridge Massachusetts: Center for Community Economic Development TAFURI M., [1976 ] Architecture and utopia: Design and Capitalist Development, Cambridge: MIT, Press THOMSON E, VARELA F, [ 1991]. The embodied mind: cognitive science and human experience, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press VAN CRIEKINGEN M., [ 2006 ], What is happening to Brussels’ inner-city neighborhoods? Selective migration from areas undergoing gentrification, in Brussels Studies Synopsis no.1, Brussels: Brussels Studies.

P. VANDERSTRAETEN, S. DE CORTE, B. DEPREZ, B. THIELEMANS [ 2009 ], Brussels, a sustainable city in Brussels Studies Synopsis no.4, Brussels: Brussels Studies.

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