Commoning urban infrastructures: lessons from energy, water and housing commons in Barcelona

Abstract

In recent years, debates and contributions on urban commons have mushroomed. At the same time, the recent and unprecedented health and social crisis has revived the relevance of the collective (often in the form of public) response to cover basic needs. The research objective in this paper is twofold: firstly, we explore the potential and limits of the current scenario in the Barcelona region regarding political experimentation at the municipal level, analyzing different examples of commoning experiences in basic services. Secondly, we question and recast the classical commons theories applied to the urban infrastructures sector through three specific cases (water, energy, and housing). We build on a qualitative approach, using a comparative perspective, to study three experiences of commoning practices on basic urban infrastructures in the Metropolitan Region of Barcelona. The core of our contribution navigates between the discussion on the urban commons and their particularities compared to classical commons theories, and the role of infrastructures as commons in this new urban field. Our research also highlights how the commons offer useful guidelines to reformulate and reconfigure the relationship between subjects, needs, and power