The Law of the Urban Common(s)

Abstract

Cities are quintessentially human and collective products. All urban space is the product of social cooperation. Therefore not just the “public” space but the metropolis as a whole must be considered as a commons. This assumption is not neutral from a legal point of view. It raises the question of whether private property of urban land is compatible with the conception of urban space as commons. The answer depends on how much we can push on the disintegration of property to expand the perspective of collective entitlements on urban resources against the commodification and new enclosures of urban space. Drawing on a legal realist approach to property, it is possible to dissolve the unitary conception of ownership into a bundle of rights. This article is a first attempt to enfranchise urban property as a legal form from its fate of being a mere boundary between the haves and the have-nots and revisit its role in the construction of social relations of production within the metropolis.