Commoning our futures? An anarchist urban political ecology

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Locret-Collet, Martin Michel Georges (2017). Commoning our futures? An anarchist urban political ecology. University of Birmingham. Ph.D.

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Abstract

One response to the increasing pressure of urban living is in the re-appropriation of public spaces and urban green to help sustain and enhance the environmental, social and cultural life of cities. But a major paradox arises here: while they are increasingly leaning on voluntarist discourses of sustainability, the pressure of privatization, the implementation of risk-based policies and the general principles of consumer-based urban economies only scarcely fit with the notion of common, public spaces, and hardly accommodate with the freedom of their users or their alternative or even subversive occupation. Using an explicitly anarchist analytical lens and based on extensive fieldwork in Birmingham and Belfast (UK) and Amsterdam (NL), this thesis uses an ethno-geographic approach, consisting mainly of documents and policy analysis, semi-structured interviews and field notes to replace urban green commons in their broader spatial, social and political networks. It demonstrates how sustainability is a consensual but ultimately undetermined political object. Emerging co-operative processes of environmental governance and stewardship are identified and traced to the development of a new category of actors and networks. The potential of urban green commons to foster more resilient, socially inclusive cities is assessed alongside the need for radically re-politicized urban environments.

Type of Work:

Thesis (Doctorates > Ph.D.)

Award Type:

Doctorates > Ph.D.

Supervisor(s):