life in common

‘in common’ is where community resides…
According to Jean-Luc Nancy (1991) “Community is given to us – or we are given and abandoned to the community: a gift to be renewed and communicated, it is not a work to be done or produced. But it is a task, which is different – an infinite task at the heart of finitude” (p.35).

spatial manifestations of life in common

if considering community as a state of being, various forms of collective and grassroots organization may be seen as community instantiations, from the production of public goods like public infrastructures (spaces) and grassroots urban alternatives such as cooperative housing and living, to participatory processes reflecting on new possible spatialities and ways of living in cities.

at the inauguration party of the mehr-als-wohnen housing and living coop in Zurich, July 2015

the right to difference

creating differences is necessary to sustain life, and an alternative to abstract space is a world of difference capable to provide an opening to imagining and acting for new possible spatialities. The right to difference is a perpetual struggle necessary to generate living space. It may be understood in contrast to an abstract construct like the right of property.

As a form of resistance to the homogenizing planetary urbanization, the right to the city formulation coined in 1968 by Henri Lefebvre has been used in the last five decades as a ubiquitous “cry” for the democratization of urban space. Lefebvre urged us to take seriously into consideration the political struggle for the right to the city, to renew urban society and to renovate centrality as an essential right, which means regrouping of differences in relation to each other.