Planning for publics: Reconceptualising the governance of the commons in relation to the margins
Worldwide cities and planners are struggling to find effective ways to manage resources and involve local communities, especially in the margins, in the effort to provide just and sustainable living environments. Within this state, we propose revisiting the commons, with the emphasis on the commoning as a process.
This special issue examines planning for the commons by interrogating the gap between aspirational planning, development policy and the practicalities of implementation and management. It analyses how this gap shapes the governance of shared spaces and everyday transactions, with consequences for spatial justice and for resilient, sustainable urban futures. Considering commoning as a process that could counter-balance the planning process towards achieving spatial justice, two levels are addressed regarding planning with publics for just and sustainable futures.
- First, while there has been an active debate about managing critical resources, there is room to explore urban commons and common good as part of broader socio-ecological and institutional systems. This would include exploring the role of urban policy and spatial planning in facilitating commoning activities through various local institutions at different scales, to effectively address challenges related to social and economic inequalities, climate change, and access to common goods.
- Second, there is abundant literature on the over-management or under-management of public space, but less understanding of the connection between governance, planning and commoning for communal gathering.
We invite contributions from around the globe that interrogate the relationship between urban planning and commoning. We welcome studies that approach commoning from the margins. Submissions may be empirical or theoretical and should examine actors involved in commoning and their roles; governance systems; pubic goods provided to inform how planning instruments, policies, and urban management enable or constrain commoning; how governance arrangements (formal and informal) shape access, use, redistribution, and stewardship; and what design, policy, or organisational innovations advance just, resilient commons in everyday urban life; domains of commons (e.g. natural, infrastructural, knowledge, social, or care); types of margins (e.g. peripheral districts, informal settlements, displaced communities, or marginalised groups); mechanisms that address conflict, recognition, risks, sustainability; comparative case studies, participatory research, policy and institutional analysis, design experiments, historical accounts, resource allocation.
We use the term ‘margins’ to encompass not only spatial or geographic marginality but also institutional and social ones, in relation to the equitable provision of spaces for collective, shared, everyday social practices. The ‘margins’ become a lens to broaden the inquiry on the commons, as shared capacities that are governed, invented and even re-invented for and in the margins.
The commons are shared resources managed collectively by communities – sometimes in partnership with other stakeholders – for mutual benefit. These resources may be natural (e.g., land, water, forests, open space) or human-made (e.g., infrastructure, knowledge). Commoning refers to the collective governance and stewardship of these shared resources.
We refer to the commons as communally governed spaces – regardless of their public or private ownership – where people come together, transact, and initiate new endeavours, while commoning denotes the organising and management of this shared space through collective action to enable practical transactions and collaboration. Within this framework, defining these collectives, the nature of the commons, and collaboration mechanisms requires further exploration.
This perspective reveals a planning paradox that is worth unpacking. The planning and design of the commons intends to provide spaces that benefit publics more broadly, in other words, provide a public good, but often the governance of the commons is considered separately from the scope of planning. The common good refers to the shared benefits, social conditions, and resources that allow all members of a community to thrive and improve their well-being. What does this imply for urban policy, urban planning for, and management of urban commons in more just and sustainable ways to foster co-creation and collective stewardship?
To examine this relation between planning, design, and the commons, we turn to the margins to consider where the commons are located and who can shape, access, and benefit from them. This foregrounds institutional, social, and economic barriers along with the knowledge and practices that emerge to mitigate them.
The margins tend to manifest inequitable access and distribution of spaces for collective use making it difficult for planners to respond to the consequent spatial injustices leaving many urban spaces, often situated on the periphery, either as vacant, ‘minimally developed’, inaccessible or under serviced. In many cases, there is no formal township establishment or delegated zoning, with conflicting land uses occurring in large peripheral areas. Within the same urban environments, prolific common yet exclusive spaces are planned and implemented within gated developments, which occur in the vicinity of informal settlements. In the latter and despite the absence of institutionalised planning, commons are organically created or ‘self-planned’ and actively used as a nexus for diverse transactions in space – be it play, gatherings or supporting livelihoods. The level to which the commons is inviting to diverse users determines the level of its psychological ownership and ability to remain active in everyday urban life for diverse users – who otherwise might not interact in other urban places. These phenomena signal that the urban planning for the common good more broadly and urban commons specifically does not necessarily lead to/ result in practices of commoning, places of rubbing shoulders and encountering strangers or the ‘other’. This is true for cities globally and indicates the need for further exploration of planning for publics and the common good by revisiting the relation between the margin and the commons in cities across the world and the role of urban planners to manage this relationship. It therefore evokes questions related to the importance of governance and institutional arrangements in shaping and regulating the commons as a place for all. Governance in this context refers to a formal or informal system of rules, processes and structures used to direct current and future function and form of common space through various formal and informal institutions.
TIMELINE AND CONTRIBUTORS
- Call for abstracts announced. 6 April
- Abstract submission date. 25 May
- Informing selected authors. 1 June
- Submission of the manuscript for peer review. 7 September
- Peer reviewing. Sept/October, one author from the special issue and one external
- Final submission. November
- Publication of the special issue. December 2026 /January 2027
