Urban commons: From the collective management to the right to the city

Abstract

There is a growing interest and emerging academic literature regarding the commons and their application in urban studies. On the one hand, those contributions related to urban areas, Elinor Ostrom studies on forms of self-management of the natural common pool resources, are pointed. On the other hand, the critical literature on neoliberalism, new forms of accumulation by dispossession and the resistances to them in the form of social movements have also addressed the commons in the city from different Marxist perspectives. In this paper the contributions of both approaches are addressed and analyzed, as well as their critical points and possible complementarities to move towards a better conceptualization and a future research agenda on the urban commons.