Carving Out the Commons

Carving Out the Commons PDF Author: Amanda Huron
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 145295643X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 283

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Book Description
An investigation of the practice of “commoning” in urban housing and its necessity for challenging economic injustice in our rapidly gentrifying cities Provoked by mass evictions and the onset of gentrification in the 1970s, tenants in Washington, D.C., began forming cooperative organizations to collectively purchase and manage their apartment buildings. These tenants were creating a commons, taking a resource—housing—that had been used to extract profit from them and reshaping it as a resource that was collectively owned by them. In Carving Out the Commons, Amanda Huron theorizes the practice of urban “commoning” through a close investigation of the city’s limited-equity housing cooperatives. Drawing on feminist and anticapitalist perspectives, Huron asks whether a commons can work in a city where land and other resources are scarce and how strangers who may not share a past or future come together to create and maintain commonly held spaces in the midst of capitalism. Arguing against the romanticization of the commons, she instead positions the urban commons as a pragmatic practice. Through the practice of commoning, she contends, we can learn to build communities to challenge capitalism’s totalizing claims over life.

Carving Out the Commons

Carving Out the Commons PDF Author: Amanda Huron
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 145295643X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 283

Get Book Here

Book Description
An investigation of the practice of “commoning” in urban housing and its necessity for challenging economic injustice in our rapidly gentrifying cities Provoked by mass evictions and the onset of gentrification in the 1970s, tenants in Washington, D.C., began forming cooperative organizations to collectively purchase and manage their apartment buildings. These tenants were creating a commons, taking a resource—housing—that had been used to extract profit from them and reshaping it as a resource that was collectively owned by them. In Carving Out the Commons, Amanda Huron theorizes the practice of urban “commoning” through a close investigation of the city’s limited-equity housing cooperatives. Drawing on feminist and anticapitalist perspectives, Huron asks whether a commons can work in a city where land and other resources are scarce and how strangers who may not share a past or future come together to create and maintain commonly held spaces in the midst of capitalism. Arguing against the romanticization of the commons, she instead positions the urban commons as a pragmatic practice. Through the practice of commoning, she contends, we can learn to build communities to challenge capitalism’s totalizing claims over life.

Urban Commons

Urban Commons PDF Author: Christian Borch
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317702972
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 187

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Book Description
This book rethinks the city by examining its various forms of collectivity – their atmospheres, modes of exclusion and self-organization, as well as how they are governed – on the basis of a critical discussion of the notion of urban commons. The idea of the commons has received surprisingly little attention in urban theory, although the city may well be conceived as a shared resource. Urban Commons: Rethinking the City offers an attempt to reconsider what a city might be by studying how the notion of the commons opens up new understandings of urban collectivities, addressing a range of questions about urban diversity, urban governance, urban belonging, urban sexuality, urban subcultures, and urban poverty; but also by discussing in more methodological terms how one might study the urban commons. In these respects, the rethinking of the city undertaken in this book has a critical dimension, as the notion of the commons delivers new insights about how collective urban life is formed and governed.

Counterpreservation

Counterpreservation PDF Author: Daniela Sandler
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501706802
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 274

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Book Description
In Berlin, decrepit structures do not always denote urban blight. Decayed buildings are incorporated into everyday life as residences, exhibition spaces, shops, offices, and as leisure space. As nodes of public dialogue, they serve as platforms for dissenting views about the future and past of Berlin. In this book, Daniela Sandler introduces the concept of counterpreservation as a way to understand this intentional appropriation of decrepitude. The embrace of decay is a sign of Berlin's iconoclastic rebelliousness, but it has also been incorporated into the mainstream economy of tourism and development as part of the city's countercultural cachet. Sandler presents the possibilities and shortcomings of counterpreservation as a dynamic force in Berlin and as a potential concept for other cities. Counterpreservation is part of Berlin's fabric: in the city's famed Hausprojekte (living projects) such as the Køpi, Tuntenhaus, and KA 86; in cultural centers such as the Haus Schwarzenberg, the Schokoladen, and the legendary, now defunct Tacheles; in memorials and museums; and even in commerce and residences. The appropriation of ruins is a way of carving out affordable spaces for housing, work, and cultural activities. It is also a visual statement against gentrification, and a complex representation of history, with the marks of different periods—the nineteenth century, World War II, postwar division, unification—on display for all to see. Counterpreservation exemplifies an everyday urbanism in which citizens shape private and public spaces with their own hands, but it also influences more formal designs, such as the Topography of Terror, the Berlin Wall Memorial, and Daniel Libeskind's unbuilt redevelopment proposal for a site peppered with ruins of Nazi barracks. By featuring these examples, Sandler questions conventional notions of architectural authorship and points toward the value of participatory environments.

Intellectual Commons and the Law

Intellectual Commons and the Law PDF Author: Antonios Broumas
Publisher: University of Westminster Press
ISBN: 1912656884
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 223

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Book Description
‘With clarity and sophistication, Antonios Broumas presents a bold new theory of intellectual commons and powerful arguments for a new body of supportive law. This book not only reveals the misleading logic of intellectual property law in our time; it reveals the rich possibilities for constructive change that legally protected commoning can bring. Highly recommended!’ — David Bollier, Director, Reinventing the Commons Program, Schumacher Center for a New Economics. ‘Liberating the Intellectual Commons from the fetters of capital accumulation and appropriation, would give us a renaissance of creative energies and empowered communities: exactly what the world needs to move away from the social and ecological devastations of our times. This book is a thoughtful and compelling argument for making this possible through the works of the law and the redesign of public domain as a common space.’ — Massimo De Angelis, Professor of Political Economy and Social Change, Co-director of the Centre for Social Justice and Change, University of East London. ‘In this pioneering book, Antonios Broumas argues that philosophically, morally, politically and economically we are in urgent need of a new legal regime that recognizes the intellectual commons, peer production and sharing as the primary practices of intellectual production, distribution and consumption. I cannot imagine a more urgent task today. A legally protected intellectual commons will lead to greater scientific and cultural innovation and creativity and will lead to an urgently needed second Enlightenment. This book should be read by lawyers, critical theorists, economists and the many professionals of science, culture and the academy.’ — Costas Douzinas, Professor of Law, Birkbeck, University of London. ‘Antonios Broumas’ book is an excellent critical analysis of the cultural commons and a must-read for everyone interested in understanding what the commons, the cultural commons, and the digital commons are all about. This work brilliantly outlines the foundations of an empirically grounded critical theory of the commons and the cultural commons in the context of the interactions of law and society.’ — Christian Fuchs, Professor of Media and Communication Studies, author of Communication and Capitalism: A Critical Theory (2020). ‘Broumas takes us on a spellbinding tour of how and why the law could and should change to accommodate the creative multitude, which engages into an emerging mode of production. He tells a vibrant story that makes us shout: “Lawmakers of the world, unite!”’ — Vasilis Kostakis, Professor of P2P Governance, Tallinn University of Technology, Faculty Associate at Harvard Law School. At the cutting edge of contemporary wealth creation people form self-governed communities of collaborative innovation in conditions of relative equipotency and produce resources with free access to all. The emergent intellectual commons have the potential to commonify intellectual production and distribution, unleash human creativity through collaboration and democratise innovation with wider positive effects for our societies. Contemporary intellectual property laws fail to address this potential. We are, therefore, in pressing need of an institutional alternative beyond the inherent limitations of intellectual property law. This book offers an overall analysis of the moral significance of the intellectual commons and outlines appropriate modes for their regulation. Its principal thesis is that our legal systems are in need of an independent body of law for the protection and promotion of the intellectual commons, in parallel to intellectual property law. In this context, the author of the book proposes the reconstruction of the doctrine of the public domain and the exceptions and limitations of exclusive intellectual property rights into an intellectual commons law, which will underpin a vibrant non-commercial zone of creativity and innovation in intellectual production, distribution and consumption alongside commodity markets enabled by intellectual property law.

Rent and Its Discontents

Rent and Its Discontents PDF Author: Neil Gray
Publisher: Transforming Capitalism
ISBN: 9781786605757
Category : Housing
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
The 1915 Rent Strikes in Glasgow, along with similar campaigns across the UK, catalysed rent restrictions and eventually public housing as a right, with a legacy of progressive improvement in UK housing through the central decades of the 20th century. With the decimation of social housing and the resurgence of a profoundly exploitative private housing market, the contemporary political economy of housing now shares many distressing features with the situation one hundred years ago. Starting with a re-appraisal of the Rent Strikes, this book asks what housing campaigners can learn today from a proven organisational victory for the working class. A series of investigative accounts from scholar-activists and housing campaign groups across the UK charts the diverse aims, tactics and strategies of current urban resistance, seeking to make a vital contribution to the contemporary housing question in a time of crisis.

A Queer New York

A Queer New York PDF Author: Jen Jack Gieseking
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1479803006
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 334

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Book Description
Winner, 2021 Glenda Laws Award given by the American Association of Geographers The first lesbian and queer historical geography of New York City Over the past few decades, rapid gentrification in New York City has led to the disappearance of many lesbian and queer spaces, displacing some of the most marginalized members of the LGBTQ+ community. In A Queer New York, Jen Jack Gieseking highlights the historic significance of these spaces, mapping the political, economic, and geographic dispossession of an important, thriving community that once called certain New York neighborhoods home. Focusing on well-known neighborhoods like Greenwich Village, Park Slope, Bedford-Stuyvesant, and Crown Heights, Gieseking shows how lesbian and queer neighborhoods have folded under the capitalist influence of white, wealthy gentrifiers who have ultimately failed to make room for them. Nevertheless, they highlight the ways lesbian and queer communities have succeeded in carving out spaces—and lives—in a city that has consistently pushed its most vulnerable citizens away. Beautifully written, A Queer New York is an eye-opening account of how lesbians and queers have survived in the face of twenty-first century gentrification and urban development.

On Leon Baptista Alberti

On Leon Baptista Alberti PDF Author: Mark Jarzombek
Publisher: MIT Press (MA)
ISBN:
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
Listen to Alberti's voice. This is what Mark Jarzombek has done in studying virtually all of Alberti's writings on philosophy, ethics, aesthetics architecture, and literature.

The Public Domain

The Public Domain PDF Author: James Boyle
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN: 9781979963077
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
In this insightful book you will discover the range wars of the new information age, which is today's battles dealing with intellectual property. Intellectual property rights marks the ground rules for information in today's society, including today's policies that are unbalanced and unspupported by any evidence. The public domain is vital to innovation as well as culture in the realm of material that is protected by property rights.

The Help-yourself City

The Help-yourself City PDF Author: Gordon C. C. Douglas
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190691336
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
When local governments neglect public services or community priorities, how do concerned citizens respond? In The Help-Yourself City, Gordon Douglas looks closely at people who take urban planning into their own hands with homemade signs and benches, guerrilla bike lanes and more. Douglas explores the frustration, creativity, and technical expertise behind these interventions, but also the position of privilege from which they often come. Presenting a needed analysis of this growing trend from vacant lots to city planning offices, The Help-Yourself City tells a street-level story of people's relationships to their urban surroundings and the individualization of democratic responsibility.

Enchanted Lives, Enchanted Objects

Enchanted Lives, Enchanted Objects PDF Author: Dianne Sachko Macleod
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520237293
Category : Antiques & Collectibles
Languages : en
Pages : 325

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Book Description
This insightful and beautifully illustrated book offers the first feminist analysis of the phenomenon of women art collectors in America. Dianne Sachko Macleod brings a surprising paradox to light, showing that collecting, which provided wealthy women with a private sense of solace, also liberated them to venture into the public sphere and make a lasting contribution to the emerging American culture. Beginning in the antebellum period, continuing through the Gilded Age, and reaching well into the twentieth century, Macleod shows how elite women enlisted the objets d'art and avant-garde paintings in their collections in causes ranging from the founding of modern museums to the campaign for women's suffrage.