Atlas des chartes des communs urbains/Éléments de discussion avec Mothiur Rahman

Matériel de travail - Séminaire Community Chartering / Remix the commons

Questions proposées par Mothiur Rahman à la suite d'une discussion sur le sens de Urban commons

I had an interesting discussion with Frederic after you both left, as to what was meant by the focus on urban in the concept of "urban commons". He said that it was not necessarily about cities or physical urban environments. The idea was to create a distinct way of managing the world that was separate from the way of managing the world through private contracts and agreements (e.g. managing things through open source software and creative commons licensing).

That led me to wonder whether what was important in the concept of "urban" was the type of relationship that was being created, rather than where that relationship was being created. e.g. even if we are in the countryside, we are still being managed by "urban relationships" - that is, legal relationships that emerged from an industrial way of framing the world (enforceable contracts and land law). The essence of community was siphoned off (the relationship of meaning) so that relationships could be process and outcome focused (enforceable contracts, the philosophy of legal positivism).

So the questions then become something around:

1. What would a "non-urban" relationship look like?

2. What examples of "non-urban" relationships are there in the current world (and that would not necessarily include such commons which are governed by contractual arrangements)?

3. How could we create a consensual process by which we could harvest principles to formulate a "legal" means (and by legal I don't necessarily mean "legal" as we normally think of it in an urban framing of mind - e.g. that it needs to be defined, lead to certainty, and be enforceable) for describing such "non-urban" relationships?

By thinking through questions like these, perhaps we can begin to see how we can get out of the cul-de-sac of legal positivism and re-inject the essence of community (meaningful relationships) back into the ways in which we (individual, group, nation) can govern ourselves in our private and public legal relationships?