The project’s main research questions are:
- How do processes of creating new urban commons – or “commonification” – influence sustainability in cities by providing new solutions beyond market and state (in)abilities?
- Which transition pathways lead to their (un)successful development?
- And what is their transformative potential towards a more just and sustainable society, and what are their limitations?
First, COMMONPATHS is identifying the design principles that ensure the sustainable commonification of resources in urban settings. Second, it is developing a typology of transition pathways and archetypes towards urban commonification. Third, it is working to provide an empirically-grounded contribution to debates on the post-growth organization of societies. These results will generate key information, facts, and figures on practical strategies – packaged as guidelines, policy briefs, and more – for use by planners and organizers of other city-commons initiatives to improve sustainability and urban life quality.
Interdisciplinary collaboration spanning Switzerland and Ghana
Led by the Institute of Geography, University of Bern, the project combines expertise in commons, sustainability transitions, economics, urban planning, psychology, sociology, and more in the global North and South – including case studies in Switzerland and Ghana.
One CDE-led Work Package examines and compares the individual characteristics and changes in behaviour of participants in urban commons initiatives. Further, CDE led- or co-facilitated Work Packages aim to generalize the knowledge from case studies, in particular by highlighting patterns that may predict the success or failure of urban commons initiatives. Lastly, key activities are an aimed at facilitating transdisciplinary co-learning processes with local initiatives (transdisciplinary learning platform).