Commons

The commons appear as a paradoxical ground of togetherness: neither wholly public nor fully private, but a shared fabric where use outweighs ownership. Their social value lies in the fragile, everyday negotiations that allow grazing, gathering, playing, or simply being—practices that stitch individuals into collectives. Legally, the commons are suspended between recognition and erasure: ancient customary rights codified in medieval Europe, colonial dispossessions, neoliberal enclosures. Their origin is a condition: the field unfenced, the forest unclaimed, the water untaxed. We find them where law falters and custom endures—pastures of England, rice terraces of Asia, irrigation channels in Spain, village greens, fishing grounds, digital networks. Each is provisional, continually contested, and yet the idea persists: that space might be held in common, not as property but as a practice of cohabitation.

/ Urška Škerl

Lucia Tozzi is a Milano-based journalist and urban researcher known for her incisive critiques of gentrification, tourism-driven development, and the commodification of public space. Her writing spans cultural criticism, investigative reporting, and political analysis, appearing in publications such as Il Tascabile, NERO, Altreconomia, il manifesto, and other journals. She is the editor and author of […]

/ Laura Menatti

In the current debate about climate change and its disruptive effects on the health of people and ecosystems, the reclamation of the ‘right to the environment’ has gained momentum, both in theoretical accounts and in legal documents. Yet, it is useful to make a first distinction between the right to the environment and the right of the environment.

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