(Re)producing everyday life: urban commoning through care

This issue of Contesti (no. 1/2024) explores the complex interconnections between everyday life, commoning, and care, drawing on episte-mological approaches that highlight the dy-namic and non-static nature of urban space. It emphasizes how the political, social, and cultur-al conditions in urban contexts often lead to the fragmentation of the urban fabric, increased commodification, and the reinforcement of power structures, which in turn exacerbate so-cial inequalities and advance individualism (Vi-derman et al., 2023). Against these fragmenting tendencies, and with a focus on everyday life—where lived experiences and material practices merge—this issue suggests that commons can act as the glue that binds urban spaces together.By engaging with the politics of the commons, which are “perpetually made and remade, cre-ated, eroded and defended” (Chatterton, 2010: 626), the production of urban fabric is revealed as an everyday negotiation across a wide range of differences, aimed at fostering harmony in shared space and time. The commons illustrate how societies strive for cohesion and seek to ad-dress and overcome conflicts, mobilizing both individual and collective resources in everyday life. In connecting commons with care, this issue specifically examines how locally embedded caring practices—those that create and sustain collective relationships fostering mutual sup-port and solidarity—disrupt established power dynamics, reclaim urban space, and reappropri-ate everyday life in opposition to structural forc-es that fragment society (Gabauer et al., 2022). This perspective positions care as a shared so-cial practice, rather than an individualized re-sponsibility, making it a fundamental element of the politics of the commons (cf. Puig de la Bellacasa, 2017).The thematic framework of this issue builds on the research and insights shared during the in-ternational conference “Urban Conflicts and Peace: Everyday Politics of Commons” (5-6 Oc-tober 2023, Naples, Italy), of the AESOP The-matic Group “Public Spaces and Urban Cul-tures”, organized by the National Research Council of Italy, Institute for Research on In-novation and Services for Development (CNR-IRISS), and hosted by the University Federico II, Department of Architecture and the Lido Pola Urban Common.