Urban Conflicts and Peace: Everyday Politics of Commons

This opening contribution explores the relational tension between conflict and peace in contemporary urban life through the lens of the everyday politics of commons. Moving beyond binary understandings, the article argues that conflict and peace are co-constitutive and deeply embedded in the material, symbolic, and affective dimensions of urban space. Drawing on critical urban theory, feminist perspectives, and commons scholarship, the authors conceptualize conflict not merely as disruption, but as a constitutive condition of urban life that exposes inequalities, opens spaces for negotiation, and enables transformative possibilities. At the same time, peace is approached not as the absence of conflict, but as a fragile and situated process continuously produced through practices of coexistence, care, and collective negotiation. Grounded in reflections emerging from Naples and the international conference Urban Conflicts and Peace: Everyday Politics of Commons, the contribution situates commons and commoning practices as key terrains where tensions between conflict and peace are actively negotiated in everyday life. Through examples ranging from urban commons and mutual aid practices to feminist and more-than-human perspectives, the article highlights how commoning generates relational infrastructures capable of sustaining coexistence without erasing antagonisms. The paper ultimately proposes the “everyday politics of commons” as a critical framework for understanding how urban societies navigate uncertainty, cultivate collective agency, and keep open horizons of possibility for more just and inclusive futures.