Strategies for a new municipalism: Public–common partnerships against the new enclosures

Bertie Russell, Keir Milburn and Kai Heron
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Bertie Russell: Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain
Keir Milburn: Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung, UK
Kai Heron: Birkbeck University of London, UK

Urban Studies, 2023, vol. 60, issue 11, 2133-2157

Abstract: This article considers the potential of public–common partnerships (PCPs) to act as a new municipalist intervention against the privatisation and financialisation of land in the UK. In previous publications, we have presented PCPs in abstract terms as a municipalist organisational form that could help communities eschew the disciplinary effects of finance capital to pursue alternative democratic forms of urban development. Here, we start to examine what this process looks like in practice. The article draws from ongoing participatory action research in two contrasting case studies, Wards Corner in Haringey and Union Street in Plymouth. We find that by establishing enduring organisational structures where collective decisions can be made about who owns and manages land and assets, PCPs could bolster already existing efforts to democratise urban development in both cities. As an organisational form, PCPs reframe the ‘local’ as a politics of proximity, decentre and reimagine the role of municipal institutions and foreground a politics of the common. This makes them an archetypal new municipalist strategy, well-suited to contesting the enclosure of urban landscapes. The article concludes by considering the development of PCPs within the broader new municipalist tendency.

Keywords: commons; governance; land; new municipalism; public–common partnerships; æ²»ç †; 土地; 新市政主义; 公地伙伴关系 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:urbstu:v:60:y:2023:i:11:p:2133-2157

DOI: 10.1177/00420980221094700

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