Shared Administration of the Commons and the Challenge of Urban Nature: The Case Study of Bologna (Chapter 8)

Shared administration is analysed as a form of governance of urban commons through the case study of Bologna, which adopted the first Italian Regulation in 2014. This research analyses civic collaboration on common goods ‘in practice’, based on 28 interviews conducted in 2019-2020 with promoters of collaboration agreements concerning urban green spaces. The case study is discussed in order to analyse the main challenges of civic collaboration and its transformative potential, in relation to both forms of participation and quality of urban life. The research found that the risks of a delegated administration to citizens and the push towards individualisation and depoliticisation of the care of urban commons, frequently emphasised by critical literature, do not fully account for the civic experience investigated, which is capable of both resilience and resistance to the neoliberal urban model. Civic collaboration practices are an expression of the pursuit of new ways of doing politics and experiencing citizenship. We also considered which natural environments are recognised as urban commons in the negotiation between the administration and citizens, and what balance is achieved in practice between care and regeneration activities. Urban green spaces are frequently recognised as commons by citizens, but these are exclusively the domesticated or tamed natural environments, which are mainly the object of maintenance and care. Wild natural environments do not seem to be included in the field of shared administration, while paradoxically they would be the most suitable for acknowledgement as commons and for counteracting the logic of neoliberal urban capitalism.