Everyone shares in Hasselt: a perspective on the political potential of spatial commoning

Abstract

The proposal presents a situated action that exhibits a Participatory Design project called "Everyone shares in Hasselt". It discusses the role of PD in contemplating and articulating the political potential of spatial commoning. It does this by exploring the relation between how communities organise themselves around their common concerns, goods or information (i.e. commoning) - often on a micro-level - and how they depend on, relate or act against various institutional frames on a meso- and macro-scale (i.e. institutioning). This leads to an exhibition that, through design proposals, reflects on and articulates the political potential of spatial commoning practices in Hasselt that evolve around four clusters: care-, value-, trade- and need-based sharing. These proposals reveal opportunities for PD researchers to give form to institutioning as a conscious design practice in projects, when they want to explore the political potential of self-initiated and sometimes self-centered commoning practices and enter into dialogue with them as a resource in professional practices of policy-making, project development, architecture etc.