The Regeneration of the Urban Commons: An Opportunity for Circular Cities

In most contemporary cities there are often buildings and open spaces, both public and private, which are dismissed, empty, not used, or abandoned for several reasons. These places might be in several different sectors of the city like historical centre, suburban areas, deprived neighborhoods, etc. The rehabilitation and the management of these underused and/or dismissed places (urban commons), through collaborative processes, is a recognised way to catalyse regeneration offering social and cultural services with positive side effects in terms of jobs creation, social inclusion, socio-cultural growth, strengthen of local identities, appropriate management, and maintenance of such places, avoiding urban sprawl. In this framework, public leverage is essential to promote such collaborative processes, and for this reason, it is important to identify and understand the method to follow and find the appropriate and necessary resources. Despite their relevance, these kinds of practices are still experimental, and there is no systematic application because even if local authorities recognise the added value of such collaborative processes, promoting such practices is not easy for many reasons, mainly: To be able to manage this complexity we must develop regeneration actions, not only through collaborative approaches from the bottom up, capable of making different urban and territorial actors interact but above all also with horizontal actions, capable of making different departments of local authorities in charge for the urban management cooperate, therefore design integrated urban regeneration processes.