Becoming-common of the public. Municipalist lessons on urban commoning as alter-planning

Four years after the square occupations under the banner of 'Real Democracy Now', civic platforms
took part in the Spanish municipal elections and consolidated an institutional assault, winning in
some of the most important cities, like Madrid, Barcelona, Zaragoza or A Coruña, and dozens of
smaller towns and villages. Spanish municipalism appealed to the idea of the commons to promote
institutional change towards radical democratic management of collective resources. Municipalist
implementations of the commons political hypothesis as a radically democratic decision-making
over collective concerns went beyond these narrative and normative aspects to articulate a
programmatic constellation of elements capable of defining an alternative form of ‘city-making’.
Based on this experience, this thesis is an inquiry into how commons can proliferate beyond
discrete examples, on the assumption that municipalism and planning can provide valuable lessons
and tools.

The research examines: 1) the role of the commons within the Spanish municipalist political
hypothesis; 2) how this hypothesis has been deployed in urban commoning processes in Barcelona;
3) future scenarios in which commoning processes constitute an alternative form of social
organisation; and 4) the possibility of defining planning as a commoning methodology.
This exercise is particularly necessary in the context of a planetary eco-social crisis that affects not
only the climate, but also the legitimacy of collective governance structures, from local
governments to the International Court of Justice. At this critical moment, the aim of this activist
research is to make visible the resonances between theory and practice, and to identify potential
lines of action that could be taken back to the practitioners and policy makers involved in
commoning processes discuss whether or not a transformation towards the commons as a form of
social organisation is feasible and worth risking, while constantly asking the question: Do we have a
common cause?