Radical Participation and the Commons: Inventing Spaces of Change

Radical Participation and the Commons: Inventing Spaces of Change is a groundbreaking interdisciplinary publication that critically examines and redefines the role of participation in shaping urban environments. At a time when participation is increasingly used as a rhetorical tool by institutions and private interests, this book challenges top-down, co-opted models and instead foregrounds grassroots, collective action as a driver of real spatial transformation. Through contributions from leading scholars, architects, planners, and activist collectives worldwide, the book investigates how communities invent participatory processes to reclaim space, resources, and agency—positioning participation as a relational, emancipatory, and counter-hegemonic practice.
Bridging theory and praxis, Radical Participation and the Commons is structured around key thematic areas: the subjects of participation (who participates and how agency is constructed); the practices and forms of grassroots and middle-up participation; the interaction between institutions and counter-institutions, where participation either reinforces dominant power structures or subverts them; and the transitions and emancipatory potentials that determine whether participatory practices remain radical or risk co-optation. These themes are explored through a diverse set of academic essays, in-depth case studies, and conversations with practitioners who are actively engaged in participatory urban processes.
A truly global endeavor, this book includes case studies and insights from Latin America, Africa, Asia, and Europe, featuring renowned contributors. These voices bring perspectives from informal urban settlements, cooperative housing initiatives, architectural activism, and alternative governance structures—offering valuable lessons for both academic audiences and grassroots communities working to build more just cities.
Designed as both a critical text and a practical handbook, the book will be richly illustrated with diagrams, images, and maps, making complex ideas accessible and actionable. It will serve as an essential resource for academics, students, urban practitioners, and community organizers looking to engage with participatory urbanism in ways that resist neoliberal co-optation and foster spatial justice.

______________________________________________________________

Themes' key questions: 

1. Subjects of participation: Who are the agents of participation? How do marginalized communities and grassroot movements invent participation? How do diverse groups and identities intersect in reclaiming their right to affordable housing, public spaces, and urban infrastructure for all? What communities of practice are created and how do they operate? 

2. Practices, forms & models: What types of participatory practices, forms, and models are there? How do these models operate in everyday life? How can participation operate as a lesson, narrative, habit, demand, relationship, need or form of care? 

3. Institutions & Counter-Institutions: How do participatory practices and models interact with dominant urban institutions, including legal and financial frameworks? How are they supported or hindered by them? What types of counter-institutions do participatory grassroot movements form to reimagine urban citizenship and challenge or bypass existing institutional frameworks that fail to address their needs or perpetuate inequalities? 

4. Transitions & Emancipatory potentials: Participatory practices and the counter-institutions they form can be fluid or temporary, transitioning and adapting to immediate needs or specific struggles as time passes by. How do they transform and what does their transition mean in the wider context? What can catalyze their instigation and change over time? Do they become part of the mainstream or how do they avoid co-optation? What collective memory do they leave behind and what urban imaginaries and emancipatory potentialities do they create for the future?