Commoning toward urban resilience: The role of trust, social cohesion, and involvement in a simulated urban commons setting

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate the potential of urban commons for building community resilience. We focus on the issue of adaptability to socio-ecological issues, which depends on the social capital built by the local community of practice. We measure this capital through the variables of volunteer involvement, perceived trust, and social cohesion in an agent-based model, which simulates the dynamics of participation in collective activities. We anchor our model with the case of KasKantine in Amsterdam, a cooperative and restaurant run by volunteers. Our model shows that both trust and social cohesion emerge from the interactions in the cooperative, especially when group sizes are kept small. This contributes to the adaptability of such social-ecological systems, helping their communities build social resilience. Recent research has placed emphasis on processes of co-production and collective governance as drivers of urban resilience (

Characterizing the Social-Ecological System for Inland Freshwater Salinization using Fuzzy Cognitive Maps: Implications for Collective Management

“…They are not simply a means for stakeholders to advocate their own interests, a common challenge in collaborative governance. 42,43 This framing of the process increases the likelihood that future collaborations to address salinization in the Occoquan will be successful, [44][45][46][47] but does not guarantee it, particularly as the focus of such collaborations broadens to include the sewershed, which is both more contested and brings new groups of stakeholders to the table.…”

Urban Commons and Collective Action to Address Climate Change

“…As pointed out above, trust-building is an essential characteristic of well-functioning common property systems. As empirical research suggests (Feinberg et al, 2020;Rogge et al, 2018), smaller group sizes are more likely to sustain trust and social cohesion. This, perhaps, also indicates that the "community" to start with should not be too big and involve too many stakeholders, also taking into consideration Ostrom's critical design principle of having welldemarcated resource areas to be governed and/or managed.…”

“Governing the urban commons”: DLT, institutions, and citizens in perspective

“…Perhaps the most important contribution of urban commons is as a self-governance framework that centers the preservation of urban ecosystems (and their multiple benefits) as integral parts of neighborhoods rather than an afterthought of land use planning (Colding and Barthel, 2013; Mundoli et al, 2017). Urban commons therefore enables and cultivates socio-spatially contextualized resilience amidst overly restrictive and oftentimes irrelevant government plans about urban space and its uses (Feinberg et al, 2020).…”

“…Key promises of urban commoning and commons include: the amelioration of the mismatch between the top-down planning (and design and management) of urban spaces and the actual needs and capacities of its users (Bradley, 2015;Huron, 2017;Linebaugh, 2008;Stavrides, 2016) and, as a result, the cultivation of local social capital for locally relevant and inclusive resilience (Petrescu et al, 2016). This largely bottom-up adaptive governance process that increases social capital and enables communities to develop resilience based on their own capacities, values, meanings, and social-spatial dynamics (Feinberg et al, 2020). Perhaps the most important contribution of urban commons is as a self-governance framework that centers the preservation of urban ecosystems (and their multiple benefits) as integral parts of neighborhoods rather than an afterthought of land use planning (Colding and Barthel, 2013;Mundoli et al, 2017).…”