From Urban Commons to Rural-Urban Commoning
How Can Rural Revitalization Benefit from Commoning Practices?
This article was compiled from a talk delivered online at the Village Commons Symposium, a hybrid event hosted by the Faculty of Architecture, University of Hong Kong, on 29 April 2023.
Thank you to friends at the University of Hong Kong for this wonderful opportunity to join a conversation on village commoning. In the title of my short presentation today — From Urban Commons to Rural-Urban Commoning, you may notice the two distinct threads: first, from Urban to Rural-Urban, and second, from Commons to Commoning. I will tell you more about some of the conceptual connections and distinctions in the next few minutes.
First, as a background, I come to the topic of commons and commoning as a community design scholar, looking at how design can be a vehicle for civic engagement and community building. I have researched and practiced community design since the 1990s. My community design work spans inner-city immigrant communities from the United States to rural communities in East Asia, particularly Taiwan, during a time that represented a formative part of my career.
Borderless Practices
Much of my work in those days approached community as having relatively well-defined or stable boundaries, membership, and identities. Around a decade ago, I started to notice emerging practices, particularly in East Asia, that challenge those assumptions. In 2015, I applied for and received a Fulbright Scholarship to carry out some fieldwork in Taiwan. During that time, I also took the opportunity to visit Hong Kong to look at similar initiatives.
These emerging, “borderless” practices coincided with an important shift in the literature on commons — a shift that was characterized by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri (2009) in their book Commonwealth. Essentially, the focus on commons has shifted from that of material commons (air, water, etc.) to practices that are defined more by the production of social relationships as well as those not based on material resources (knowledge, languages, code, information, affects, etc.).
During my fieldwork in Taiwan, I followed groups and initiatives such as Do You a Flavor (DYAF) （人生百味）and their project “Stone Soup” which involved soliciting donated food materials and volunteers, cooking together, and sharing meals with the unhoused people on the street. Hundreds of people have signed up for these activities — people who often did not know each other but were connected through the initiative because of their shared interest in helping others.
The event was typically held on the last weekend of each month. The volunteers did not just hand out food but would sit down and share a meal with the homeless whose primary struggle was not just the lack of income but also social isolation and stigma. DYAF had another project called Lives on the Street. Different from traditional community organizing, they used a hackathon-style workshop to have volunteers develop preliminary solutions, a format that was particularly welcomed by young people.
In yet another project — They developed these products for street vendors that were meant to appeal more to a wider audience — dried banana chips, organic black tea, etc., that would link together vendors, organic food producers, and consumers. The revenue was divided proportionally among the different actors. Compared to the earlier community design work that focused on well-defined, geographical communities, these recent practices linked together actors and communities and enabled sharing and exchanges.
Another fascinating project that I followed in Taipei at the time was the Gufeng White Hut（古風小白屋）, a formerly vacant space owned by the government that was first turned into a makeshift tool library by a group of volunteers. The place evolved into a community makerspace and repair clinic run by additional volunteers and open to neighbors and non-neighbors alike — a vacant space activated through sharing.
Instead of performing the repairs for the residents, the volunteers would teach people how to fix the appliances. It was clearly not just about the material resources. Here, the act of repairing becomes a process of sharing, co-creation, and community-building. The model has since been replicated in other neighborhoods in Taiwan, connecting even more people and networks that previously existed alone.
Defying Assumptions
Commons in theory is defined as existing outside of the realms of market and the state. As another feature that defies assumptions, many of these projects in Taipei were supported by government programs, including the Open Green Program which supports community placemaking as a mechanism for bottom-up, community-driven neighborhood regeneration. The program provides different tiers of funding for different scales of interventions that could be carried out in both public and private spaces, defying yet another assumption or preoccupation.
Unlike past community placemaking projects in Taipei that were limited only to community members, under the Open Green program, anyone — nonprofits, professionals, and/or artists can propose projects that demonstrate community benefits. This feature allowed a broad range of actors and stakeholders to become involved in placemaking and urban regeneration efforts by sharing and bringing with them expertise and resources that local communities don’t typically have access to, in a sort of open-sourced urban regeneration process.
One of the most remarkable examples of open-sourced commons in Taiwan was Nanji Rice（南機拌飯）, a community hub located in the basement of this large apartment complex. The site was a bit reminiscent of the Kowloon Walled City (although it was no comparison in scale). But it was in fact one of the most advanced modern buildings in the city when it was completed in the 1960s with a large central courtyard to bring in daylight and fresh air.
The space that Nanji Rice occupied was once used as a wet market but was vacant for many years. In 2015, a young architecture school graduate (left) applied for an Open Green grant to renovate a portion of the basement space in the hope of activating the space. In December 2015, we became the first users of this space when we organized a workshop on sharing city and urban commoning there. We chose the location with the hope that perhaps more people might be interested in activating the space.
From Nanji Rice to IMMA
To my very pleasant surprise — a few months later — several organizations did move in and started to turn the space into an active community hub that enabled a wide variety of initiatives, including a community market organized through a collaboration of social service organizations in the district, and a monthly repair clinic initiated and run by young professional volunteers. People who need repairs can sign up or just bring their home appliances here and get them repaired for free. The same space was used for exercise lessons for residents in the building, run also by a volunteer (a retired health professional).
The space also functioned as a recycling depot organized in partnership with a clothing company that upcycles plastic bottles for their lines of clothing. Because of the partnership, they were able to pay a higher price for the recyclers who were mostly older adults. On an everyday basis, Nanji Rice also provided a space for staff and neighbors to bond over meals, conversations, stories, and various informal exchanges and social activities. These activities were critical to building a sense of community and collective ownership, reciprocity, and so on.
It’s important to note the personal and emotional costs of running such a space. With the turnover of staff and a rent hike, members of Nanji Rice decided to disband in 2020. But even before the group disbanded, other members of the group leased an even larger space in the same basement. The new space is now called IMMA（一碼）. At 1,300 square meters, IMMA functions as an even larger multifunctional hub with more flexible spaces for events, involving a greater number of partners.
They included a second-hand thrift shop for the neighborhood, itself a collaboration between multiple social service organizations, as well as a full-service community makerspace where neighbors and volunteers could come and access the tools they need or get help. The combination of the second-hand shop and the makerspace provided opportunities to offer classes on repairs, reuse, and recycling. There is also a regular secondhand market to promote a culture of repair, reuse, and recycling. One can also find co-working spaces with a shared conference room. It was like Nanji Rice getting a full upgrade.
In May 2021, after a year with practically zero COVID-19 cases locally, the Wanhua district where IMMA was located became the epicenter of the worst outbreak in Taiwan. Initially closed down like everywhere else, IMMA soon took on a new role as a temporary logistics center for the community where donations would arrive and get sorted and distributed to those in need with the help of staff and volunteers. This operation was accomplished through a collaboration among the groups that have been working together all these years, with IMMA providing the space and logistical support and other groups in charge of either fundraising, soliciting donations, or distributing the food and supplies to those in need. The operation also provided jobs for those who were out of work during the pandemic.
From Urban Commons to Rural-Urban Commoning
What do these cases tell us about commons and commoning? Compared with the traditional notion of commons as basically a closed system to prevent free riders and depletion of resources, the examples I have presented to you today are characterized instead by their open borders without a strict form of membership or affinity. Rather than commons as being a finite pool of resources, there is practically no limit to the processes of sharing and commoning since those borders are eliminated.
The processes of commoning can be an important mechanization for village conservation and revitalization, coming back to the theme of the symposium. Specifically, they can help many village communities overcome barriers in terms of isolation and limited networks and resources, especially if those commoning practices could transcend the rural-urban divide, which takes us to the notion of rural-urban commoning.
Commoning across the rural-urban divide can be a powerful way of bringing together actors and assets that can be complementary and even synergistic. It can overcome the social and cultural barriers that have been obstacles to a more just and reciprocal relationship between rural and urban communities.
There are examples of this sort of rural-urban commoning already. The bookstore Book Congee （書粥）, located in a remote area of Coastal Taitung County in Taiwan, has been functioning as a commons for urban travelers and rural residents. Folks from the city would sign up to serve as temporary store managers in exchange for lodging. During their stay, these travelers/store managers would build relationships with the locals and learn about rural life in ways that would not have been possible without the existence of the bookstore.
Another example, Xiwei Peninsula（西尾半島）, is a café/store located on Nangan in the Matsu archipelago, off the coast of Fujian, China. Similar to Book Congee, the store/café has been an important meeting point between the locals and community design professionals from the outside. Together, they explore ways of learning and collaboration that bring the local culture and food materials to a much wider audience. The collaboration has brought greater social and economic benefits to the local community, in addition to friendship and camaraderie.
Lastly, just one more example, a self-organized childcare co-op in the indigenous village of Sanhe（三和）in rural Pingtung County in Taiwan has functioned not only as a place for busy parents working in the city to have peace of mind knowing that their kids received proper care. They also introduced opportunities for children to learn about traditional knowledge and cultural practices. Through crowdfunding, the project also brings resources and support from urban donors across the rural and urban divide.
To quickly conclude, I hope my presentation today demonstrates for you how the concepts of commons and commoning may be relevant to village conservation and revitalization. Specifically, such border-crossing commoning can help overcome the divide between the rural and the urban as well as the limitations of the current model of community-engaged planning and design. The spaces of networks and flows can serve as fertile ground for a new form of community building. I look forward to the discussion in a moment. Thank you.
Reference:
Hardt, M., and A. Negri. 2009. Commonwealth. Cambridge, MA, and London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
