Collective actions and social struggles for the right to the city and the commons, and their role in spatial planning

This study examined whether Sociocracy (also known as the Sociocratic Circle Method) could function as a tool of grassroots governance within the context of commons, focusing on collective action, the production of shared urban commons, and the reconfiguration of power in local governance. The case study focused on the Youth Council of the Municipality of Thermi, a unique case in Greece and Europe where Sociocracy has been implemented as a decision-making method at the municipal level. Using a combination of autoethnography and unstructured and semi-structured interviews, the research revealed that the Sociocratic Circle Method fosters new forms of collective political subjectivities, governance practices and commons-based social relations emerging through equal participation, collective decision-making process and consent. Through this process, participants developed communication, organisational, and deliberative skills, while simultaneously cultivating a collective right to participate in the production and governance of urban space (right to the city) that transcends party frameworks and conventional deliberative practices. Sociocracy served as a tool for personal and collective empowerment, enabling members to overcome an exclusionary mindset and experience collective action as a means of social change within the urban space of Thermi and beyond. It also fostered inclusion, equality in dialogue, and the recognition of care as a politically productive value within urban commons. Despite initial reservations regarding its effectiveness and the risk of “partisan exploitation,” the results demonstrated that sociocracy fosters political maturity, critical thinking, and a sense of collective power. The Youth Council of the Municipality of Thermi, operating as a municipal-scale governance practice of the right to the city, exemplified the principles of participation and democratic co-creation. This demonstrates that young people can actively contribute to the development of local policies and promote bottom-up urban transformation through collective action. Keywords: sociocracy, participatory governance, youth participation, urban commons, collective action, grassroots urban planning

The paper examines the radically transforming rural geographies of the Greek territory under the framing of climate crisis resilience, focusing on the ways the periphery is restructured as an active, contested field of spatial reconfigurations. The analysis is framed within the concept of planetary urbanization (Brenner, 2015; Brenner & Schmid, 2015), drawing from Henri Lefebvre’s proposition of complete urbanization ([1970] 2003), which it critically reinterprets by bringing into focus the transformative dynamics of everyday life and relational space as a multiplicity of trajectories in constant negotiation (Massey, 2005). The research focuses on Agrafa and North Evia, examined not as external to urbanization processes but as spatialities produced within extended urbanization. Emphasis is placed on climate-accelerated restructuring, such as energy investments and post-disaster reconstruction, which intensify socio-spatial inequalities while creating new grounds for collective struggle. In this context, local mobilizations—such as the Save Agrafa movement and initiatives against the Northern Evia Reconstruction Plan—are analyzed as practices of reclaiming the commons (Stavros Stavrides, 2016, 2019, 2024), through which landscape and resources are reimagined as use values and fields of collective action. Using ethnographic methods through the lens of situated knowledge (Donna Haraway, 1988), the research highlights how grassroots practices challenge dominant spatial planning models and contribute to the emergence of alternative forms of spatial organization. This paper aims to critically reposition the “context of context” framework (Brenner & Schmid, 2015), shifting analysis from the macro-scale of capitalist processes toward situated social action, highlighting the potential for collective production of space and reinterpretation of planetary urbanization through social struggles. The study argues that planetary urbanization is not merely a process of capitalist spatial integration, but also a field of contested spatialities where social struggles redefine the right to centrality as a collective practice, critically expanding Lefebvre’s right to the city.

The collective urban domain enables the enactment of values, such as notions of ownership, the right to resources and territory, and ideologies about human life in the realm of existence. In a world increasingly directed by consumerism, this century has been termed ‘the century of the self’ . Today, as world-class urbanization focuses on market-oriented development, urban space that offers no monetary value is perceived as wasteful by the consumerist mantra. In a parallel and contrary scenario, alternative modes of personal engagement with place are observed across the Pakistani city. Of the most unique of these is the use of the urban commons for acts of service, such as the street school, the neighbourhood water cooler, the bird-feeding node, the langar (free food distribution). These acts may be termed anti-self-interest, and are largely motivated by the altruistic motive: the unselfish regard for, or devotion to, the welfare of others , at personal risk or personal expense. In the words of Monroe , ‘where the rest of us see a stranger, the altruist sees a fellow human being’. The research takes the city of Lahore as case, exploring narratives of altruism, and manners in which space in the urban collective domain is appropriated by individuals and communities for these acts. These extend to the appropriation of the road, the street, the footpath, and the green patch- as ‘spaces for all’. The research also brings to light the socio-cultural logic informing the perception of the collective realm in Lahore, a city originating in a traditional urban form. Taking specific enactments of altruistic practices in the common realm, the research explores engagement and occupation, territory and autonomy, and the broader relationship of altruistic acts in public space with the culturally framed imaginaries of ‘self-and-world’.

Petorca, in central Chile, has become a global emblem of hydrosocial injustice produced by water privatisation. Since the 1981 Water Code, water rights have been captured by avocado agribusiness, while about 20% of the local population receives water from cistern trucks —100 litres per person per day, against 170 in Santiago— with which households must sustain all reproductive activities. This burden falls disproportionately on women, who daily stretch scarce water across cooking, hygiene, laundry and care work, at the cost of their health, time and well-being. This contribution reflects on Nuestra casa, nuestro cauce (Our House, Our Watercourse), a community manual for the self-management of domestic water co-produced over two years by La Gota Negra, a hidrofeminist collective of geographers, together with women's organisations and rural water committees of Petorca, supported by the Universidad de Chile. While anchored in women's situated knowledge and reproductive labour, the manual was conceived as an inclusive territorial tool engaging the wider community —men, youth, schools and local organisations. Drawing on participatory action research and grounded in feminist political ecology and community ecofeminism (Cabnal, Paredes, Federici, Rivera Cusicanqui), it articulates four interwoven axes: ancestral and local water knowledges; legal literacy against water theft and contamination; domestic assessment of drinking water quality; and ecological reuse —dry toilets, efficient plumbing, homemade non-toxic products— that protect water as it flows between bodies, households and territories. Read through Holloway's theory of cracks and Stavrides' notion of the commons, the manual is interpreted as a feminist commoning practice that prefigures alternative hydrosocial relations within and against the neoliberal regime. The paper places Petorca in dialogue with feminist water struggles across Abya Yala and the Mediterranean —two arid, deeply unequal hydrosocial worlds— offering insights for collective action and feminist territorial pedagogies travelling between both shores.

This contribution presents the key insights of a forthcoming book that examines how commons and state institutions encounter one another across diverse socio spatial contexts. Emerging from a four-year interdisciplinary research project, the book brings together 12 case studies from Europe and beyond, whose transversal and interdisciplinary reading challenges state centric and binary framings of support or opposition that continue to dominate debates on the role of the state in commons governance. Building on this work, the presentation shifts the debate from whether commons should develop with or without the state to what actually happens in everyday encounters between commoning practices and different forms of state authority. These encounters unfold when commoning practices ‘meet’ planning offices, land registries, municipal agendas, permit systems, policy frameworks and informal negotiations. The analysis shows that commons and states cannot be treated as pre given, coherent entities. Instead, they are understood as relational practices that are continuously reshaped through negotiation, contestation, friction and cooperation. The book reveals a spectrum of state–commons interactions, across which commons may operate within legal frameworks while contesting them, appropriate institutional tools through alternate ethics and for alternative ends, or deliberately keep the state at a distance; often combining these strategies at once. Recognizing the difficulty of escaping state‑centric vocabularies to study commons, the book develops an action‑oriented vocabulary, organised around verbs such as reclaim, negotiate, embed, generate, and reconfigure, to read encounters as productive sites of institutional innovation and socio-spatial transformation rather than problems to be resolved. By foregrounding situated struggles over land, housing, food, and urban space, the contribution speaks directly to debates on socio‑spatial inequalities, participatory planning, and the politics of commoning, offering critical insights for scholars, activists, and practitioners engaged in struggles for more just and collective urban futures.

Splantzia Square—officially 1821 Square—constitutes one of the central public spaces in the old town of Chania, retaining its significance since the Ottoman period. The square and its surroundings host a layered assemblage of historical elements, including Venetian churches, an Ottoman minaret, an underground cistern and a centuries-old plane tree as a landmark at the center. Today, however, the square is predominantly occupied by the outdoor seating areas of adjacent commercial establishments, which expand seasonally in alignment with tourism flows, producing a temporally bounded landscape of leisure and consumption. Over the past decade, municipal interventions have gradually removed the benches that once enabled everyday sociality and non-commercial use. Framed as measures to deter “undesirable” presences, these practices can be understood as forms of exclusionary urban governance that reshape the conditions of access and use. In line with critical debates on the commodification of public space, such transformations undermine inhabitants’ right to the city by restricting possibilities for unmediated presence, encounter, and appropriation. Within this context, the self-organized carnival initiated by the Yar Aman music collective offers a counter-practice of spatial reclamation. Following a performative procession through the city, participants converge on Splantzia Square, where the space is temporarily reappropriated through music, dance, and collective festivity. For several hours, the square is reactivated through music, dance, and collective celebration, foregrounding alternative modes of belonging and participation. This ephemeral yet recurrent event exemplifies practices of reclaiming public space. By examining these contrasting dynamics, the paper highlights the tensions between tourism-driven gentrification and grassroots forms of spatial appropriation, contributing to broader discussions on the politics of public space in contemporary cities.

Drawing from the reclaiming movement of Kasteli Hill (Chania, Creta), in this presentation, we explore the notion of common space, which was adopted by the radical wing of the struggle of reokupation of Rosa Nera, in conversation with Foucault's Heterotopias, Holloway's and Stavride's thinking. By analyzing –from a militant research perspective– the participants’ discourse, we reflect on common space through the theoretical contributions of Stavrides. We argue that common space constitutes a discourse which: consider space as the material basis of autonomy; removes the barriers that fragment subjects into identities and promotes change as the result of that encounter; focuses on the act of sharing space as a key element for social transformation; implies an internal conflict over the forms that will prevail within it; points to a dialectical conflict between emerging utopias and the capitalist order. Finally, a symbolic transition experience is produced: passengers of the space undergo experiences of individual transformation. Taking this into account, we return and reconsider the basic assumption of Foucault's Heterotopias considered the Other Spaces not just spaces that, besides they difference with normality, contributes to the constitution of order, but as spatial crisis that crack its robust dimension and presents the space as fragile, full of crisis, spaces that inflame the antagonisms of the city and re-constitute the class composition and thus, class struggle. Key words: Foucault, Heterotopias, common space, Stavrides, Social movements, Rosa Nera, Holloway

The concept of re-existence originates from the struggles of seringueiros (rubber tappers) of the Amazon in Brazil (“Aliança dos Povos da Floresta”) and was formulated by the geographer Porto-Gonçalves (1998). The Zapatista uprising that began in Chiapas, Mexico, in 1994 (organizacion from 1984), the struggles of the Indigenous Congress, the recent Zapatista journey to Europe, and the arts and sciences encounters in Zapatista communities have highlighted this relationship in a remarkable way. The concept of “geo-histories against the grain” is introduced in geography through the speaks of Christy Petropoulou and Alberto Betancourt, which are inspired by the works of Walter Benjamin about historie against the grain and Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui. The concept of the culture of resistance derives from the work of Stathis Damianakos. The concept of cracks in the system derives from the work of John Holloway. The concept of re-existence in territories with a deep history of rebellious tradition, is understood as the power of a fresh start, of rebirth, of attributing new meanings or renewing the meanings of existence, of life with its own horizons of meaning rather than Agamben’s bare life (Hurtado & Porto-Gonçalves) like cracks in the system (Holloway). And they do this by utilising grassroots cultural actions, street arts, and other “bottom-up” cultural expressions. In this paper, we will mapping oral geo-histories recorded within the framework of ReexistAtlas in certain cultural geographies related to re-emergence, since for many years they had been rendered invisible, in neighbourhoods and communities with strong characteristics of self-organisation, and anti-patriarchal, anti-colonial, and anti-capitalist approaches, in Greece, Mexico, and Chile. Atlas began with active militant research in Mexico and Chile and was enriched with material from the group’s participation in the assembly for the Zapatistas’ trip to Greece.

“Brushing history against the grain” is a metaphor by Walter Benjamin (“Theses on the Philosophy of History”) that proposes interpreting history in opposition to the dominant narrative of the victors. Adolfo Gilly also used this expression for a collection of texts in his book “History Against the Grain. A Constellation”. The concept of geohistories againthegrain is introduced in geography through the speaks of Petropoulou, Betancourt et al. The concept of re-existence stems from the struggles of Amazonian rubber tappers in Brazil (“Aliança dos Povos da Floresta”, Chico Mendes) and was formulated by Porto-Gonçalves (1998). It has since been used to describe social movements that do not merely resist, but rather struggle for concrete forms of existence, for multiple specific ways of living, producing, feeling, acting and thinking. The “Reexist-ATLAS” examines re-existences as forms of resistance against processes of accumulation by dispossession (Harvey) and land grabbing – monetarization, and how these manifest in cities and on the peripheries through the creation of commons. Within this framework, the concept of the struggle for Land and Freedom draws on the 1910 Mexican social revolution and the Plan of Ayala, the contemporary Zapatista uprising, and the Zapatista delegation’s visit to Europe. These struggles are understood as efforts to create new worlds “from below.” They oppose the deprivation of land, both within urban environments and in peripheral outskirts. They resist large-scale destructive projects, including so-called “green” industrial energy initiatives and they encompass struggles for water and food, the commons -resources increasingly treated as exploitable commodities. These reflections are also evident in self-sufficiency projects of eco-communities and agroecological initiatives. Methodologically, this work adopts an activist action research approach, in which the researcher actively participates in the research process in Mexico, Brazil, Greece. The research process both enriches social knowledge and fosters action towards social change.

Amid the deepening urban and environmental crisis characterized by touristification, overlapping crises of precarious housing conditions, degradation of social reproduction and climate risk, urban space becomes increasingly perceived as a space of exhaustion, dispossession, and struggles for alternative forms of social organization and social practices. The paper contributes to this discussion by investigating how practices of commoning emerge as locally grounded reactions to neoliberal threats associated with tourism-oriented urbanization processes. The research is grounded on the theoretical connection between “the right to the city” (Lefebvre; Harvey) and the “societies in movement” described by Zibechi, which offers an empirical lens through which to examine how grassroots resistance reconstructs the urban fabric. Building upon the idea of urban commons proposed by Stavrides and the concept of collective action by Ostrom, the paper builds on the concept of commoning. Empirically, the analysis is based on the study of two Italian cities, Naples and Venice, which are heavily influenced by tourism development but follow different urban trajectories. Although the Venetian example may be considered as the most radical case of a dependency on tourism, resulting in far-reaching consequences for access to housing and depopulation, the current situation in Naples can be viewed as one where the valorization of intangible cultural heritage is being negotiated against the processes of touristification. In both cases, the growth of vacation rentals and the commodification of urban space have exacerbated conflicts over housing, access, and social reproduction. The data are collected via a set of semi-structured interviews with actors involved in housing disputes and urban commons projects, including activists, grassroots organizations, and local actors. Special emphasis is put on the ways in which these actors create socio-material infrastructures.Through this process, it identifies the commons as an indispensable space of reinventing the right to the city.

This paper draws on the ongoing research project Radical Rituals to explore emerging paradigms of spatial practice grounded in collective agency, care, and justice in contexts marked by infrastructural neglect and environmental stress. Against the backdrop of intersecting ecological, social, and political crises, the paper revisits the concept of “radical design” not as an aesthetic or expert-led intervention, but as a relational, performative, and regenerative process embedded in everyday life. Particular attention is given to mundane and infra-ordinary rituals—often overlooked practices of maintenance, repair, and care—as critical tools through which communities reclaim space, sustain engagement, and contest dispossession. Based on empirical research with initiatives across Europe and within urban–rural entanglements, the paper examines how local actors engage in shared rituals of commoning, stewardship, and cooperation in response to housing insecurity, uneven access to infrastructure, and exclusion from planning and governance. These practices operate simultaneously as forms of spatial care and political agency: they sustain collective action over time while fostering belonging, resilience, and new forms of social organization. Although rooted in specific localities, such rituals resonate across geographies, suggesting how place-based struggles can connect and scale without losing their situated character. The paper is informed by an ongoing performative journey along the 45ºN parallel, which functions both as method and metaphor. This axis connects disparate contexts through a shared inquiry into how communities mobilize ritualized practices to claim space and shape alternative urban futures. Rather than producing a static archive, the research adopts the lens of the anarchive—an open, evolving system of knowledge that foregrounds localized expertise, affective labor, and environmental attunement. Ultimately, the paper argues that collective agency and struggles for the commons are transformative forces in spatial planning, revealing how spatial justice and the right to the city emerge through interdependent practices of care, cooperation, and everyday resistance.

This presentation is grounded in my doctoral research* which aligns with the themes of this panel on urban struggles and the production of space. Social relations of domination are realized in space and through space. Classes, as well as the various social groups that compose them, require space in order to exist, reproduce themselves, and represent themselves. Conflicts over urban and public space are therefore not merely territorial conflicts over the appropriation of the use value of space, but also existential conflicts. They constitute a confrontation between, on the one hand, a system that relentlessly seeks to integrate or systematically eliminate the spatial practices, representations of space, representational spaces, symbols, and organizational possibilities of the proletariat as well as marginalized and oppressed groups; and, on the other hand, those groups themselves, who survive this onslaught and oppose it through resistance and struggle. The right to the city, collective actions and autonomous experiences stand in opposition to developer-led urbanism and its security-oriented and consumerist ideology. Space, however, is not merely the product of a power imposed upon it; it may also emerge from the interrelation between social agencies, thereby constituting a field of possibilities for the existence of multiplicities — both a form of rupture and a source of rupture. Spaces of struggle, as well as alternative and oppositional spaces, are (re)produced through this potential for rupture, introducing the possibility of multiplicities both in uses and in representations. Based on this theoretical stand, I analyze, on the one hand, the strategies of dispossession and appropriation of public space deployed by homogenizing powers and, on the other hand, the strategies of resistance, contestation, and reappropriation of that space developed through urban struggles, drawing on empirical cases of urban struggles in the two cities of Caen (France) and Athens (Greece).

This research engages with debates on the right to the city, the city as commons, and anti-colonial feminist struggles, examining how gender-based violence, in particular femicide, is contested through collective, situated practices of memory-making. It asks how marginalized subjects reclaim presence, visibility and spatial belonging in contexts where dominant regimes of memory erase the geographies of violence. Drawing on anti-patriarchal and anti-colonial perspectives, this research approaches urban space as a contested common shaped through struggle, where everyday practices can open ''cracks'' in hegemonic structures. Within this framework, it explores how grassroots, embodied practices generate alternative spatial knowledges that challenge institutional silencing and dominant narratives. Methodologically, the research combines qualitative and digital approaches. It analyses the feminist protest song Canción sin miedo, which originally emerged in Mexico as a collective act of mourning and resistance against femicides, tracing the transnational circulation of the song across Abya Yala Afro-Latin America and into the Mediterranean, particularly Greece. A dataset of publicly available performances on YouTube is compiled and synthesized into a map that visualizes the geographies articulated through lyrics, translating dispersed, affective narratives into forms of counter-mapping. In addition, the study traces the rhizomatic circulation of the song within Greece between 2022 and 2024 mapping the performances through which it spread. This is complemented by semi-structured interviews with participants involved in this process, providing insights into the rhizomatic spread. The research conceptualizes these practices as rhizomatic, decentralized, iterative and expanding across territories through networks of solidarity. Through song as an embodied, collective practice, collectives produce intangible counter-memorials that inscribe violence and invisibility into space while asserting claims to justice and the commons. It thus highlights how feminist, anti-colonial practices of remembrance reconfigure space and enact the right to the city beyond formal narratives.