Housing the Commons 4: Ecology and Agency

Under what conditions does housing become a commons? Housing the Commons is a series of four thematic roundtables exploring the scope of commons in housing and of housing commons in the city.

For the last decades, housing commons have become synonymous with voluntary adherence to strict environmental controls in construction and everyday use. The closing event of the series explores issues of environmental responsibility at individual and collective levels, focusing on the tensions between accountability and freedom, appropriation and gentrification, in the neoliberal city.  We are joined by Mohsen Mostafavi, editor of the anthologies Ecological Urbanism (2016) and Ethics of the Urban (2017), Fran Tonkiss, author of Cities by Design: The Social Life of Urban Form (2013), and Luca Pattaroni, editor of La contreculture domestiquée: art, espace et politique dans la ville ‘gentrifiée’ (2020).

Speakers: Prof. Mohsen Mostafavi (GSD Harvard), Prof. Fran Tonkiss (London School of Economics), Dr. Luca Pattaroni (Urban Sociology Laboratory EPFL) and Irina Davidovici (EPFL and ETH).