Urban Commons and their Degradation
By Tejatha Hallur
Urban commons can be defined as a place, building or an urban resource for which the citizens of that particular region take opportunity to manage and reframe the cost of living in the city based on the maintenance cost in relation with the market driven costs (Gidwani & Baviskar, 2011). Citizens in such communities will have a relatively significant role than the public authorities and the governing bodies. Considering the historical notations, commons are referred to as the natural resources such as rivers, forest etc. that were collectively managed by the communities that used them irrespective of the private and public governing bodies. Moreover, this form of collective management practice is observed to be gradually declined with the rise in mercantilism and consolidation of liberal states. But with the reinvention of urban commons, the collective management through commons has resurfaced with the adaptations to social and solidarity economy.
Urban Commons and its relationship with communities
Urban commons are to be considered as places that are appropriated by the citizens of the city in the aims to ensure that these places are protected. They can be public places, buildings, parks, particular localities etc. and they can be of many forms depending on the decisions of citizens who use it. Urban commons often have certain rules defined not by the government but by the city itself and by the people who live in these places. For example, few places like Sankey Tank, Bangalore Lake in the city of Bangalore are being managed and protected by the citizens of the city considering them as urban commons. However, the common’s sustenance depends on the operations and actions such as monitoring, regulation of access, production etc. of a community. A community can be observed to be have formed around the accessibility to these commons as both commons and the communities residing in it go hand in hand (De Angelis, 2005). Communities can be defined as the social groups that have concern over the defined common. The association of a common to a social group can identify the common that sustains it.
Moreover, urban commons can in some cases be places of conflicts (Goldman, 1998) and the interest over these communities exist at different levels. They can be contained spatially and mutually conflicting with the public management systems or cooperating. Communities which define these urban commons may be conflicting with the communities which don’t consider them as the commons and hence they relate differently to the same commons relatively. With the influence of ideological and emotional pointers and other utilitarian reasons, the individuals who belong to the communities may incline towards cooperating to the commons or some may clash over governing rules of the commons. Moreover, citizens of different commons have different motives and they certainly belong to different communities and hence there exists a political correlation between the communities and its commons.
Bangalore and its Commons
As mentioned above Bangalore is an advanced cosmopolitan city characterised by its diversity and various kinds of resources and communal capacities such as the mobility systems, networks of Services and infrastructure, public spaces, urban topography, history and heritage etc. that support the lifestyle. The differences in the expectations, needs and the capabilities of the communities, about the public infrastructures generate biased and political opinions. New and re-established commons like parks, recreation centres, public libraries etc. are essential for the sustenance and the support of communities. Urban public infrastructures eventually be considered as urban commons that have need to be reproduced through mutual engagement and re-imagination. Concerns caused by the lack of such infrastructures contribute to the urban life in the country.
Complications in the transformation of commons are often observed in expansion of cities. As new communities are introducing into the commons, problems concerning the community transformation arise. Lakes that are under the urban commons of Bangalore city are one such example. Institutional problems in the transformation of village to urban commons can be categorised among the degrading factors for such commons. Rajapalaya Lake which was named after its adjacent village Rajapalaya was introduced as an urban common for the citizens of a relatively urbanised KM Pura neighbourhood. The problems were observed in the urban land transformation of the lake from an irrigation facility to a land that is in abandoned and further to a future lake. This suggested conflicting claims over the institutional governance. Moreover, it indicates the relationship between the commons, community and the role of planning in practice.
Re-invention of Commons
However, the issue of the Rajapalaya Tank is arguable as the tank ceased to be one of the urban commons after the transformation from village economy to urban as a result of the diminished interest in the communities. The concerns of the irrigation communities also diminished and the management is taken over by the planning and governance systems. However, the main concern was observed with the changed population in the locality with little to no interest in the Rajapalaya Tank. Though the locality of the tank was thought to be defined as an urban common, the topography has negated the argument as it stood to be a regional drainage. Several other claims to reimagine the common as a local drain system around the Rajapalaya Lake were recorded but the progress was invalidated.
The concern over the issue of the community surrounding the tank, villagers and the local taxation authority (from period of old Karnataka State) is deemed to be debatable. Given the intricate socio-political subtleties that characterise villages in India and the specific modalities that contribute to the sustenance of the Rajapalaya tank should be the question of a specific historic ethnographical construct. However, it is essential for the social economic interests to support the sustenance of the tanks.
Moreover, the land acquisition by the development authorities of Bangalore (BDA) not only contributed to the wellbeing of the locals and the village of Rajapalaya itself, but also the relationship between them. Number of village locals have found livelihood in the form of informal traders for the informal service sectors, gardeners, construction workers, daily labours etc. this ensures a potential for long term employment to the locals of the village and also new comers. The issue can further be pointed out in this case as the marginal growth in the economy of that particular region might have contributed to the gradual decrease of community concern over the Rajapalaya tank. It is certain that the communities and different actors concerning this issue have developed different relationship with the tank since the beginning.
The above-mentioned lake is one example among several other urban commons. But to emphasize the conflicting scenarios, it has been considered. Relatively, planning in the city of Bangalore can be perceived beyond an abstract practice. Planning practice signifies the interests of the communities that inhabit the system of governance. It remained one of the main domains of investment politics in city and the central medium that damaged its urban commons. In identifying planning as the public domain for the negotiation, different communities have the scope to claim planning to produce and reproduce their commons. It is essential to recognise that planning practice do not spontaneously operate as a benefactor to welfare. Instead, it is a socially constructed system, governing urban production.
