Commoning (in) the neighborhood, righting the city: The role of participatory budgeting in enacting the right to the city through commoning in Lisbon

Abstract

The pursuit of the Right to the City (R2C) calls for prioritizing the most affected by its absence [1]. Operationally, this denotes a two-way dynamic between the impact of bottom-up emancipatory practices on transforming institutional norms and the ability of top-down resources to reach and activate socially and spatially marginalized populations. This paper portrays the R2C within the pragmatical context of the participatory budget of BIP/ZIP in Lisbon, depicting it as a network of institutionally aided commoning activities performed in disadvantaged urban neighborhoods. Towards this goal, the study initially develops a framework for analyzing the R2C through commoning practices by aligning a taxonomy of activities in the BIP/ZIP projects with Susser and Tonnelat’s [2] rights to everyday urban life; encounter; and creative activity. The devised commoning framework encompasses activities that 1. Prioritize the most disadvantaged, 2. Promote social development, 3. Have a strong spatial character, 4. Practice togetherness and solidarity, 5. Enhance the value of the neighborhood and 6. Expand neighborhood boundaries. Subsequently, this framework is employed to analyze the BIP/ZIP projects and portray the pursuance of the R2C within the program by pinpointing emerging and under-addressed rights in BIP/ZIP neighborhoods. To accomplish these objectives, the study employs a mixed-method approach integrating theoretical exploration of urban commons and R2C, data collection and organization. This involves mapping a dataset of projects into attributes, qualitative coding cycles to categorize project activities into a commoning taxonomy, and subsequently utilization of this model for statistical data analysis.