A new model of urban governance, mapping the route to a more equitable management of a city’s infrastructure and services.
Available Now!
Identifying core elements of these diverse efforts, Sheila R.Foster and Chrstian Iaione develop a framework for understanding how certain initiatives position local communities as key actors in the production, delivery, and management of urban assets or local resources. Within this framework, they explain the forms such initiatives increasingly take, like community land trusts, new kinds of co-housing, neighborhood cooperatives, community-shared broadband and energy networks, and new local offices focused on citizen science and civic imagination.
Co-cities map overview
LabGov experimentation grounds
Mapped Cities
Case Studies Collected
Case Studies analyzed
Latest Publications
Community-led Solid Waste Management, Koregaon Bhima -India
The non-profit CHF India has been operating in India for roughly 11 years. The organization primarily works with urban poor areas in several cities, enlisting locals in participatory waste management and sanitation initiatives. A business entity approached CHF for...
Farmacia popular de Valparaiso – Chile
The case study is about the city of Valparaiso, Chile (South America), which covers an area of 402 square kilometres and has approximately 253 580 residents (as of 2012). Following the election of Jorge Sharp as mayor of the City in December 2016, a project started in...
The Case of Beirut Madinati of Lebanon
In the wake of a severe crisis that engulfed downtown Beirut in 2015, a group of passionate academics from the American University in Beirut initiated a movement that would change the face of Lebanese politics forever, Thus, Beirut Madinati (BM) was born, a political...
Atelier de l’Observatoire in Morocco
Atelier Observatoire is a non-profit organization that was founded in 2012 purposely as a place for art and research. The intent is to develop participative projects and support the creation of the Moroccan population. The idea is to bring artists, students,...
Urban Co-Governance
As the previous chapter exposed us to the policies and regulatory instruments to enhance the city collectively and provided clear examples of cities that have learned from the Reggio Emilia Regulation which also brought forth Co-Bologna, this chapter seeks to build...
The Case of the Chinese Urban Villages: Village shareholding companies in China’s urban villages
“Urban villages” emerge when the previous villages have been geographically incorporated into cities and granted urban administrative status. However, they keep their village collective economies, which are managed by village shareholding companies. Chinese urban...
Urban commons in Romanian shrinking cities, the case of “Living Făgăraș” by Make Better.
Decaying spaces matter: Empowering communities through urban regeneration. The accumulation of demographic and economic decline in a city is an old phenomenon. It is its persistence in the long-term as well as a crisis of local public finance, which...
Club Cultural Matienzo (Buenos Aires, RA)
The Club Cultural Matienzo (CCM), initiated in 2008 is a space and a worker-managed cooperative (a hybrid between cooperative and private entrepreneurship) developed by the Matienzo team in the city of Buenos Aires in Argentina. This project was founded by 5 friends...
The City as a Commons
This chapter looks at how public policies have developed in a few places that allow both public and private players to jointly or cooperatively generate and then manage shared urban resources across the city. It gives varying definitions of collaboration and how much...
One-on-one conversation with Professor Sheila Foster about the Co-Cities book
Welcome to our CO-Cities book blog, readers. This post features a one-on-one conversation with Professor Sheila Foster, co-author of the Co-Cities book and co-director of LabGov, a scientific and applied research laboratory in multiple cities. Let’s get...
The Urban Commons
The second chapter of the Co-city book is initiated by recalling Elinor Ostrom’s revolutionary studies of natural resource commons (Ostrom 1990), posing the question: Are there groups of residents and/or resource users who are willing and able to organize themselves,...
Foster & Iaione Probe Commoning in the City
Sheila R. Foster and Christian Iaione have been recently guests of David Bollier on his podcast “Frontiers of Commoning” (episode 37). The interview was an opportunity to present their last publication, “Co-Cities: Innovative Transitions Toward Just and...
Professor Christian Iaione’s interview for Euractiv
“Co-management city assets to improve the quality of democracy” – included within the report “A look at democratic experiments across Europe.” Luiss professor Iaione calls “administrative collaborative democracy” the idea to establish civic collaborations with local...
Urban sustainable development and innovation partnerships
This article discusses the concept of Urban Sustainable Development and Innovation Partnerships (USDIPs) as a tool for designing and managing policy experiments in cities to accelerate technological and ecological transitions while ensuring accountability and equality...
SlogLaw: Co-Cities: A Journey Through Urban Time and Space
Many scholars, experts, authors and policymakers have expressed their opinions about Cities and Urbanism today on Sloglaw. Amnon Lehavi, Professor of Law at the Harry Ledzyner Law School, Reichman University also shares his thought-provoking opinions on Sloglaw about...
Re-thinking the City
What key principles underpin a Co-city model of urban governance, and how can they be applied to promote more collaborative and inclusive approaches to urban planning and development? Following our previous discussion which introduced the book, this session brings us...
The Co-cities book. So the story begins
How can the recognition of the fundamental right to collective action of city inhabitants and local communities foster the sustainable development of cities and urban innovation thereby promoting social inclusion, environmental sustainability, and prosperity? ...
Verso Savio 2030: la co-governance per lo sviluppo sostenibile della Valle del Savio
L’Unione dei Comuni della Valle Savio ha avviato a luglio 2019 Verso Savio 2030, percorso strategico volto a sviluppare un kit di politiche e di strumenti legali che favoriscano la collaborazione tra pubblico, privato e comunità nella realizzazione di progettualità...