A new model of urban governance, mapping the route to a more equitable management of a city’s infrastructure and services.
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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
New Review of the Co-Cities Book in the Journal of Design and Culture (Taylor & Francis) by Jacob DeGeal
Check out the review of the Co-Cities Book by Sheila Foster and Christian Iaione (The MIT Press) in the Journal of Design and Culture (Taylor & Francis) by Jacob DeGeal. Click here: https://acrobat.adobe.com/id/urn:aaid:sc:EU:8e42dd61-7c14-4cab-a9e7-a882579c92bb...
Energy Award Winner 2023 – Co-Cities Book awarded in the category of Best Book about the ‘Commons’
Each year, the The American Energy Society spotlights the most extraordinary contributions to energy and sustainability. We are thrilled to announce that among the winners of the Energy Awards 2023 is the book “Co-Cities: Innovative Transitions toward Just and...
The Co-City Design Principles
The Co-city approach has been formulated at this stage considering the various developmental phases it has been through in each chapter and the cases that have been analyzed in different cities. The most recent chapter dubbed Urban Co-governance illustrated the 5P’s...
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 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? ...
Association Of American Publishers 2023 Prose Award
We are honored to announce that the “Co-Cities Book: Innovative Transitions Toward Just and Self-Sustaining Communities”, by Sheila R. Foster and Christian Iaione won the 2023 Association Of American Publishers Prose Award for Architecture and Urban Planning in Social...
Ostrom in the City: Design Principles for the Urban Commons – Sheila Foster, Washington, DC. Christian Iaione, Rome. The Nature of Cities, 20 August 2017
“Where we are able to identify a network of urban commons, or some degree of polycentricism in the governance of urban resources, we begin to see the transformation of the city into a commons—a collaborative space—supported and enabled by the state.” The article...
The Right to the Co-City. An article in the Italian Journal of Public Law, 1:9 (2017) providing a reflection on the understanding of the concept of Co-city from a legal perspective.
The article, The Right To the Co-city, authored by Christian Iaione is published on the Italian Journal of Public Law, Volume 9 Issue 1 2017. The study is an effort to contribute to the current urban studies debate on the way to conceptualize the city by advancing a...
The Possibility of a CO-City – Interview with Christian Iaione by Anne de Zeeuw and Michiel Hulshof for New Europe, Cities in Transition. 17 November 2016
"Citizens should not just be involved, but they should be driving the process, being the managers.” What does the rise of bottom-up initiatives mean for our current welfare state? Does it provide a way out of the growing dichotomy between active citizens and...
The City as a Commons – Christian Iaione interview by Kati Van de Velde for The Green European Journal. November 9, 2016
“Society runs, the economy follows. Let’s (re)design institutions and law together.” This is the credo of LabGov – the Laboratory for the governance of the commons in Italy, that was behind the pioneering “Bologna Regulation” – a guidebook on public-civic...
Co-Cities MIT Press Book Awards
Energy Award Winner 2023 – Co-Cities Book awarded in the category of Best Book about the ‘Commons’
Each year, the The American Energy Society spotlights the most extraordinary contributions to...
Association Of American Publishers 2023 Prose Award
We are honored to announce that the “Co-Cities Book: Innovative Transitions Toward Just and...