Seminar: "Expanding institutions of urban commoning" , by Roberto Sciarelli

The BCNUEJ group is organizing a new seminar by Roberto Sciarelli, postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Humanities of the University of Catania.

Title: "Expanding institutions of urban commoning: contested planning and difficult transitions in the city of Naples, Southern Italy"

Speaker: Roberto Sciarelli, postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Humanities of the University of Catania

• Date: Tuesday, October 21st 2025
• Time: 12h
• Venue: Sala Montseny (Z/022) & (Z/023) ICTA-UAB

The seminar aims to discuss the impact of commoning practices and institutions in socio-environmentalconflicts and processes of urban transformation by observing the case of Naples, in Southern Italy. The city’surban environment has been severely affected by the waste management crisis (1994–2012), decades ofuncontrolled real estate speculation, and the ruination and contamination of former industrial districts. Overthe past fifteen years, however, Neapolitan social and ecologist movements have developed a diverseconstellation of commoning practices, starting from the collective occupation and self-management of publicbuildings to the organization of grassroots initiatives of ecological remediation, urban regeneration, andcollective forums to discuss the city’s future.

While local authorities evoke urban transformation through smart technologies and green restyling but failto implement effective policies, these movements remain the only ones to actually ideate and enact sociallyand ecologically just forms of transition. The actions undertaken by commoners not only challenge theinterests of private builders, the tourism industry, and the new enclosures fuelled by large-scale events, butalso put forward alternative pathways of regeneration, opposed to the techno-managerial solutionsenvisioned by public authorities.

Focusing on sites of cleanup and urban transformation in the metropolitan area of Naples as spaces ofpolitical tension where public investments, risks of privatization and grassroots commoning practices directlycollide, the seminar will examine the crucial role played by the institution of urban civic and collective uses,a juridical innovation created by social movements themselves to legalize and regulate the self-governmentof urban commons. As an expansive democratic institution, civic and collective uses have enabledcommunities of commoners to intervene in urban planning from below, producing concrete, albeit fragileand threatened, alternatives to speculative development and opening pathways toward inclusive andemancipatory forms of urban ecological transition.

Roberto Sciarelli is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Humanities of the University of Catania,where he works within the PRIN project JUSTAINABILITY – Just sustainability. Rhizomatic social innovations,transformative knowledge, and prefigurative practices for a just transition. He holds a PhD in Democracy inthe Twenty-First Century from the Centre for Social Studies of the University of Coimbra. His researchinterests focus on urban commoning movements, examined through the theoretical lens of political ecologyand co-research methodologies. Both during his doctoral studies and in his current project, he has mainlyinvestigated social and environmental movements in the Southern European area, with a particular focus onthe city of Naples, his hometown. There, he is an activist within the local Network of Urban Commons and amember of the Permanent Observatory on the Commons of the City of Naples.