The rebel city of Naples : stimulating social innovation by recognizing social squats as urban commons

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THE REBEL CITY OF NAPLES

Stimulating social innovation by recognizing

social squats as urban commons

Author:

Suzan de Jong

Student ID: 10574727

Master:

Urban Geography

Supervisor: Dr. N.P.C. Beerepoot

Second reader: Dr. P.S.M. Weir

Date:

8 June 2018

Masterthesis

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Chapter 1 - Introduction

Walking through the winding narrow streets of the center of Naples, could be described as a cramped experience. The buildings, often about five stories high, restrain the sun from reaching the pebbled streets. The streets are crowded. People use the space in front of their houses as an expansion of their living room where they come together and hang their laundry to dry. Although Neapolitans could be characterized as outdoor people who live in public spaces, a public square could be considered as a luxury in this dense city. However, when you enter the small brown door of the squatted space ‘Scugnizzo Liberato’ in the middle of the populous neighborhood Quarteri Spagnoli, the huge indoor square full of sun and air feels like a refreshing change of environment. Children play soccer on the courtyard, people walk around, talk, and a group of migrants follow an Italian language class. What is this place? According to the people around it is neither private nor public, it is a ‘common’. Common: that’s the type of ownership Italians struggled for in their fight against the privatization of the water resources in the country in 2011 (Mattei, 2013). It’s also the type of ownership that is increasingly being experimented with by the Neapolitan mayor Luigi de Magistris. Naples was the first Italian city to identify the commons as the foundation of rights and participatory democracy and the first to establish a specific ‘Department of the Commons’. By recognizing the commons, Naples is being transformed into a hothouse of participatory democracy, bottom-up initiatives and social innovation(Bauwens, 2016; Bollier, 2012; Spigarolo, 2017).

Commons, or ‘beni comuni’ in Italian, could be described as local resources in which the residents of a city all share a common stake (Bailey & Mattei, 2013). Naples particularly focuses on the commons as vacant buildings in the city. These buildings are public properties and have often been in terrible states of neglect. Social movements have re-appropriated many of these spaces and transformed them into social centers that are collective used and managed by local communities and provide social services, such as health care, after school, and legal aid. The city legally recognizes eight of these spaces as commons (Spigarolo, 2017; Urban Institute, 2018). Through these experiments with urban democracy and the commons, the city of Naples is changed into a laboratory for social innovation (Spigarolo, 2017). The municipality initiated a program in the beginning of 2018 that is called ‘Common spaces for social innovation’, which shows the importance that is assigned towards stimulating social innovation in the city (Comuni di Napoli, 2018).

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Both social innovation and the commons have emerged as important instruments to rethink urban governance. Social innovation is about designing new ideas that can solve social issues and unmet social needs. It is often activated when social welfare standards fail and has become a popular concept for policymakers, social movements, and scholars (Unceta et al., 2015; Moulaert et al., 2014). The concept of commons is often used to underline the existence of a common interest in shared resources and to lay claim on these resources. In this way, the concept can be used to protect resources against privatization and speculation (Foster & Iaione, 2016). There is a voluminous lineage of studies about the commons. However these perceive commons mostly as natural resources, like grazing lands (Foster & Iaione, 2016; Hardin, 1968; Ostrom, 1990). Although the idea of commons in urban domains is becoming increasingly popular, the concept of ‘urban commons’ remains under theorized according to Foster and Iaione (2016). This makes it challenging to capture the complex nature of cities with the more historical literature about commons, because it remains unclear how urban aspects, like density and diversity of users, impact the common resources of cities.

This research aims to gain more understanding of the potential of the urban commons to rethink our cities in terms of democratic renewal and social innovation. Many European cities are, like Naples, experimenting with new forms of participatory urban governance aiming at new relations between citizenship and institutions (Caccia, 2016). Naples serves as an interesting case to study this trend, since the city is being transformed into a laboratory for experiments with commons. By rejecting market logic, bringing citizens back to the center of the decision process, and using commons as its guiding principle in urban spatial policy, it is choosing a pathway that Harvey (2012) would term the ‘rebel city’ approach (Varriale, 2015; Spigarolo, 2017). This study will therefore go into the case of Naples. It aims to study how the transformation of vacant buildings into social centers can serve as an instrument to stimulate social innovation and how these spaces can function as urban commons.

This thesis will begin with providing theoretical background and defining the key concepts of this study in the theoretical framework. This will be followed by the methodological section, where the research questions, research strategy, methods, and operationalization of the key concepts will be discussed. Subsequently, the local context in which the study finds itself will be described, which will evolve into the empirical analysis of the gathered data. The paper will be finished with a conclusion, that aims to provide answers to the research questions.

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Chapter 2 - Theoretical Framework

Due to rapid worldwide urbanization, the available city space is becoming more rare and urban resources are becoming ever more contested. Questions about how city space is used and for whose benefits are sprouting urban movements and policy debates globally. The occupation of formally cultural institutions by the ‘beni comuni' movement in Italy serves as a prominent example of these contestations over urban space (Foster & Iaione, 2016). The idea of the commons are becoming an increasingly popular tool to lay claim on contested urban spaces (Foster & Iaione, 2016; Bollier, 2014). The commons serves as the main concept that this theoretical framework will elaborate upon, with a specific focus on the urban commons. The concept of commons is highly related to the idea of ‘right to the city’ (Foster & Iaione, 2016; Mattei & Quarta, 2015). This is a popular concept that is being used by urban movements as a way to claim urban commons and to rethink city making. Movements exercise their right to the city by squatting abandoned public buildings and claiming them as urban commons (Mattei & Quarta, 2015). Therefore, when discussing urban commons, it is important to also incorporate the ideas of the right to the city, which can be perceived as the overarching discussion in which the literature about commons finds itself. Next, the concept of ‘social innovation’ will be elaborated upon, since this goes further into the organization of commons by social movements and local institutions in order to tackle social issues. Lastly, the theoretical framework will focus on Italian ‘social centers’, where the ideas of the commons, the right to the city, and social innovation are brought into practice.

2.1 Commons

The concept of the commons has fascinated many scholars, which has resulted in a voluminous and historical lineage of studies (Foster & Iaione, 2016; Hardin, 1968; Rose, 1986; Ostrom, 1990). Historically, the commons were perceived as natural resources, which included grazing lands, fisheries, forests, and water. More recently, scholars are identifying new types of commons like urban, sound, culture, infrastructure, and knowledge (Hess, 2008). This section will first provide insight into the more traditional commons, before going into theories about the urban commons.

2.1.1 Conceptualizing the commons

At the vanguard of academics who researched the commons, was Hardin (1968) with his ‘tragedy of the commons’ theory. He showed how common resources are prone to misuse and overuse when

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they are not managed correctly. He exemplified this by providing the case in which different herders use the same land to graze their cattle. Each herder aims to increase their number of cattle to increase their own benefit, without taking account of the costs of overgrazing and eventually depleting the shared resource. Hardin (1968) then argues that the tragedy is in the aim of individuals to increase their own herd continuously, in a world with restricted resources. Whilst people aim to improve their own benefit, they eventually end up destroying their own future.

Following on these notions of usage of the commons, was the book ‘Governing the Commons’ by Ostrom (1990), for which Hardin’s tragedy of the commons served as the departure point. Adopting a more positive approach, she aimed to discover how to enhance the capabilities of the public involved in order to achieve outcomes other than tragedies. Her theory of collection action shows how ‘a group of principles can organize themselves voluntarily to retain the residual of their own efforts’ (Ostrom, 1990:25). She suggested design rules that could make it possible for Hardin’s cattle farmers to communicate with each other and in this way avoid the tragedy. By giving examples of successful cases of the governing of natural resources around the world, she argues that it is possible for groups to effectively self-manage and sustain common resources. To allow this self-governance of the commons, appropriate organizational and institutional arrangements are necessary, which include conflict-resolution mechanisms and defined group boundaries. Under these certain conditions communities can achieve local empowerment. This makes these communities capable of autonomous decision-making about the management of common pool resources. Ostrom then suggests a type of governing collective action that doesn’t include state coercion or private property rights. Rather, she suggests historical grown, institutionalized rules which allow for the self governance of the commons (Ostrom, 1990; Hess & Ostrom, 2007).

Hardin (1968) and Ostrom (1990) both approach commons as natural resources, which can be characterized by being subjective to rivalry. This means that the use by one person of the common resource can result in the depletion of the resource for others. Ostrom (1990) refers to this characteristic as the ‘subtractability’ of resources. However, later in her career, Ostrom also acknowledged the existence of common resources that are non subtractive (Ostrom & Hess, 2007). These are resources where the use of one person does not reduce the benefits of the resource for other people. Rose (1986) already recognized the existence of these common resources with her contrasting case of the ‘comedy of commons’ theory. Herein, the increased use of a common resource enhances its value rather than depleting it. An example she offers is the usage of an

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open-access resource by a community to hold periodic dances. In this situation, the more dancers that join the activity, the more benefit it creates for the community. With the idea of ‘the more the merrier’, sometimes the solidarity and well-being of the whole community is reinforced by increasing the amount of people that participate in activities organized in open-access resources. Public use can in this sense also generate an enhanced value of the resource. So it could be argued that there are two notions of the commons, of which the first perceives the common as a resource that is exhaustive and subjective to rivalry, whilst the other is based on the inherent public value of the resource, which is not exhaustive (Foster & Iaione, 2016).

2.1.2 Urban commons

Congestion and overconsumption of city space can be considered as the urban equivalent of the tragedy created by a cattle’s overgrazing as in Hardin’s example. Every other house or factory that is build can then be seen as another cow that is added to this cattle. This can create rivalrous conditions in which people pursue the use of an urban space for self-interest, whilst degrading the resource for others (Foster & Iaione, 2016). These contestations and rivalry over urban space result in discussions about the issue of urban commons. Urban commons are the urban resources to which residents of a city all share a common stake (Foster & Iaione, 2016). Urban commons are not always open-access resources. Some are, like the air we breath, others are open but policed, regulated and sometimes privatized like streets, public spaces, and public goods (Harvey, 2012). Harvey (2012) argues that since the provision of public spaces is usually under governmental power, public spaces cannot be considered as commons necessarily. Only after citizens appropriated them as such, protect them, and enhance them for mutual benefit, they can be turned into commons. This idea is shared by Bollier (2014) who argues that ‘a common arises whenever a given community decides that it wishes to manage a resource in a collective manner, with special regards for equitable use, access and sustainability’. An urban common is therefore not only a resource, but a resource plus a defined community that self-manages the resource. Harvey (2012) refers to this social practice of appropriating and self-organizing urban resources as ‘commoning’. This entails people coming together and sharing knowledge, skills, and time in the opened space. In this sense, commoning can be characterized as an everyday practice that is about liberating spaces from speculation and about creating new ways of encountering and engaging with others (Di Feliciantonio, 2017). Managing these shared amenities as places for people to learn, socialize, and access social services can improve the local social wellbeing. Different scholars have discussed how the practice of commoning can foster social and economic inclusion of participants (Pelikan et al.,

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2003; Foster & Iaione, 2016). Moreover, the opportunity of citizens to take care of the commons in their city, to build a solidarity network, and to develop individual skills can increase their empowerment and the local social cohesion and justice (Iaione, 2015). In this way, urban commons could possibly provide alternatives for creating inclusive and equitable cities (Foster & Iaione; 2016).

Since urban commons is a very all-encompassing concept, this study will narrow down its scope and focus on the use of vacant urban structures as a manifestation of urban commons. These abandoned structures are highly vulnerable for the contestations about the use of this space. Vacant urban space is space in transition, since it has been abandoned but not yet reclaimed. Conflicts about its future use arise between the local government, the present owners of the space, and the local community. The possible uses of the vacant space can either be the kind that is subjective to rivalry, congestion and exhaustion, or the kind that produces agglomeration benefits and creates a positive value for the community (Foster & Iaione, 2016). The vacant space can create a positive value when its creating goods that the community can share, for example by turning the space into a community garden (Foster & Iaione, 2016).

Much of the contestation about the use of vacant urban spaces arises from a critique on contemporary neoliberal urban development. Neoliberalism has downsized governmental power in order to stimulate free markets and private enterprises. This has stimulated the commodification and privatization of collective resources of cities by governments (Foster & Iaione, 2016; Peck, 2012). This is further strengthened by the austerity measures, that have characterized urban governance for decades now and that have further intensified since the financial crisis in 2008 (Davies, 2017). Some argue that this has evolved into ‘austerity urbanism’, in which local governments undermine citizen-well being, public services delivery, and social equity. This retention of the provision of public welfare by the state has especially targeted the most vulnerable social groups (Peck, 2012; Donald et al., 2014). In the field of urban development, neoliberalism has mobilized large-scale capital investments and property developments into cities. Some argue that it has hereby shifted the planner into an entrepreneur, which plans for capital and not for society (Tasan-Kok & Baeten, 2012; Albrechts, 1991). The impacts of neoliberal practices like privatization in cities has revived the idea of the urban commons. Reclaiming vacant urban spaces as urban commons can then be considered as a struggle against these neoliberal practices and can highlight the contestations about the future use of this space (Harvey, 2012; Mattei, 2013; Foster &

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Iaione, 2016). In this sense, the city can perform as a platform for anti-capitalist struggles by social movements and become a so-called ‘Rebel City’ (Harvey, 2012). Social movements are often using the tactic of illegal occupation of the vacant buildings or spaces in order to reclaim the common resource. By occupying, they are resisting against enclosure through privatization and protesting against failures of neoliberal urban development, which often neglects the social value of urban spaces (Foster & Iaione, 2016).

Thus, urban commons are resources that are appropriated by citizens and managed in a collective manner in order to enhance the quality of the resource and stimulate its sustainability for mutual benefit. In the context of vacant urban spaces, this appropriation often entails liberating these spaces from neoliberalism and speculation. In this sense, the practice of commoning can be perceived as a struggle against neoliberal urban development. The urban commons can then be used to lay claim on urban resources that would otherwise be privatized or enclosed by economic elites. Contestations about the use of vacant urban spaces can therefore be considered as prioritizing either the exchange value of the space on the neoliberal market, or the social value of the space when it is appropriated as an urban common. The practice of commoning will remain contentious, since it is always about whose common interests are protected and by what means (Harvey, 2012; Foster & Iaione, 2016).

2.2 Right to the city

The reclamation of vacant urban spaces as urban commons and the protection of these spaces against speculation and privatization is in tandem with the ideas of the ‘right to the city’ movement (Foster & Iaione, 2016; Mattei & Quarta, 2015). This movement seems twofold. The foundation of the right to the city was laid by Lefebvre (1996), who aims to give city inhabitants the right over the decision-making power about city planning and the use of urban spaces and resources (Lefebvre, 1996; Foster & Iaione, 2016). The concept is later adopted by social movements, who aim to ensure the right to equal access to the social benefits of a city (Right to the City Platform, 2005; Balbo, 2008). Some have criticized the concept because of this multitude of rights that it now entails which makes it seem not well-defined (Purcell, 2013; Finlay, 2017; Attoh, 2011). This section will discuss both the older and the newer approaches to the right to the city.

2.2.1 Lefebvre’s ‘right to the city’

Lefebvre (1996) was the first to write about the right to the city and presented a radical vision in which users of the city can manage the space in this city themselves, beyond the control of

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capitalism and the state. He sees the right to the city as a right to change and reinvent cities. Important in this is that users, in claiming their right to the city, appropriate urban spaces. He argues that this space appropriation is a right in itself, since it are the city inhabitants who have the normative right to use the urban spaces. This idea transforms notions about who owns the city and goes against property rights. It removes the city from a space of capitalistic accumulation to a space of usage and social connections. It also shifts the power to produce urban space from the state towards urban residents. It is thereby a right that empowers the urban inhabitants. Moreover, he argues that besides the right to appropriate urban spaces, the right to participate is another important element of the right to the city. The right to participate entails the participation of city inhabitants in decisions about the production of urban space in their city. Participation of city inhabitants in city politics and consequent mobilization, could make them more consciousness of their ownership over the city and the need to struggle for their rights. This active participation also implies a third element of the right to the city movement, namely that of self-management. By increasingly managing urban spaces, city inhabitants can start to understand themselves as capable managers of urban spaces (Lefebvre, 1996; Purcell, 2013).

Similar to the urban commons, this right to the city can be viewed as a reaction against neoliberalism. Different scholars argued how neoliberalization is increasingly disenfranchising urban residents by excluding them from decisions that shape their cities (Purcell, 2002; Peck, 1998; Ward, 2000). The right to the city approach could provide an alternative to this neoliberal structure by changing urban residents into important advocates of urban politics (Purcell, 2002). Since Lefebvre’s right to the city resists the power of capital in shaping urban spaces, his approach often becomes related to anti-capitalist struggles. Lefebvre (1996) argues that this resistance will come from the working class social force. However, Purcell (2002) argues that we should be cautious in assuming that the right to the city will challenge the capitalist structure and that this resistance will be realized by the working class. Since every inhabitant has a right to the city and their identities and interests can be so diverse, they can aim to challenge different notions than capitalism, like racism or heteronormativity. He continues by discussing that we therefore should be aware of the outcome of the right to the city, since it is unknown what inhabitants will do with this right and whether it will result in a more inclusive democracy, or in new forms of political domination by certain social groups (Purcell, 2002).

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2.2.2 New approach to the ‘right to the city’

Networks and civil society organizations have later began to approach the right to the city in broader terms. The global platform for the Right to the City formulated the following definition:

‘The right to the city is the equitable use of cities according to the principles of sustainability, democracy, equity and social justice. It is a collective right of the inhabitants of these cities, especially for vulnerable and disadvantaged groups who gain legitimacy of action and organization based on their use and customs with the objective of achieving, in practice, the right to free self-determination and an adequate level of life’ (Right to the City Platform, 2005). In this sense, the

right to the city is increasingly being perceived as a vehicle to create more inclusive and equitable cities.

In these newer approaches to the right to city, the right to appropriate and participate in the city shifts to the right to access the benefits that the city has to offer (Balbo, 2008). Principles that are considered important in creating this are solidarity, sustainability, freedom, equity, dignity, and social justice. The right to the city can, in this way, promote the just distribution of benefits and social functions of the city, and the democratization of access to land and public services for all citizens, with a specific focus on those in situations of vulnerability. (Right to the City Platform, 2005; Brown & Kristiansen, 2009). One of the most important vulnerable social groups whose conditions the right to the city movement aims to improve are migrants (Bhagat, 2014; Balbo, 2008). International migration raises the issue of the right of everyone, including migrants, to access the social benefits of a city. International migrants are often excluded from urban social services and are denied access to participate in urban politics. The exclusion of migrants by host communities, which is often strengthened by fear of ethnic diversity amongst local residents, remains a crucial challenge for creating inclusive cities (Bhagat, 2014; Balbo, 2008).

2.3 Social innovation

Whilst the ideas of commons and right to the city are both focused on providing an alternative to neoliberal city making, on fighting for the right to appropriate common resources and on having equal access to resources, the concept of social innovation is useful to understand the social solutions that could provide this change. Social innovation can be used to go further into the organization of the reclaimed urban commons in order to tackle social issues and unequal distribution of benefits (Bonneau, 2015; Phills et al., 2008). The concept of social innovation is becoming increasingly popular amongst policymakers, social movements, and scholars. This

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growing popularity can be understood as a reflection of the growing dissatisfaction with the outcomes of neoliberalism and of current governance systems, which has already been discussed in previous sections. It is particularly a reaction to the unequal distribution of benefits in the neoliberal system (García et al., 2015; Moulaert et al., 2014). Social innovation can function as an important tool to identify solutions for social issues that are not yet solved by traditional institutions and to stimulate social cohesion and social capital. This has resulted in some cities adopting new approaches of city governance that collaborate better with citizens and seek to facilitate social innovation (Bonneau, 2015) Also at the EU level, tools and features have been developed for cities to realize and promote social innovation. The EU considers social innovation as one of the main strategies to create sustainable and inclusive economies (European Commission, 2013).

Innovation could be thought of as the development of new ideas that work. When it comes to social innovation, it relates to new ideas that work in resolving social issues (Mulgan et al., 2007). The concept of social innovation was already used in the 17th century, but only gained scientific status in the 1960s in relation to social movements. The concept has evolved into different meanings over time. Two main streams of thought can be distinguished, namely that of caring neoliberalism and socio-political transformative social innovation. According to the first ideology, social innovation should ‘socialize’ market mechanism in order to increase the equality amongst different social groups. This entails that the government activates civil society organizations to provide welfare. These organizations then often provide social services at a lower cost and possibly a lower quality (Peck, 2013; Nicholls & Teasdale, 2017). The second ideology perceives social innovation as a tool to firstly solve the unmet needs of citizens due to state and market failures, and consequently strengthen solidarity and social relations amongst the people that are involved in the social innovation initiatives. This can in turn trigger socio-political empowerment (Moulaert & van den Broeck, 2009) Urban studies have largely adopted the second ideology. This study will also follow the second ideology and will consider social innovation in terms of the definition that is provided by Moulaert et al. (2005;2014). According to Moulaert et al. (2005;2014) social innovation is innovation that aims to increase the equitable distribution of social benefits, to meet the social needs of communities, and to alter social relations. They argue that social innovation develops when there is a social need that is not met, often due to market and state failures. When societal problems like poverty, racism and segregation are not solved by public institutions and authorities, communities can aim to find solutions in order to meet their own needs. This can result in social and political empowerment of these communities and in the development of bottom-up initiatives from citizens

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movements. When these solutions are identified, facilitated and promoted by local institutions with the use of regulated practices, social innovation develops. This is only possible when local citizens and stakeholders are involved in city governance. Moulaert et al. (2005, p. 1976) have framed social innovation by the following three interrelated features:

• The strategies of agents that seek provision of resources and services in response to local social needs

• The improvement of social relations between agents and the development of empowerment and trust with marginalized populations. Improvement of social relations here refers to values such as solidarity, reciprocity, association, and respect.

• The usage of the developed social relations to transform the power relations that produce social exclusion by a change in governance mechanisms. The new governance systems should be socially innovative and constructed together with the socially innovative agents. This means that the democratic practices should be more inclusive and pursue political participation.

This process of social innovation can happen in different communities and at different spatial scales. Moulaert (2010) stresses the capacity of neighborhood communities to allow social innovation to happen. He considers communities as real-life settings, where people fight for citizenship rights and against social exclusion and where new political rights are defined. Communities are often spatially embedded in neighborhoods. Moulaert (2010) refers to urban neighborhoods as local territories that serve as breeding grounds for social innovation. In urban neighborhoods, there is a high visibility of economic decline and restructuring and there is a high spatial concentration of exclusion and people reacting against this exclusion. These features could together function as a catalyst for finding alternatives and thus stimulate social innovation to happen (Moulaert, 2010).

2.4 Italian social centers

In Italy, the right to the city and to commons has often been pursued through the practice of squatting. This was initiated in a process of ‘claiming the city’ in the 1970s in which young people squatted public spaces and buildings to protest for their right to the city (Ruggiero, 2000). Later it has been articulated by the ‘beni comuni’ movement, which changed the notion of commons into a fundamental human right and aims to protect commons from privatization. This movement serves as a powerful example of how social movements are emerging as a constituent power at the national and supranational level (Bailey & Mattei, 2013). Because of this movement, Italian cities have

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experienced a re-emergence of squatting as a political, social, and housing strategy since 2010 (Di Feliciantonio, 2016).

When urban social movements squat vacant buildings and reclaim them as urban commons, they are often turned into ‘social centers’, or ‘centri sociali’ in Italian. Evolved in the 1970s during the ‘claiming the city’ process, social centers have developed into significant actors in the Italian socio-political landscape. Membretti and Mudu (2013) use the following definition to describe social centers: ‘A network of people, characterized by a heterogeneous socio-cultural and generational

composition […], sharing the same space, usually an illegally occupied abandoned building [to] develop a collective identity […], have an internal organization based on non-hierarchical self-management [focusing] their actions on the dimensions of non-commodified social relations, counter-cultural events and welfare services.’ So, the social centers originate through the practice

of squatting and then become self-managed spaces that offer services, cultural events, and act as politics activists. The actions and activities of social centers can thus be considered as political, social, or cultural (Piazza, 2016). The idea of self-management, ‘autogestito’ in Italian, can be described as a system of social relations, a specific decision making process, and a hidden process of class struggle. The social organization that is developed in the social centers is one that exists without oppression, hierarchy, racism, and sexism (Il Collective del Labirinto, 1994; Mudu, 2004; Mudu, 2012). It is important to acknowledge that the social centers are embedded in their local contexts and challenges and are therefore highly diverse. Characteristics of the local contexts shape the actions that the social centers focus on (Filhol, 2016).

The squatted building in which the social center resides is considered as the main resource for the development of collective action and a group identity. The origins of the occupied place is often retained by adopting the former name preceded by ‘ex’ or followed by ‘occupato’ (Tiddi, 1997). The practice of squatting the abandoned urban structures and turning them into social centers creates new public spaces that are open to all social groups (Membretti & Mudu, 2013; Mudu, 2004). The movements often refer to these spaces as ‘liberated space’, or ‘social space’, which further underlines this publicness (Mudu, 2012). The diverse range of social services that are provided by the social centers embraces the public character of the places, which are open to many different social groups, like migrants and students (Membretti & Mudu, 2013).

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The social centers have always been characterized by a political approach to change reality with originally a radical left or anarchist orientation. The urban social movements that self-manage the social centers claim new rights of citizenship and resist capitalist trends. They have been important actors in the movement against the privatization of the commons and also themes such as housing, social, and cultural services have also always been high on their agendas (Membretti & Mudu, 2013). It is important to acknowledge the political activism of the social centers, since the appropriation of the space is already a radical political action in itself and the liberated spaces are often used to organize political protests. The social centers can therefore not only be considered as social or physical places, but as places with a high political dimension (Piazza, 2016).

Through the social services that are provided by social centers, they can provide welfare from below. The social services are often used to promote the rights of social citizenship for social groups that are largely excluded from welfare and social benefits, like migrants, unemployed, and precarious flexible workers (Montagna, 2007). In this way, the social centers can empower lower class social groups. An example of this is provided by Filhol (2016), who conducted a case study into the social center Ex-Canapificio, which is located in the village Caserta in the Campania region in Southern Italy. The Campania region has a high presence of illegal migrants who work in the agricultural sector. This particular social center has created an immigration office where they have helped thousands of migrants with residence permits and legal support. The center has also sprouted a specific movement for Caserta’s immigrants in which they mobilize migrants to protest for their rights. Besides support, the center also created an inclusive place where immigrants can interact with local people and where everyone is welcome (Filhol, 2016).

Piazza (2016) distinguishes two other features that characterize Italian social centers. The first is social aggregation. This refers to the space as not only a place or people to gather, but as a place where people share common interests and can socialize and carry out different activities. The liberated space makes it possible for people to come together outside a commercial space but in a de-commodified space. Another important feature is that of self-financing. This means that the centers find material resources for their activities by organizing concerts, parties, and other cultural activities. Other ways to achieve money is by voluntary subscriptions (Mudu, 2004)

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Chapter 3 - Methodology

In this chapter, the methods that have been used for this interview will be discussed. The choices for the research questions, research strategy, research methods, data collection and units of analysis will first be explained. This will be followed by the operationalization of the key concepts of this study, namely urban commons and social innovation. The chapter will be concluded with a discussion about the limitations and ethical concerns that should be acknowledged during this study.

3.1 Research questions

The theoretical framework has demonstrated that the concept of commons is used to lay claims on vacant buildings. In Italy, these vacant buildings are often squatted by social movements and then turned into social centers, which can create new public spaces where social services are offered. In the city of Naples, the governmental institutions legally recognize and facilitate these social centers as urban commons. It could be argued that the creation of the social centers and their recognition of the government could stimulate social innovation. Positioned within the overarching discussion of right to the city, this research aims to provide further insight into the potential of the Neapolitan social centers to do this and aims to understand how the social centers are managed as urban commons. To accomplish this, the following question has been formulated:

‘How do Neapolitan social centers act as drivers of social innovation and what features of urban commons do they contain?’

In order to answer this question, the following subquestions will be addressed:

1. How can the eight social centers that are recognized as urban commons in Naples be distinguished?

2. What are the local conditions that contribute to the development the urban commons approach in Naples?

3. How are the Neapolitan social center stimulating social innovation? 4. How are the Neapolitan social centers managed as urban commons?

3.2 Research strategy

This research is a case study into the urban commons approach of Naples. A case study provides rich and detailed data about one object of interest through an intensive examination of the setting. The aim is to elucidate the unique features of this case. The urban commons approach in Naples

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could be considered a ‘unique’ case, because Naples is pioneering this new approach towards managing the urban commons. The aim is to generate intensive examination of this case (Bryman, 2012). Within this case, the social centers that are legally recognized as urban commons function as the units of analysis. These are the major entities that will be analyzed in this study and they consist out of the following:

• Ex OPG

• Ex Asilo Filangieri • Scugnizzo Liberato • Ex Schipa

• Villa Medusa

• Santa Fede Liberata • Ex Lido Pola

• Giardino Liberato

To answer the research questions, in-depth information is needed about the characteristics and the inner functioning of the social centers, how they are managed as urban commons and how they contribute to social innovation. Moreover, information is needed about how the local circumstances of the city of Naples have contributed to the development of the commons approach and the motives of the municipality to recognize social centers as commons. In order to do this, qualitative methods have been used. Qualitative methods are useful in gaining an understanding of a social setting, give in-depth information and can grasp underlying feelings and tensions between people (Bryman, 2012). The different methods that have been used for the data collection consist of semi-structured interviews, participant observation, and the analysis of external data. By combining different methods, the same setting is examined from different angles. This can help to validate the conclusions.

3.3 Research methods and data collection

3.3.1 First research method - Semi-structured interviews

The first research method consists of semi-structured interviews with stakeholders at the level of the social centers and of the municipality. At the level of the social centers this entails both stakeholders within these social centers, but also volunteers or users that participate in the process of commoning. At the municipal level this entails interviewing stakeholders in the urban commons department to understand the role of the municipal authorities in creating the urban commons.

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The interview questions vary per respondent, since different respondents sustain different roles in the situation. The interviews are semi-structured, which means that they provide a guideline for what is to be discussed, however the interviewer also freely responds on the topics that the interviewee brings up. This allows the interviewee to talk about issues that they consider as important or that may not have been foreseen whilst preparing the interview. It can thereby give room to unexpected yet relevant issues. Three different interviews have been made, depending on the function of the interviewee. The first interview is focused on people who are active in the social centers, also referred to as ‘militanti'. The second interview is focused on employees of the municipality. Whilst these two interviews are different, they both contain questions that relate to the local conditions that stimulated the social centers to develop, the inner-functioning of the social centers, their official recognition as urban commons, the cooperation between the social centers and the municipality, and the impacts of the social centers and the urban commons approach on the city. The third interview is smaller and has been conducted with the users and volunteers of the social centers. This interview focuses more on why the interviewees come to the social centers, what they think about the centers, and what it means to them.

The interviews have been recorded and transcribed. The data that is collected through the interviews has been analyzed with the use the program Atlas TI with the use of different codes. Quotes from the interview have been analyzed to discover how the interviewees give meaning to the urban common approach in Naples. Table 1 shows a matrix of the respondents that have been interviewed in this research, including the location of the interview, the function of the interviewee, the duration of the interview and the language in which the interview has been conducted. The respondents are comprised from people who have been interviewed in the period of April and May in 2018, combined with a few interviews that have been conducted in January 2018 by the author herself.

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Table 1: Interview respondents (Source: Author, 2018)

Resp Name Location Function Duration Language

1 Luciano, Dario & Zibby Villa Medusa Militante 60 minutes English

2 Dario Villa Medusa Militante 30 minutes English

3 Fabio Lido Pola Militante 45 minutes English

4 Andrea & Daniele Scugnizzo Liberato Militante 70 minutes English

5 Gennaro Santa Fede Liberata Militante 20 minutes English

5 Salvatore Santa Fede Liberata Militante 65 minutes Italian

6 Luca S Ex Asilo Filangieri Militante 75 minutes English

7 Luca R Ex Schipa Militante 80 minutes English

8 Nicole Ex Schipa Militante 55 minutes English

9 Shevek Giardino Liberato Militante 65 minutes Italian

10 Alessio Ex OPG Militante 60 minutes English

11 Abdel Ex OPG Militante 50 minutes English

12 Emilio & Sylvana Ex OPG Militante 45 minutes English

13 Maria Ex OPG Militante 40 minutes English

14 Juldeh Ex OPG Migrant 20 minutes English

15 Jali Ex OPG Migrant 10 minutes English

16 Andrea Ex OPG Climb teacher 10 minutes English

17 Camilla Ex OPG Medical help

desk

35 minutes English

18 Jean Lucca Ex OPG Gym teacher 15 minutes English

19 Manuelo Ex OPG Gym user 10 minutes English

20 Simone Ex OPG Aula user 15 minutes English

21 Clara Ex OPG Labour help

desk

30 minutes English

22 Malik Ex OPG Medical help

desk

20 minutes English

23 Daniela Municipality Department of

Commons

30 minutes Italian

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3.3.2 Second research method - Participant observation

Within the social centers, participant observation is used to further understand the functioning of the social centers. With participation observation the observer immerses himself in a specific social setting during an extended period of time. This can create an extensive understanding of the setting that is being observed and of the behaviors of the people within this setting (Bryman, 2012). Special interest goes out to what the centers are providing, who they are attracting and how the spaces are being used by different social groups and how these interact. Moreover, participating in the social centers also provides possibilities to meet new interviewees. The observations can also be used to validate the knowledge that has been derived from the interviews. Only small jottings are written down during the observations, since writing down more detailed notes could make the observer stand out too much. After the observation, complete field notes are written down as soon as possible by using the jottings. This ensures that the observer does not forget any important information.

Since observing extensively in each of the eight social centers is out of the scope of this research, one of them is chosen to focus on in order to collect rich and detailed data from the participant observations. For this, Ex OPG has been selected, since this is the biggest social center in Naples and provides the most types of social services. This makes it an interesting case to study, because the center has a big impact on the community in terms of the numbers of people who frequent the place and it also allows for many possible interviewees.

3.3.3 Third research method - Analysis of external data

The last research method is an analysis of external data about the social centers in Naples. For this, mostly the information that is given on the websites of the social centers is used. This is important information to incorporate into the research, since it shows how the centers want to portray themselves. Moreover, a document provided by the social center Santa Fede Liberata and by Luca Recano, one of the militants of Ex Schipa, is also consulted. Both of these documents go into the experiences of social centers as urban commons in Naples. Whilst the first focuses on Santa Fede Liberata, the second has a specific focus on Scugnizzo Liberato and Ex Asilo Filangieri. Furthermore, reports from the municipality about the urban commons approach in Naples that have been found on its website are also consulted. This data-analysis can be used to further validate the foundlings from the interviews and from the participant observations.

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3.4 Operationalization

The three main concepts of this research have been operationalized, namely ‘urban commons’ , ’social innovation’, and ‘right to the city’. With operationalization, abstract concepts can be transformed into more measurable variables. The concepts are firstly defined with the use of dimensions that have been subtracted from the literature. Subsequently, these dimensions are further operationalized by specifying the indicators that can measure these dimensions. Some indicators have been further specified with the use of sub-indicators when necessary. Table 2 shows the operationalization of the different concepts.

The first concept that is operationalized is urban commons. Using the literature, four dimensions have been recognized that together form the concept of urban commons. The first dimension is the collective appropriation of vacant space, which serves as the first step in creating an urban common (Harvey, 2012). This dimension has been divided into two indicators, one that focuses on this appropriation of the vacant space and the liberation of the space from speculation, and one that focuses on the process of collectively appropriating the space by a community. The second dimension goes into the practice of commoning, which is a social practice that is about the collective managing of the appropriated resource (Harvey, 2012; Bollier, 2014). The indicators for this are the self-management of the urban resource and the coming together of people that share knowledge, time, and skills in the opened space. The third dimension looks at whether the created urban common enhances the local social wellbeing (Foster & Iaione, 2016). This could be stimulated by increasing the social and economic inclusion of participants and by the creation of a solidarity network whilst taking care of the urban common (Foster & Iaione, 2016; Iaione, 2015).

The second concept that is operationalized is social innovation. This is divided into three dimensions, which have been defined by Moulaert et al. (2014). The first dimension is the provision of services in response to local needs. The first indicator that applied for this focuses on the local needs and problems. Social innovation should respond to this by satisfying the social needs (poverty, housing, health), the cultural needs (art, theater), and the political needs (citizenship, access to decision-making), which have been framed as the sub-indicators (González et al., 2010; Martinelli, 2010). The second indicator is the content of the provided services, which can have effects in social, cultural, and political terms (González et al., 2010). The last indicator that is used to describe the provision of services in response to local needs are the users of the services. This could clarify whether the deprived social groups are also the ones making use of the services. The

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second dimension that is used to define social innovation is the empowerment of dispossessed and improved social relations (Moulaert et al., 2014). This will be indicated firstly by the enhancement of human capabilities, which has been argued to be a catalyst for the empowerment of people. Important in this are the enhancement of skills, social networks, opportunities, and consciousness of rights (González et al., 2010; Moulaert et al., 2014). The second indicator that is used, focuses on increasing the visibility of marginalized social groups, which could also positively affect the empowerment of these groups (Martinelli, 2010). The third indicator goes into the achievement of inclusion of the marginalized social groups, which is fundamental to successful socially innovative initiatives. Inclusion is defined with the use of the same sub-indicators as local needs, since addressing those needs that cause exclusion will result in inclusion (González et al., 2010). The last indicator that is addressed for this dimension is the sharing of a collective vision amongst the participants, which is important to construct collective identities and to create a movement that changes social relations. A vision could be described with the question: ‘What’s to be done?’ (González et al., 2010). The third and last dimension that is applied to define the concept social innovation is that of the transformation of social power relations. This is what social innovation should ultimately result in (Moulaert et al., 2014; Gonzáles et al., 2010). According to González et al. (2010), this involves changes in relations among different social groups, and among different scales of government and civil society.

The third concept that is operationalized is right to the city. This concept is divided into two dimensions. The first dimension approaches right to the city with the definition of Lefebvre (1996), who perceives the right to the city as the right for users of a city to manage the city space. He distinguished three elements of this right, which have been used as the indicators. The first is the right to appropriate urban spaces through squatting. The second indicator is the right to participate in the decision making process over urban spaces. This can be realized through participation in city politics and the mobilization of city users. The third indicator goes into the right to self-manage urban spaces. By collectively self-managing urban spaces, users of a city can become capable managers of urban spaces (Lefebvre, 1996). The second dimension of the right to the city focuses on the right to equitable use of cities (Right to the city platform, 2005). Important for this are the equal access to social services and benefits, the equal right to an adequate level of life, and a specific focus on vulnerable and disadvantaged groups. These three elements have been used as indicators. Important principles for this are sustainability, democracy, equity, social justice, solidarity, and dignity (Right to the city platform, 2005).

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Table 2: Operationalization of main concepts (Source: Author, 2018)

Concept Dimension Indicator Sub-indicators

Urban commons Collective appropriation of vacant space

Appropriation of resource as a common and liberating it from speculation

In a collective manner by a community

Practice of commoning Self-managing the urban resource

Creating ways of

encountering and engaging with others

Sharing time

Sharing knowledge Sharing skills Enhance the local social

wellbeing

Foster social and economic inclusion of participants

Place to socialize

Place to access social services Creation of a solidarity network Social innovation Provision of services in response to local needs

Local needs/problems Material

Social Political Content of services Social

Political Cultural Users of services

Empowerment of

dispossessed and improved social relations

Increase human capabilities Skills

Social network Opportunities

Consciousness about rights

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3.5 Limitations and ethical concerns

An important limitation for this research is the dependence on the willingness of people to co-operate with the research and to be interviewed. It has occurred that people cancelled appointments or didn’t respond to emails. This could result in a less comprehensive data collection and in a longer research period.

Increase visibility of marginalized social groups

Achieve inclusion Material Social Political

Share a collective vision What’s to be done Transformation of social

power relations

Changes in relations between social groups

Changes in relations among scales of government and civil society

Right to the city Right to manage the city Right to appropriate urban spaces

Squatting

Right to participate in decision making over urban spaces

Participation in city politics

Mobilization of users of a city

Right to self-manage urban spaces

Right to equitable use of cities

Equal access to social services

Right to an adequate level of life

Focus on vulnerable and disadvantaged groups

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Another limitation is my inability to speak Italian. This firstly makes it difficult to analyze reports from the municipality or Italian articles about the topic. Secondly, it creates difficulties whilst doing interviews. Interviews that have been conducted in English could have resulted in more marginal data if the interviewee does not feel comfortable in the English language. It sometimes resulted in shorter answers or responses like ‘It’s difficult for me to explain in English’. This could have withhold me from obtaining the optimal data from the interviews. In some cases, this has been solved with the use of a translator when the English proficiency of the interviewee was too low or when the presence of a translator made the interviewee feel more comfortable. However, cross-language research could result in translation mistakes. The translator should not be considered as a neutral transmitter of language. Their identities and views could possible influence how they understand words and concepts and could thereby influence the translations they make (Temple 1997; Temple & Young, 2004). It is therefore important to acknowledge that the translator that has been used for this research also made her mark on the study.

Another difficulty that the language barrier poses is that it made the participant observation harder. Not being able to speak the local language made it more difficult to integrate with the local communities and to understand what is going on during activities and meetings. It, in a way, preserved my ‘outsider’ status. This can bring ethical limitations, since I am a Dutch person who is not familiar with the local context and who does not speak the local language, but tries to participate in their usual businesses. Because of this, people could become wary of my presence in the social centers. I therefore handled my presence with care and always informed people about my study.

Bryman (2012) has provided a framework to reflect on the ethics of a research. He distinguishes four main ethical principles: (1) harm to participants, (2) lack of informed consent, (3) invasion of privacy, (4) deception. These four principles have been respected in this research. The respondents have always been informed of the purpose of the research. There has always been asked for permission to record the interview and asked whether they preferred to remain private. Lastly, they have been informed that they did not have to answer every question and that they could quit the interview any time.

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Chapter 4 - Understanding social centers as urban commons in Naples

How do the Neapolitan social centers relate to the local challenges? Why did this approach towards urban commons develop in Naples? This chapter aims to answer these types of questions and aims to increase the understanding of the social centers in Naples and of their legalization as urban commons. In order to do this, it will begin with describing the Italian and Neapolitan context, to understand how the social centers respond to the local characteristics. Hereafter, it will go further into the eight social centers that have been legalized as urban commons and into the local conditions that stimulated the creation of this unique urban commons approach in Naples.

4.1 The Italian fight for the commons

Before going into the Neapolitan case, it is important to first provide insight into the broader Italian struggle for commons in which Naples finds itself. In Italy, the understanding of commons as a human right has evolved as a political strategy. United under the ‘beni comuni’ movement, Italians have aimed to reclaim commons like water, education, and culture from privatization (Mattei, 2013). An important victory of this movement was the ‘Water Referendum’ in June 2011, when more than 95% of the Italians voted against the privatization of their municipal water services. Italians showed their resistance to the privatization of water by protesting and occupying squares and buildings of socio-cultural importance (Mattei, 2013; Bailey & Mattei, 2013).

The symbolic value of water and the victory with the national referendum was able to shape the idea of the commons into a symbol of an alternative political vision. This has inspired many other social movements and the idea of the commons has been increasingly suggested as an alternative to capitalism (Mattei, 2013; Ricoveri, 2011). Consequently, it resulted in an increasing amount of occupations of abandoned public buildings by Italian social movements in order to reclaim them as a commons (Mattei & Quarta, 2015). The increasing popularity of the concept of commons has also influenced the current type of governance that is implemented in Naples, which is the only city amongst the larger Italian cities that returned water services to public ownership (Büllesbach et al., 2017). One of the interviewees argued how this battle against the privatization of water stimulated a further fight for commons in Naples:

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“The creation of the commons in Naples are a reaction against the privatization of water in Italy. It is a way, an instrument, to create another idea of society… It all started with the battle against the privatization of water. We won this battle in Naples. Hereby, we showed that the problem in this city is not its inhabitants, but it’s its government. All these places, the commons, they don’t exist because everyone in this city is leftist. However, people became leftist, because of this fight for water.” (Interview Salvatore, 2018)

With this quote, Salvatore (2018) underlines the idea of how the ‘beni comuni’ movement in Italy has shaped the idea of the commons into a symbol of an alternative political vision and an alternative idea of society. He also argues that the success of this movement in Naples has sprouted a local political ideology that could be characterized as more leftist. It could thereby be argued that the Italian struggle against the privatization of water has stimulated the creation of urban commons in Naples. However, this is only one of many reasons why urban commons have become an important instrument of urban political change in Naples. The following section will go further into the context and characteristics of Naples to increase the understanding of why and how the Neapolitan urban commons have developed.

4.2 The Neapolitan context and challenges

The city of Naples is the capital of the Southern region Campania and the third-largest municipality of Italy. There are just below 1 million inhabitants living within Naples’ administrative limits, whilst the entire metropolitan city counts more than 3 million inhabitants (Istat, 2015). It has the highest population density of the bigger Italian cities, which results in challenges in the managing of the available urban space (Comune di Napoli, 2018; Dines, 2012). The Campania region in which Naples finds itself is known for its informal and illegal nature, and its economic backwardness. This has often been referred to as the ‘southern question’ and attributed an idea of ‘otherness’ to the southern part of Italy compared to its northern counterpart (Filhol, 2016; Moe, 2006). The idea of being subordinate compared to the north of Italy is felt by Neapolitans, as is exemplified by the following quote:

“In the south of Italy, Napoli is the metropolis, but it is a suburb of Italy. The south is the suburb of Italy and Italy is the suburb of Europe and so on. So we have to break these ideas of that there is a center and a suburb and that the people in the suburb are the losers of the society and that they cannot do anything to change their conditions.” (Interview Luciano, Dario & Zibby, 2018)

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Whilst Dario (Interview 2018) perceives Naples as the metropolis of Southern Italy, he argues that its inferior position in the Italian system should be challenged, because it can create a feeling of helplessness and inferiority amongst its inhabitants. Besides this, the city of Naples faces many challenges and the consequences of a long socio-economic crisis which affects a large segment of the population (Comune di Napoli, 2018). This multitude of challenges were underlined when Daniela, who works at the municipality, was asked what the current problems of Naples were:

“Wow… We have many problems, many. It is difficult. There are so many problems. I think the most important is that Neapolitans feel powerless and excluded. The feeling that this city belongs to everybody misses in Naples… Citizens think that the city is not their responsibility and that someone else will solve all the problems.” (Interview Daniela, 2018)

Daniela (Interview 2018) argues that Neapolitan citizens don’t feel included in city making and therefore don’t feel responsible for the city. This then further accelerates the problematic conditions. It suggests that inhabitants of Naples are socially and politically excluded, which is referred to as one of the city’s biggest current challenges by the municipality (Comune di Napoli, 2018). Moreover, economic exclusion also characterizes the current difficulties that Naples faces (Comune di Napoli, 2018). The city has a relatively high unemployment rate, which is currently stable at 42% (Gazetta di Napoli, 2018). Many of the interviews pointed out that people are often employed without a legal contract and are paid relatively low salaries. This was demonstrated by Clara (Interview 2018), who helps workers without contracts with legal issues in the social center Ex OPG. According to her, many of the people who work in restaurants and the tourist sector in Naples do so without a contract. Furthermore, exclusion from the housing market and housing shortage is another important challenge that has been recognized as problematic by the municipality. Both the bad conditions of the job market and the housing shortage can result in social vulnerability and situations of extreme poverty (Comune di Napoli, 2018). Nicole said the following about this:

“In Naples there are many people who cannot afford a rent and who cannot pay for a house anymore. All the public programs are stopped. They don’t build any public housing here for people anymore… So there are about 17.000 people now who are waiting for a house.” (Interview Nicole,

The rebel city of Naples : stimulating social innovation by recognizing social squats as urban commons