Scaling Material Urban Commons is a speculative city-making project investigating automated logistics for commoning material urban commons, such as rescued food. It postulates that some forms of material commons require different forms of beyond-hyperlocal scale commoning. The project critically investigates and prototypes technological and sociotechnical conditions for city-wide commoning of material urban commons, using a predictive-algorithm-based system emulator that orchestrates pickup and drop-off of rescued food in Basel and London. Introducing predictive technology shifts the site of commoning closer towards an algorithm-driven platform, which raises following key questions: What frictions emerge from changing scale in commoning? How to reconcile predictive technologies with local, idiosyncratic food cultures? How to engage in commoning with algorithmic agents in participatory settings? By addressing these questions, the project aims at creating imaginaries of commoning-based smart city alternatives.
smuc.kitchenProject Website
Curated research bookmarkswww.are.na/viktor-bedo/scaling-material-urban-commons
Advisory Board
Prof. Dr. Claudia Mareis, Cultural History and Theory at the Humboldt University of Berlin
Prof. Les Back, director Centre for Urban and Community Research, Goldsmiths, University of London
Dr. Jaz Choi, director Care-full Design Lab, RMIT
Dr. Martijn de Waal, director Play & Civic Media, Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences
Host for London based activities
Center for Urban and Community Studies, Goldsmiths, University of London
The project is funded by the Practice to Science Grant of the Swiss National Science Foundation (grant no 199107).
