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Adverse commoning: Tracing contested legal geographies of the urban commons

Published version
Peer-reviewed

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Authors

Abstract

jats:pUnder threat of enclosure in rapidly gentrifying cities, some urban commoners are turning to legal tactics to ward off dispossession. In this article, I explore the contested legal geographies of urban commoning, considering some of the challenges, stakes, and opportunities that emerge in the effort to gain legal recognition. Specifically, I examine the use of the doctrine of adverse possession by Philadelphia gardeners to claim title to the community farm they cultivated as an urban commons for decades. In the context of a neoliberal settler colonial city, I argue that the gardeners’ adverse commoning, involving an il/legal counterclaim to property, facilitates consideration of the ways urban commoners are both enrolled in normative property regimes and have the potential to resist these regimes through errant performances of proprietary continuity, exclusivity, notoriety, and hostility.</jats:p>

Description

Funder: Department of Geography, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Keywords

Property, adverse possession, urban commons, performativity, squatting, legal geography

Journal Title

Environment and Planning D: Society and Space

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

0263-7758
1472-3433

Volume Title

40

Publisher

SAGE Publications
Sponsorship
National Science Foundation (Graduate Research Fellowship)
University of Wisconsin-Madison Institute for Legal Studies (Law and Society Graduate Fellowship)
American Council of Learned Societies (Dissertation Completion Fellowship)