Sheila Foster -
The City as a Commons - Beyond Public and Private
Who owns the things we share? And who gets to decide how they're used?
We tend to think about cities in terms of public and private ownership. But what happens when we consider the city itself as a commons—shared spaces and resources that communities can help govern and sustain?
To open Season 3 of The Sidewalk Ballet, Chip talks with Sheila Foster, legal scholar, Columbia University professor, and co-author of Co-Cities: Innovative Transitions Toward Just and Self-Sustaining Communities.
Sheila offers a different way to think about the relationships between communities, governments, and the places they share. How do we balance competing interests? And what happens when residents have a meaningful role in shaping their cities?
From solar energy and community-owned broadband to questions about artificial intelligence, we explore how the idea of the commons extends into unexpected parts of our lives.
Originally recorded for our two-part series on democracy and public space this extended conversation asks us to reconsider a fundamental question:
What if public and private aren't the only ways to think about the city?
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