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Contribution short abstract

Building on a reflection about prior usage of the urban commons, the paper analyses volunteer councils authorised to negotiate building appearances with developers in a quintessential heritage city. What do these councils achieve for the common good?

Contribution long abstract

Kicking off the panel, the paper reviews prior usage of the urban commons, arguing that not all cases to which the concept has been applied fit the category. Yet while urban atmospheres and the cityscape emerging from building exteriors clearly do, they have been neglected. The paper then moves to Kyoto, the former capital of Japan and acclaimed stronghold of history and tradition. Decades of conflict over the built environment led to a new municipal building code in 2007 that continues to enjoy broad support. Details of building design, however, are now left to negotiations between ‘local cityscape councils’ (chiiki keikanzukuri kyōgikai) made up of citizen volunteers and the developers. Officially, local amateurs meet non-local professionals here, but ethnographic fieldwork in 2019/20 revealed a more complex picture. Kyoto City bureaucrats are also less absent than officially proclaimed. While these encounters are legally non-binding, they do produce widely appreciated results, demonstrating the potential of mixed management of the urban commons by the state, private corporations and civil society. ‘Commoning’ and the state should therefore not be posited as irreconcilable opposites.