Is This the Dawn of a New Era? Fragilities and Opportunities on the Transformative Path to Shared Public-Collective Governance in the Brussels Capital Region.

The experimentation with shared forms of public-collective governance is probably one of the most well-known and widely acknowledged contributions of urban commons to tackling many societal challenges —urban commons being understood here as a specific form of community spaces, thus excluding community spaces initiated and managed by public or private actors. This opportunity is now recognised by the local administration in the Brussels Capital Region as well, with a focus not so much on preventing privatisation but on reinventing how resources are managed, protected, and re-generated. Following a publicly funded study on the state of urban commons in the BCR (2022-2023), some local administrative entities are making efforts on various fronts to promote shared governance for community spaces and beyond, in what I describe as Brussels' molecular landscape of commons.

Drawing on my extensive experience with the Brussels commoning scene, this paper aims to briefly depict the efforts, potentials, and milestones achieved, as well as the uncertainties, fragilities, and hesitations—on the part of both commoners and the administration—that may continue to delay this new chapter for urban governance in the Capital of Europe. Written in dialogue with local actors during what appears to be a liminal phase, just before the dawn of a new era of shared public-collective governance in Brussels, the paper seeks to contribute to the reflection on the transformative dynamics of urban governance under the sign of the commons, navigating between resilience and resistance.