From Occupation to Inhabitation. Trajectories of Vacancy and Commoning in Cape Town, Dublin and Vienna

The dynamic relationship between vacancy, occupations and commoning is a productive entry point to investigate inhabitation as an emancipatory form of liberation. However complex geographical variegation and binary thinking creates barriers in advancing on these concepts. In this presentation, we draw on collaborative dialogues and a comparative approach with a focus on Cape Town, Dublin and Vienna. Our approach was guided through conceptual themes of vacancy, occupation, via engaged participatory research in our cities, and with the aim of bridging Global South and Global North geographies of theory. We conceptualise vacancy, occupation and commoning along a continuum, as points of articulation and potential rupture to produce for alternative modes of city-making but which exist precariously within highly surveilled, enclosed and financialized urban systems. Along three thematic axes, (1) Thinking with and across historical context, (2) Working with complex temporalities, and (3) Beyond the formal/informal divide, we seek to bring the divergent experience of inhabitation in the three cities into closer dialogue. Thinking with and across historical context thereby means being attentive to a diverse set of urban processes as entries to do comparison between Global South and Global North. Working with complex temporalities stresses that occupation as a planning intervention not only impacts the trajectories of policy/politics but highlights the recognition of socio-spatial practices as alternative modes of city-making, provoking foundational questions about the power to speculate on the future city. Beyond the formal/informal divide underlines the crucial theoretical contribution from the Global South urban scholarship to recognise the importance of the informal as a set of a practices shaping all cities, not just Southern cities. Discussing these three thematic axes with contemporary and historic examples of Cape Town, Dublin and Vienna, we give insights into the relation of vacancy–housing precarity and into the emancipatory practices of occupation and commoning.