Let's Recommon IT

Free, Fair, and Alive: The Insurgent Power of the Commons

Bollier, David; Helfrich, Silke (2019). New Society Publishers

Threads: Commons, Design patterns

Summary

A practical theory of commoning built from observed patterns of social life, peer governance, and provisioning in real commons. It explicitly uses an Alexander-style pattern language.

Why it’s useful here

Connects Ostrom to Alexander directly. It is the closest existing model for the wiki’s pattern language and is written for practitioners.

Key ideas

  • Commoning as a verb (practice, not resource)
  • Triad: social life, peer governance, provisioning
  • Pattern language of commoning
  • ostrom-1990-governing-the-commons.md
  • alexander-1977-pattern-language.md

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