Abstract
Commons have been described as an ethic of political action (Hardt and Negri, 2015) or as a political principle that aims to self-government (Dardot and Laval, 2015). That means they possess an ideological framework able to stand against the main regulatory institutions of our times, that is: representative democracy, capitalism and neoliberalism. Despite more than two decades of practicing, this counter-model has not reached its ideological goal. On the contrary, the more commons spread their diffusion as an «empty-signifier» within collective action repertoires and among public opinion, the more neoliberal aspects colonized our urban environments. A different, and less radical, theoretical approach looks at urban commons as tools for reshaping the relationship among citizens and local administration. This approach has also shown is limits, particularly in terms of the de-politization of urban ecosystems. If the preceding assumptions are indeed correct, what could be the empirical functions of urban commons? The hypothesis put forth in this chapter is that commons serve an “expressive” role for particular groups that may be considered an “avant-garde” in terms of cognitive resources and critical weltanschauung. The aforementioned hypothesis is been validated through the analysis of case studies in the municipalities of Bologna, Rome and Naples.