Session 2: Commoning the City

Focusing on urban commoning initiatives as a form of resistance and community-building.

Presenters

Shuyun Cao is a member of Dinghaiqiao Mutual Aid Society, a Shanghai-based commoning initiative for alternative art and social practices. She received her master’s degree in Urban Studies at University College London and currently works as an editor of IDEAT China. Shuyun is active in the research and practices of art/activism, creative place-making, and guerrilla urbanism through curation, event-planning, and other community-based projects. She initiated “Bureau of Guerrilla Urbanism” to reclaim public spaces through collective actions in experimental, pop-up and playful ways, such as every year’s PARK(ing) Day Shanghai. She is also a swing dancer in her spare time. Other DMAS Contributors: Yiren Zhao, Mengyang Zhao, and Benny Zhang. Click here for full project description.

Yeonjung Ahn studied media engineering and mastered in social economy. She worked as a cultural planner in Hongdae-ap region in Seoul, South Korea then founded a social enterprise called “Norrizzang” in which people share an upcycling makers spaces in pursuit of transition of city dwellers’ roles from consumers to producers. Under her leadership, the group performed a bottom-up space making project, Bibil base, with citizen in once abandoned Mapo Oil Depot that they squatted by that time. Until 2020, Yeonjung was in charge of representative in Seoul Youth Hub for three years before went on a sabbatical year in 2021. While in the Hub, she supported Korean youth to pursue an independent and alternative life and created a cooperative network of Activist Researchers in Asian countries. Click here for full project description.

Discussant

Shu-Mei Huang is Associate Professor at the Graduate Institute of Building and Planning, National Taiwan University. Her research interests include urban studies, critical heritage studies, and trans-nationalization of care and space. She has published her work with International Journal of Heritage Studies, Journal of Planning Education and Research, Environment and Planning E, Natural Hazards Review, etc. Her co-authored book manuscript titled Heritage, Memory, and Punishment: Remembering Colonial Prisons in East Asia (Series Global Constellations, Routledge) is recently published.