Collective Properties and Urban Commons in Italy: Between the Social Function of Property and Sustainable Practices of Commoning

Abstract This paper explores how Italian law can accommodate – and should actively protect – collective practices of urban commoning as legally significant alternatives to the traditional dominion-based model of property. Against the backdrop of growing awareness of ecological limits and the structural failure of extractive development paradigms, understood as legal and economic models oriented toward private appropriation and indifferent to social and environmental sustainability, the paper argues that the classical conception of property codified in Article 832 of the Italian Civil Code is increasingly inadequate to govern contemporary forms of resource management. The analysis advances a functional reinterpretation of property grounded in its social function under Article 42(2) of the Italian Constitution, read in conjunction with the personalist and solidaristic principles enshrined in Article 2. From this perspective, the legal relevance of an asset does not depend primarily on its formal ownership regime – public or private – but on the collective interests realized through its use and on the capacity of governance practices to promote fundamental rights, social cohesion, and sustainability. This approach makes it possible to move beyond the traditional public/private dichotomy and to focus instead on bottom-up, community-based forms of governance, consistent with Elinor Ostrom’s theories on collective action and the sustainable management of shared resources. The paper reconstructs the evolution of property within the Italian legal system, highlighting the tension between the individualistic proprietary model embedded in the 1942 Civil Code and the persistence of collective land regimes and civic uses (usi civici), particularly in rural contexts. Long marginalized and treated as residual anomalies, these institutions were fully recognized only with Law No. 168/2017, which qualifies collective properties as primary legal orders of original communities and as instruments for environmental protection, cultural identity, and social solidarity. However, this recognition remains confined to agro-silvo-pastoral domains, leaving urban collective practices without an organic national framework. Building on this gap, the paper analyzes the emergence of urban commons in Italy, focusing on the collective reappropriation and self-management of abandoned public buildings – such as theaters, former factories, and historic sites – through cultural and social projects. These experiences are conceptualized as cultural commons, insofar as the cultural dimension is constitutive of both regeneration and governance. By situating these practices within Henri Lefebvre’s “right to the city,” the paper argues that urban commons function as instruments of participatory and inclusive urban regeneration, strengthening social bonds and democratic participation. Particular attention is devoted to local governance models. The paper distinguishes between comanagement arrangements based on collaboration pacts between citizens and public authorities and more radical forms of collective self-government, such as the Neapolitan model of urban civic uses. In the latter case, a rural legal institution has been reinterpreted to legitimize community self-management of urban spaces, with public authorities acting as guarantors rather than owners. While innovative, these experiences remain legally fragile, as they rely on revocable municipal acts and lack stable national protection. The paper concludes that urban cultural commoning represents a reinterpretation of property, oriented toward sustainability. It argues for comprehensive legislation consolidating these practices as instruments of democratic urban governance.