Occupying the commons: a practice for citywide resilience / James E. Katz (ed.)

When New York City awoke on the morning of October 30, 2012, there was an unusual quiet. It was the morning after Hurricane Sandy, a storm not only devastating in its destruction of lives and livelihoods, but also for its enormous symbolic impact: it seemed to have defeated NYC, a city where networks are the daily currency and street vibrancy the lifeblood, so easily. Yet this also became a test-bed for new forms of grassroots innovation. In particular, Occupy Sandy-a cohort borne of the barely-year-old Occupy movement-became a notable force in rapidly mobilizing to offer citywide support. They appeared to work as a distinctive community of practice, integrating street-level and online experience to bolster soft infrastructure through the creation of 'urban commons.' Now, more than a year and a half after Sandy, deeper exploration of the policy measures which harness grassroots strengths have been slow to transpire, despite 'resilience' becoming the darling term in much of the political discourse. In this study I use Occupy Sandy as a lens to examine a model for urban resilience through 270 Living Inside Social Mobile Information the interplay between sustainability, community mobilization, and technological innovation. I draw upon ethnographic fieldwork (June 2012-March 2013) to map Occupy's evolution in NYC, identifying the dynamics and practices which laid the framework for Occupy Sandy-related activities, and to raise a series of policy considerations about supporting soft infrastructure through urban commons practices. These issues must be taken seriously if we want to build significant inroads into making our urban environments more sustainable