Life as a Common : Space for a New Biopolitical Project

This text addresses the concept of "life as a common" and posits that the occasion and the necessity of a new biopolitical space dealing with life as a common are now taking form. This space not only relates to public and institutional responsibilities (crossing scales, spaces, and modes of space production; a transversal understanding to species, both human and nonhuman) but also overcomes the traditional agenda of architecture, landscape, or urban design. The hypothesis is that, in the actual reconsideration of life and space relations, the biopolitical space will leave behind the modern project, codified by modern architecture and urbanism; it will also leave behind the actual confusing and con- tradictory moves toward the ecological, demographic, and economic transition. The text proposes a few possible lines of thought about how urban and landscape design can help to shape a new, more substantial biopolitical action about life as a common, consistent with current and future challenges. This concept opens to the radical alteration of design perspective, to the value of heterogeneity and coexistences, and to the importance of developing alternative eco-socio-spatial prototypes-three conditions inside which we can begin to rethink the biopolitical nature of the transition and grasp the importance of life as a common. The text is structured in three parts: the first situates the concept of life as a common within wider debates about biopolitics and proposes a conceptual frame to orient the reading of the second and third parts as well as an autonomous reflexive device (I. Urbanism and the Biopolitical Project). The second part delves into the relation between life as a com- mon and the concrete transformation of space through design. Here, soil is at the foundation of spatial design and one of the crucial agents connecting urbanism and life as a common (II. Our Common Soil: Toward an Urbanism of the Living Soil. The third part moves to a long-term ter- ritorial vision whose goal is not only to challenge the actual biopolitical structure but to read the territory as a subject through the lens of soil and labor; to embed its vision into alternative modes of space production-a specific space for exploring the ecological and socioeconomic shift and life as a common (III. The Transition Project).