In the context of this year’s theme Luxury. Spatial politics of comfort UDP3 places its emphasis on the luxury of collective action. In the face of financial crisis, climate change and steady urban growth the continuously arising question is: how do we want to live?

This question is central to the debate around processes of action and structures of so-called commons (in German Gemeingüter). The idea of a common responsibility for commons is negotiated in scientific discourse but equally tested and experimented with in reality in order to promote social relations and commonality and to sustainable and fairly devise our dealing with resources and nature.

‘Commons can offer an appropriate structural frame to this end as commoning in its inclusive, forward-looking course of action is concerned with securing need satisfaction not only in the short term but in the longer term.’ (Adloff et al. 2015: 142) ‘It is important to note that commons not just are, but are made.’ (Helfrich 2015:37)

Urban Design studies these negotiations and practices of the commons and aims to produce insights into the possibilities of luxury, the collective in the sense of communal practices – luxe commun. On which urban levels and in which constellations do these associations take place? What is being shared, produced or exchanged in solidarity? How and where is this negotiated? How is this luxury as commonality and of the common defined by actors? What is the socially relevant meaning of such commons?