Research article

Recognising the edible urban commons: Cultivating latent capacities for transformative governance in Singapore

ABSTRACT

Across urbanising Asia, edible commons surprise, contradict or challenge social norms of being in public. Their presence provokes new adjudications of approaching, governing and managing shared and living property, prompting thought on how public and private realms of life may converge into informal modes of co-governance for green place-making and flourishing. Starting with an anecdote of stealing in a short-lived urban farm in Singapore, I conceptualise edible urban commons as ‘active moments’. Specifically, they are active moments where a generative form of friction and fiction emerges, and as such, are allegorical packages that transmit latent capacities. I suggest that closer attention to forms of regulatory slippage in these spaces generates insight about latent capacities for transformation. Finally, I propose a preliminary set of latent capacities for transformative governance towards an ecological identity that supports edible commoning in cities.

Keywords: agrarian citizenship; ecological identity; food; learning; transformative governance; urban commons