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 Commoning the City Studio
Instructor: Stefan Gruber & Jonathan Kline

Shipai, an urban village on the edge of Guangzhou’s CBD, has become a vital hub for the gig economy, where food delivery workers navigate extractive platform systems amid informal and precarious spatial conditions.

This project explores how gig workers—often excluded from stable housing, infrastructure, and decision-making—can reclaim agency through cooperative models and shared spatial practices. It proposes a platform co-op framework rooted in principles of commoning, where workers co-create and manage essential infrastructures: rest hubs, communal kitchens, battery stations, tool-sharing systems, and digital support networks.

By outlining spatial and organizational strategies that can be tested locally, the project asks how gig labor and informal economies might shift from systems of extraction toward networks of solidarity and care—reframing urban villages as resilient, worker-led spaces with the potential to scale across similar urban contexts.

Hypothesis