A Framework for Infrastructuring Commons Creation

In this paper, we present a framework that combines design principles and approaches from the co-design and commons fields to support a community to create commons. Commons are both a shared resource and the governance strategies used by a collective of people to manage that shared resource. The commons literature offers robust frameworks for analysing an existing commons but lacks approaches to support communities to create commons. To address this gap, we turn to co-design to develop approaches that support communities in commons creation. We draw on co-design's use of frames, tools, and infrastructuring to develop a `commons creation framework'. Infrastructuring approaches seek to design structures that outlast designer involvement for use and adaptation by communities. The proposed framework is a design support to guide communities in their ongoing exploration of the critical components of a functional commons. The commons creation framework is composed of a commons creation matrix that assists people in selecting tools to address critical factors of a functional commons and a tool improvement matrix that assists people to tailor selected tools for localised use. To test this framework, we applied it to a previous co-design project in which a community co-designed tools to transition public libraries into community-based neighbourhood centres. This application provided insights into how the framework guided the categorisation of tools and framed the improvement of tools explicitly for commons creation. Future research involves sharing the framework with communities to gather insights on its evolution.