Commoning Beyond Enclosures

A relational conception of space emphasises dwelling as our conscious formation of meaningful relationships with the surrounding environment at multiple scales. Dwelling manifests in a place, a specific location in geographic space with physical attributes, memory and identity that often flows beyond its given location. Dwelling is linked to common resources outside the public or private property regimes, as evident in ecosystem services like agricultural land, forests, rivers, and the ambient environment. Our place-based dependence on common resources for our physical, social, and economic well-being in the Bengal Delta has been evolving historically. The exposure of housing to various natural and man-made disturbances, and the subsequent adaptations people make to their housing, have brought about transformative changes in their relationship with settlements. In other words, people make adaptations to mitigate their vulnerabilities for resilience. The causes and consequences of this transformation vary across a rural-urban continuum. At any point in this continuum, problems arise when vulnerabilities from myriad social, economic and environmental externalities disrupt people's ways of living and means of livelihood and erode their resilient relationship with the surrounding scalar environment. Cell for Resilient Dwelling (CeRD) addresses people's resilient dwelling through relating the production and consumption of housing to its scalar integration within settlements, focusing on its contribution to enriching lives in a changing society. The Vision of CeRD is to ensure people's access to housing by relating their ways of living and modes of livelihood from a resilient perspective. The CeRD Missions include: Research, Publication and Documentation, Events, Advocacy and Networking.