The (very) concrete utopia of Bâtiment 7: A community facing the challenges of its financial autonomy
This article explores a little-studied facet of the commons that is essential to their emergence, sustainability and accessibility: the operationalization of their financing. Through the case of Bâtiment 7, a breeding ground for collective autonomy located in a working-class neighbourhood of Montreal, we posit the hypothesis that the path to financial viability is not simply a managerial matter but constitutes an intrinsically political task that lies at the heart of the communalization process. To this end, we proceed in two stages. Firstly, for the sake of contextualization, we review the scientific literature on the commons in order to characterize the Bâtiment 7 project. This allows us to identify some of the singularities that have decisive economic repercussions on its feasibility. Further to this, we utilize data from an ongoing partnership research with Bâtiment 7 as well as the funders in order to identify the structural tensions that result from what we call the “micropolitics of financing.” This term refers to both the political choices that underlie financial considerations and to the experiments with which the organization’s financing modalities and mission are brought into line.