Reviewer: Anonymous

1. Is the subject matter relevant?

Yes. The article discusses the concept of the “Right to the City” through a well-described case study, and explores the dynamics of increased citizen participation in co-producing the city. Therefore, the article is appropriate for this particular special issue.

2. Is the treatment of the subject matter intellectually interesting? Are there citations or bodies of literature you think are essential to which the author has not referred?

The article is quite inclusive. The authors use several references to present the used concepts.

3. Are there any noticeable problems with the author’s means of validating assumptions or making judgments?

No. To begin with, the authors describe extensively the methodology followed in this article. Further, the article includes a wide range of data (i.e. ethnographic participant observations, in-depth interviews and analysis of social media and printed media), which provide the reader with a clear idea of the activities and practices that are taking place in the case study. Hence, the assumptions made in this article are well validated.

4. Is the article well written?

The language is very good. However, the authors could shorten some very long sentences to facilitate the reader. Moreover, it would be helpful to number the sections and sub-sections of the article.

5. Are there portions of the article that you recommend be shortened, excised or expanded?

This is a quite long article. Given that the presented theoretical concepts might not be totally new for the readers of JoPP, it is suggested to reduce the length of the literature discussion (sections “NEW MEANS FOR CITIZEN PEER PRODUCTION OF CITIES”; “RIGHT TO THE CITY: CITIZEN RESPONSES TO THE CRISIS”; and “IMAGINING A CITIZEN-LED URBANISM: CITY-PRODUCTION IN FUTURE TENSE”) and focus more on the case study (results and conclusions).

Suggestions for improvement:

Reviewer: Anonymous

1. Is the subject matter relevant?

The article updates the “Right to the City” in today’s specific conditions at the global level, based on an urban movement discussed in a city in Australia, which uses that very term as reference in their name. In the authors’ own words, it is presented in a “hyperlocal interpretation of global issues” context, which makes it relevant to urban dynamics in many cities around the world.

2. Is the treatment of the subject matter intellectually interesting? Are there citations or bodies of literature you think are essential to which the author has not referred?

The article uses a well-defined methodology, and employs data collected from various sources. It engages the reader throughout the content, structure and form of the paper. The literature cited is quite extensive and well informed.

3. Are there any noticeable problems with the author’s means of validating assumptions or making judgments?

Even though it becomes clear that the author(s) had prior engagement with the activist movement, or have developed an intimate relationship as a result of their participations in meetings, they maintain an academic treatment of the topic and remain impartial.

4. Is the article well written?

The language used for the article is quite good, yet, one proof-reading is recommended.

5. Are there portions of the article that you recommend be shortened, excised or expanded?

While the analysis of the context is thorough, the conclusions needed to be further developed.

A statement such as “The engagement and participation discourse and practices of this local movement are informed by a collective expectation for a different city, and a different assumption of their role as co-producers” remains quite abstract. It would be illuminating to describe what exactly the participation discourse and practices are.

The “playfulness and fun” as active principles and tactics in which the Right to the City-Brisbane engages, are well described. Yet, as mention is made to the flaws of representative democracy and “the serious business of challenging local governance”, it might help the reader to introduce a discussion of the ways that decision-making and governance of the “Right to the City-Brisbane” itself occur. Are there any particular tools and/ or methods employed by Right to the City-Brisbane, in an effort to address these flaws that the reader should benefit from knowing?

Also, there is mention of a vision towards redistribution of decision-making. Yet, since “practising inclusive participation practices” (p.28) is a stated goal, it would be important to discuss concepts –if any- towards the city’s governance that the group envisions and proposes vis-à-vis currently “shrinking of democratic opportunities” (p.28).

Finally, it would benefit the paper to draw some conclusions and perhaps to offer some ideas and recommendations based on the overview that was reached during the process.

Suggestions for improvement:

• Expand on the inner structural workings of the Right to the City-Brisbane, more specifically methods and tools towards decision-making implemented in the group itself, as well as envisioned for the city as a whole as part of “crafting the city”.
• Further elaborate the conclusions section.
• Final proof-reading

Reviewer: Anonymous

1. Is the subject matter relevant?

Yes, the subject matter –the right to the city and peer production– lies at the core of the interests of this special issue of JoPP.

2. Is the treatment of the subject matter intellectually interesting? Are there citations or bodies of literature you think are essential to which the author has not referred?

The treatment of the subject is interesting because it reports on a real case study in Brisbane but there are various bodies of literature that are not properly analyzed and presented in the paper.

First, and most importantly, the authors make some bold claims implying that their study is somehow unique in the literature, which is clearly not the case since there are numerous ethnographic studies of right to the city movements and organizations with or without the use of digital tools.

For example, the author(s) could look at similar ethnographic studies across the world. For example, the Spanish anthropologist Alfonso Corsin Jimenez has extensively worked with urban activists in Madrid and has published a number of journal papers on the different components of his ethnographic research. Part of it is with regards to the co-production/co-creation of cities with the example of the local residents’ initiatives ‘the city as school’. There is also ethnographic work with regards to urban activism in South European cities, Turkey etc. that there may be of interest for the author(s) to look at.

(Very indicative) Some of the references that are overlooked and could be used as starting points to explore different ethnographic methodologies and urban movements include the following: “Urban Commons: Moving Beyond State and Market”, “Common Space: The city as commons”, “Urban Commons: Rethinking the City (Space, Materiality and the Normative)”, “From Environmentalism to Transenvironmentalism: The Ethnography of an Urban Protest in Modern Istanbul”, “The Potentials of Grounded Theory in the Study of Social Movements”, “Rebel cities”, “The City Is Ours: Squatting and Autonomous Movements in Europe from the 1970s to the Present”, “The Radical Imagination. Social movement research in the age of austerity”, “Occupy Wall Street, Open Ethnography, and the Uncivilized Slot”, “Transformations in Engaged Ethnography: Knowledge, Networks, and Social Movements”, “The Berlin Reader A Compendium on Urban Change and Activism”, “Urban Grassroots Movements in Central and Eastern Europe”.

A particular movement that shares interesting characteristics with the “Right to the city Brisbane”, including the playful and humorous approach, is the Belgrade-based “Ministry of Space”. Although there is no ethnographic work on their activities (at least to my knowledge), there is some material in English that might be interesting for the authors and/or the activists in Brisbane: http://creativetimereports.org/2015/10/07/inside-ministry-space/ http://civic-forum.eu/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/NGO-of-the-Year-Ministarstvo-Prostora.pdf https://issuu.com/ministarstvoprostora/docs/ministry_of_space

So, statements like “Scholarship on the topic has mostly gravitated …” or “theoretical approaches … fail in grasping local nuances of power struggles in urban governance” should be more thoroughly defended or better avoided.

Second, there is very little discussion about the importance of digital tools and their ownership, a topic already discussed and linked to the right to the city theory by de Lange, M., & de Waal, M. in “Owning the city: New media and citizen engagement in urban design”, and Antoniadis & Apostol in “The right(s) to the hybrid city and the role of DIY networking”. In this context, there is also a very interesting ethnographic work in Australia by Jungnickel, “DIY WiFi: Re-imagining connectivity” on community networks in Australia, which is also a novel form of right to the city movement focusing on vital infrastructure.

Finally, there are more fields touched by this work which seem to be superficially covered as, for example, revealed by the use of a single citation to “Foth et al” for “participatory urbanism” instead of building a thorough understanding since the early 1960s documented by Jane Jacobs, for instance, as well as for “urban commons”. I would also recommend the work of the Australians Leonie Sandercock, for story telling, and Libby Porter, for indigenous rights. Towards the end of the paper, there is a reference to ‘solidarity’ a term which should be also explored in more depth and in closer reference to the findings of the research.

3. Are there any noticeable problems with the author’s means of validating assumptions or making judgments?

The results presented in the paper make sense and are interesting. It is not very clear to me to what extent they are based on “grounded theory” or how the printed media we analyzed. Indeed, grounded theory is not explained thoroughly and in justification on its use for this research. A general principle of grounded theory is to start with a theme rather than a research question. Likewise ethnography is not about a hypothesis rather than giving a meaning to a cultural situation. Perhaps it would help to explain in more detail how the chosen methodology worked in practice and perhaps some reflections on the topic of methodology itself (see also some of the references above).

The overall analysis and conclusions will gain in significance and rigor if they were compared to other “right to the city” movements in other cities around the world even if they are different, trying to explain why.

Finally, the digital dimension need to be studied in more depth exploring for example possible links to “digital activism” groups in the same city, and ideas for future action to avoid the “necessary pain” of Facebook. And some more detailed comments on the analysis:

– I wouldn’t call a “troll” someone protesting even if impolitely giving a set of arguments for their claims, and even if they are unjustified. I would actually try to approach such people to try to explore also the “other side”.

– In my mind the “respect to the traditional owner of this land” by just using an aboriginal name sounds hypocritical if it is not complemented with concrete action (see also Libby Porter’s book on ‘Planning for Coexistence?: Recognizing Indigenous rights through land-use planning in Canada and Australia’)

– What means a “big” event? Some numbers would help to assess the impact of the actions of the group.

4. Is the article well written?

Yes, the paper is in general well written but it needs thorough proof-reading as there has been a number of typos and spelling mistakes throughout the text. (I am not a native speaker but “vis-a-vis” sounds strange to me; I would use “face to face” or “in person”)

5. Are there portions of the article that you recommend be shortened, excised or expanded?

I recommend to significantly reduce the overview of the right to the city concept and urban movements in general, as it does not show a thorough understanding of the topic, and rather to focus in more detail on the specific case study, to identify other similar and different case studies across the world and to produce some interesting comparative analysis, so to better justify the conclusion that the group strategies “reveal a distinct from of peer-production”.

Moreover, as mentioned above, it is important to further develop the role of the digital tools both as facilitators of urban actions but also as themselves contested urban digital spaces; that even if not based on the ethnographic data already collected, but at least through comparisons with other case studies or a forward looking analysis by the authors.

Suggestions for improvement:

– Less generic literature on “the right to the city” and more comparisons with concrete similar and/or different case studies across the world

– More focus on the digital dimension