From vacant buildings to living commons: civic empowerment strategy to reinvent rural service infrastructures
Client: Bernwiller Date: 2019-2020
Faced with the desertification of public services in rural areas and the absorption of local businesses by nearby urban centers, we developed a civic activation methodology to transform vacant buildings into "fourth places" - hybrid infrastructures between public facilities and associative spaces, inspired by commons principles. This systemic approach articulates shared governance, participatory diagnosis, and collaborative prefiguration over nine months. The Maisonsfaitquoi project demonstrates how the alignment between civil society and local authorities can generate new models of territorial resilience, creating actor ecosystems capable of adapting to rapid lifestyle mutations. By breaking free from the traditional monofunctional model, these versatile spaces embody a new form of "rural polyculture" where the State retains infrastructure ownership while delegating daily operations to external partners. This approach fully integrates questions of governance models and public asset management by emphasizing commons, thus ensuring their economic viability and community anchoring.