COMMON ACCESS: Commoning Accessibility in Urban Outskirts and Beyond Welcome to MORE 2026

Lead Researcher: Enrica Papa

Collaborators: University of Westminster: Ersilia Verlinghieri Martha Sainsbury, 18-partner consortium across five European countries

Funding: Driving Urban Transitions Partnership ⁄ UKRI, 2024–2027. Total Project Funding: €1.2 million; University of Westminster Award: £210,679 

Publication Details: Open access project reports, tools and publications including common_access atlas, available at: commonaccessproject.com/outputs/

COMMON_ACCESS investigates how community-led practices can improve access to essential opportunities in suburban, peri-urban and rural areas, where the conventional 15-minute-city model is often difficult to achieve. The project introduces the concept of ‘commoning accessibility’: communities sharing, organising and managing social, spatial, digital and mobility resources to reach healthcare, education, employment, shops and leisure. Coordinated by the University of Westminster, the 18-partner consortium combines accessibility planning, urban governance, behavioural research and co-creation across five European countries.

Research activities include: the Flowers of Proximity workshops; analysis of policy and governance conditions; evaluation of community-led mobility and service initiatives; and development of the open-access COMMON_ACCESS Atlas. The Westminster team contributes expertise in accessibility planning, comparative case-study analysis, and tools that help identify, classify and support commoning practices. Testbeds, including Oxfordshire, connect local communities and public authorities to the international research programme. The project demonstrates how accessibility can be understood not only as an outcome delivered by infrastructure, but also as a collective capacity created through cooperation, shared resources and supportive institutions.

KEY WORDS: accessibility; commoning; urban peripheries; 15-minute city