Commoning repair : framing a community response to transitioning waste economies

In this paper we sketch-out community economies of reuse and repair to address questions of look and scale posed by the session abstract titled Scales of Reuse and Repair: Diversity, Degrowth and Transformative Circularity. With a focus on community-led activities in two local government areas, the paper identifies plural economies of material circulation alive in social practices of reuse, repair and share in western Sydney, aligning with national, state and local government agendas to move to a circular economy as integral to the sustainable future of Australian cities. We propose that amongst the first tasks in the transition to a circular economy is creating a 'repair commons' that includes the contribution of local civic society. Drawing on two studies exploring cultures of repair and community waste practices in western Sydney"”one of the most culturally diverse and rapidly transforming urban areas in the world"”we show that transition means a recalibration of the relationship between governments and communities, and a renegotiation of responsibilities for managing household waste. Employing a community economies lens, our vignette of a community of repair commoners is enabled by an 'identikit' of a locality transformed by possibilities of making and remaking from the already made. We intend to enact the 'transformative thinking' that Miller and Gibson-Graham (2019) call for in making other possibilities visible in the midst of the world we have now. The provocation offered by this session is to consider how our picture of a repair commons generates a different scalar imaginary with potential to contribute to planning and policy environments prioritising a shared civic responsibility for material culture.