The second day of IASC 2013 (the 14th Conference of the International Association for the Study of the Commons, IASC, held 3-7 June 2013 in Kitafuji, Japan) was, much like the first day, filled with an incredibly intense package of presentations (you can check the panel schedule details for Wednesday here). I was really disappointed to miss the Ostrom Awards, but I got food poisoning (and probably a combination of jet-lag) in the afternoon. That said, I did attend a couple of really nice panels.
First, I checked out a panel on urban commons and open spaces, where Elizabeth Brabec (University of Massachussets – Amherst) gave a nice paper on open spaces in Vancouver (the city where I lived for 16 years). The paper is entitled “Common Space in the City of Vancouver: Analyzing Process and Outcomes“. Of course, this was an interesting and important paper to check out, so that’s why I was really keen to see what Elizabeth had done. I really liked her talk but I was surprised to see her NOT talk about greed of real estate developers as a driving force of changes in open spaces in Vancouver.
In the early afternoon I checked out a panel on field experiments in water commons research. I’m really keen to get back into experimental research (field experiments are interesting as methodological tools for water governance because they allow you to go into the field and test potential hypotheses with real folks and to study their behaviors in situ). The use of field experiments in studying water is increasing (check these examples – here and here)
Overall, I really enjoyed the second day, and I’m sorry I missed the Ostrom Awards (particularly because I am a member of the judging committee!). Here is a photo of Dr. Merino giving one of the Ostrom Awards recognition certificates.
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