CommonsSociety

Description

CommonsSociety is a conceptual and design framework developed by Henk van Houten and Ron M.R. Bosch for organising local communities around shared resources, infrastructure, ownership, responsibility, decision-making and locally created value.

The concept starts from the development of local Energy Communities, but proposes that organisational principles emerging around collective energy production, storage, sharing and governance may also be relevant to other forms of local value and shared provision.

The authors explicitly distinguish CommonsSociety from both a technical platform and an ideology. They describe it as a design approach for local communities in which the conditions for collectively organising access, ownership, responsibility and value are explored while retaining individual autonomy. It is explicitly not presented as a blueprint that can simply be applied to every community.

Characteristics

The neighbourhood as a living system

CommonsSociety understands the neighbourhood not as an isolated settlement but as a living system embedded in wider technical, legal, economic and governmental systems.

The framework brings together several interacting layers:

• Physical infrastructure — energy, buildings and mobility.
• Digital infrastructure — data, energy-management systems, artificial intelligence and transparency.
• Economic infrastructure — ownership, costs, revenues and a proposed commons dividend.
• Governance infrastructure — sociocracy, circles and consent.
• Social infrastructure — accessibility, participation, distribution of influence and the management of differing interests.

The authors argue that none of these layers can be optimised independently. A technical decision can affect economic outcomes; economic decisions can affect access and the distribution of costs and benefits; governance decisions can determine who has access to resources; and changes in legislation or infrastructure can alter local arrangements.

CommonsSociety is therefore conceived as an interdependent system rather than a collection of separate solutions.

This also expands the system boundary beyond energy. A neighbourhood may be energy-efficient or even energy-positive while its mobility, consumption, materials, food, water or waste systems continue to generate substantial environmental impacts. The authors consequently distinguish a local energy ecosystem from a broader sustainable local living ecosystem.

The neighbourhood is not an island

A central proposition is that local communities can organise many activities locally but cannot, and should not, determine everything themselves.

The authors relate this to Elinor Ostrom's concept of nested enterprises, in which responsibilities within larger commons are organised across multiple interconnected levels.

For a local energy commons, the relevant levels can be represented as:

household → street → neighbourhood → municipality → grid operator → national → European

Different responsibilities belong at different levels. Households retain space for individual choices; the community can organise shared facilities and local agreements; municipalities retain responsibilities concerning the physical environment and local policy; grid operators retain responsibility for public energy infrastructure; and national and European institutions establish parts of the legal, economic and market framework.

CommonsSociety therefore does not mean that responsibilities should be transferred to the lowest possible level.

The principle is instead:

Organise locally what can demonstrably be organised better locally, without attempting to organise locally what cannot responsibly be organised there.

This is intended to avoid an overly romantic conception of self-organisation. An energy community does not automatically possess the expertise, financial capacity, democratic legitimacy or legal authority to take over every system function.

At the same time, excessive centralisation can leave local communities with insufficient space to experiment, learn and adapt. The challenge is therefore understood as the distribution of responsibilities between scales rather than a choice between local autonomy and central control.

Appropriate autonomy

Appropriate autonomy is a central principle of CommonsSociety.

The framework does not propose maximising local self-sufficiency or transferring every responsibility to the neighbourhood. Instead, it asks which responsibilities belong:

• to the individual or household;
• to the local community; and
• to higher-level institutions.

CommonsSociety therefore envisages a plural institutional arrangement in which different organisational forms complement one another:

• households retain an individual domain of decision-making;
• communities organise what can demonstrably be done better collectively;
• market organisations can provide services and expertise;
• municipalities and other public authorities safeguard public interests and legal frameworks;
• grid operators and other infrastructure organisations retain system-level responsibilities.

The allocation of responsibilities is not regarded as permanent. As residents, technologies, economic conditions and legislation change, the appropriate distribution of responsibilities may change as well.

The learning commons

CommonsSociety is conceived as an adaptive and learning system rather than a fixed institutional design.

The neighbourhood changes continuously. Energy prices change, residents move, technologies develop, legislation changes, grid capacity changes and new interests emerge. Consequently, rules, roles, economic arrangements and governance structures may need to be periodically evaluated and revised.

The community should therefore be able to examine questions such as:

• Does the decision-making system still function?
• Are costs and benefits still distributed in an understandable way?
• Can new residents genuinely participate?
• Have unforeseen concentrations of power emerged?
• Do the rules governing participation and exit still work?
• Do local decisions create external effects that need to be reconsidered?

Learning is consequently treated as a component of governance rather than as a separate activity.

A living commons is not a finished institutional design but a system capable of feedback, adaptation and institutional learning.

Discussion

From energy communities to CommonsSociety

The starting point for CommonsSociety is the energy community.

Energy provides a concrete domain in which individual choices, shared infrastructure, local investment and public infrastructure interact. Energy communities can collectively organise activities such as renewable generation, energy use, storage, flexibility, investment and energy sharing. These activities also raise organisational questions concerning ownership, participation, professionalisation and the distribution of locally generated value.

CommonsSociety asks a broader question:

What happens when the principles underlying collective organisation around energy are considered for other forms of local value and shared provision?

The proposed expansion is deliberately presented as a hypothesis, rather than an established conclusion. The authors note that the existence of formal energy communities does not demonstrate that the same institutional arrangements can simply be transferred to housing, mobility, care, food or other domains.

In this sense, CommonsSociety represents a proposed transition:

energy community → local commons → integrated local socio-technical system

The energy infrastructure can constitute an initial common layer through which wider questions of collective organisation become visible.

Tensions within CommonsSociety

CommonsSociety does not attempt to eliminate the tensions inherent in collective organisation. Instead, these tensions are treated as continuing design questions.

The authors identify several such tensions:

• A commons needs clear boundaries without becoming a closed community.
• It needs rules while retaining the ability to change them.
• It needs decision-making, while recognising that consent does not automatically produce equality.
• It needs expertise without allowing expertise to become permanent power.
• It needs reciprocity without automatically treating people who can contribute less as free-riders.
• It needs mechanisms for dealing with conflict without becoming a separate legal order.
• It needs active participants while retaining an individual's right not to participate in everything.

These tensions are not presented as defects to be eliminated. They are part of the ongoing design problem with which CommonsSociety must learn to work.

Individual autonomy and collective organisation

CommonsSociety does not propose replacing individual autonomy with collective control. Nor does it propose eliminating government, markets or professional organisations.

Instead, it envisages different organisational forms operating alongside and complementing one another.

The household retains an individual domain. The community organises what can demonstrably be done better collectively. Market actors can provide services and expertise. Municipalities and other public authorities safeguard public interests and legal frameworks. Grid operators and other infrastructure organisations retain responsibilities that cannot simply be transferred to neighbourhood level.

CommonsSociety therefore seeks appropriate autonomy rather than maximum autonomy.

The central design question becomes:

Which responsibility belongs to the individual, which belongs to the community, and which should remain at a higher institutional level?

The answer is not considered permanent. The distribution of responsibilities can change as the community, technology, economy and regulatory environment change.

From commons theory to a socio-technical system

CommonsSociety draws on several established traditions

The work of Elinor Ostrom provides a foundation for thinking about commons and institutional governance. Amartya Sen's capability approach is used to distinguish between the formal availability of resources and people's actual ability to make use of them. Systems thinking, including the work of Donella Meadows, informs the analysis of feedback, adaptation and resilience.

The authors combine these perspectives within the CommonsSociety framework.

The distinctive proposition is therefore not that these individual approaches are new, but that they can be deliberately considered as an integrated local socio-technical system.

CommonsSociety as a hypothesis

The authors explicitly caution against treating CommonsSociety as a proven institutional model.

The individual components of the framework have precedents in research and practice concerning commons, cooperatives, energy communities, sociocracy and local economic systems. However, the particular combination of these components is presented as a synthesis that remains to be tested in practice.

The authors therefore distinguish between the established nature of some individual building blocks and the untested nature of their combination.

Interactions between technology, governance, economics and social organisation may produce effects that cannot be predicted from the individual components alone.

CommonsSociety is consequently described as a hypothesis that should be tested, challenged, delimited and improved through practice.

From design model to experiment

The proposed next step is not to prove that CommonsSociety works in general, but to create environments in which its assumptions can be examined.

Experiments should consider not only technical and economic performance but also:

• decision-making and effective participation;
• inclusiveness;
• power relations;
• voluntariness;
• conflict resolution;
• distribution of value; and
• relationships with external institutions.

An experiment is therefore not merely a demonstration of CommonsSociety. It is also intended as an opportunity to challenge, delimit and improve the model.

Relation to energy communities

The development of Dutch energy communities provides a practical context in which aspects of the CommonsSociety proposition can be explored.

Energy communities connect local activities such as renewable generation, energy saving, investment, storage, flexibility and energy sharing with questions of participation, ownership and local value creation.

The Dutch Energy Act that entered into force in 2026 provides energy communities with a formal position within the Dutch energy system. TNO describes energy communities as locally anchored organisations through which citizens and other participants can collectively undertake energy-related activities for environmental, social or economic purposes.

CommonsSociety extends the question beyond the energy community itself: can organisational principles developed around shared energy infrastructure become part of a broader model of local collective provision?

The authors leave this as an empirical question rather than claiming that such an extension has already been demonstrated.

Conceptual summary

CommonsSociety can be understood as a proposed framework for a locally rooted, commons-oriented socio-technical community in which the following elements are considered together:

• shared infrastructure;
• shared or collective ownership;
• participatory governance;
• local value creation;
• individual autonomy;
• multi-level institutional coordination; and
• continuous learning and adaptation.

Its fundamental proposition is not that communities should become self-sufficient or autonomous from wider society. Rather, communities should have sufficient local capacity and influence to organise what is appropriately local, while remaining embedded in larger legal, infrastructural, economic and governmental systems.

The neighbourhood is therefore understood as not an island but a node in a larger societal system: local enough for people to exercise meaningful influence, yet connected enough to recognise that local decisions can have consequences beyond the community itself.

More information

Primary source

• Van Houten, Henk & Ron M.R. Bosch. De Kracht van de Commons – Van lokale energie-ecosystemen naar veerkrachtige gemeenschappen. Chapters 13, De wijk als levend systeem, and 14, CommonsSociety.

References

• Ostrom, Elinor (1990). Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511807763

• Ostrom, Elinor (2005). Understanding Institutional Diversity. Princeton: Princeton University Press. https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691122380/understanding-institutional-diversity

• Sen, Amartya (1999). Development as Freedom. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://global.oup.com/academic/product/development-as-freedom-9780192893307

• Meadows, Donella H. (2008). Thinking in Systems: A Primer. Edited by Diana Wright. White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing. https://www.chelseagreen.com/product/thinking-in-systems/

• TNO (2026). Energiegemeenschappen: samen energie opwekken, delen en besparen. TNO. https://www.tno.nl/nl/newsroom/insights/2026/01/energiegemeenschappen/

• Van Houten, Henk & Bosch, Ron M.R. De Kracht van de Commons – Van lokale energie-ecosystemen naar veerkrachtige gemeenschappen. Chapters 13–14.