Commons Index Commons Index is a visionary initiative from The Living Infrastructures Agency, dedicated to transforming how we perceive, manage, and invest in urban common lands. These are not just green spaces; they are vital, shared assets – from historic village greens and community gardens to rediscovered urban woodlands and informal shared plots.
Our goal is to elevate these spaces to the status of critical urban infrastructure, alongside traditional elements like roads and utilities. By doing so, we aim to unlock their full potential, ensuring their long-term sustainability and the myriad benefits they provide to urban communities across the UK.
The Commons Index is a civic technology platform and legal framework that redefines how society values and governs shared resources. It enables communities to co-manage land, biodiversity, and cultural infrastructures through a data-driven, post-ownership model rooted in care, stewardship, and ecological justice.
Through a modular system of digital tools (heatmaps, APIs, digital-physical interfaces NFC infrastructure), trust-based ownership structures, and participatory AI agents, the project brings visibility, value, and democratic governance to the invisible labour and living systems that sustain our communities.
Our goal is to scale a replicable "commons-as-a-service" model: one that empowers municipalities, cooperatives, and civic actors to transition public interest assets out of speculative markets and into long-term, regeneratively managed Commons Trusts - supported by inclusive valuation metrics, AI-informed decision-making, and fair compensation models.
Across cities and rural areas, the foundational systems of life—land, biodiversity, water, cultural spaces, and care—are under pressure. These commons are typically governed by outdated ownership models that fail to account for ecological degradation, social fragmentation, and systemic exclusion. Climate change, speculative land markets, and short-term governance cycles make these life-sustaining assets increasingly vulnerable.
In parallel, emerging technologies such as AI, automation, and platform governance are reshaping economic systems without strong public-interest safeguards. While promising in theory, they often exacerbate inequalities, consolidate power, and overlook the needs of those most affected by disruption—particularly communities engaged in care work, ecological stewardship, and informal economies.
Our project addresses both crises at once:
We ask: how can communities govern shared resources fairly, protect them from speculation, and benefit from their long-term care? And how can we use AI not to replace human labour but to support participatory governance, data dignity, and regenerative economies?
Our solution is the Commons Index: a digital infrastructure, legal framework, and cooperative business model that enables land and ecosystems to "own themselves" through Commons Trusts, and empowers communities to co-steward them.
We combine:
The platform offers public-interest actors a reliable, accountable system to visualise, fund, and govern the commons. Use-based contracts, time-limited access, and transparent rulebooks guide care and renewal cycles, while digital infrastructure enables decentralised monitoring and context-sensitive decision-making.
Through this model, we enable municipalities and communities to value and govern the assets that sustain life—while integrating ethical, inclusive AI that strengthens civic engagement and long-term resilience.
We will measure success across three impact areas, tracked quarterly with an annual review by a mixed committee of community stakeholders, legal experts, and funders:
Risk: Legal frameworks for land owning itself are novel and jurisdiction-specific.
Mitigation: Work with experienced legal teams in Germany and the EU to prototype new trust models with clear precedents and institutional buy-in.
Risk: Community data misuse or surveillance.
Mitigation: Build in privacy by design, including ceremonial deletion of data, local-first AI, and data-sharing agreements governed by cooperatives.
Risk: The platform's modular design could be overwhelming or fragmented.
Mitigation: Start with minimal viable modules (indexing + basic contracts), then phase in advanced AI/governance components with user testing.
Risk: Municipal or national policy misalignment.
Mitigation: Engage early with public actors, design for institutional compatibility, and provide evidence of cost-effectiveness and social ROI.
Risk: High dependency on philanthropic capital in early stages.
Mitigation: Diversify income through membership models, ESG investment channels, and public-interest license fees by Phase 2.