This first empirical chapter explores the urban political context that shaped the emergence of the Liberated Spaces in 2010s Naples. It offers a chronological reconstruction of the process later framed as the Neapolitan experience of new municipalism, tracing its development from the re-municipalisation of water to the drafting of commons resolutions and the creation of popular institutions. The chapter centres on the negotiation between two key actors—the local administration led by Luigi De Magistris (2011–2021) and grassroots social movements—within a decade marked by political experimentation, conflict, and structural constraints. Rather than presenting a linear or celebratory narrative, the chapter offers a grounded and open-ended account of a complex, often contradictory process. In particular the unresolved tension between the simultaneous rise of “the city of the commons” and “the tourist city”—two projects following opposing logics—remains. The chapter concludes by asking: What future for the commons?—situating this question within the broader political shift marked by the end of the new municipalist era.