Four transformative themes incubated in a summer workshop in Nicosia. They are the motor of the “Hands-on Famagusta” project team to make explicit the need to common urban imaginaries beyond the ethnically contested city. They are about: 1. sharing infrastructures, 2. creating a wide public waterfront, 3. turning the future of the ecological and cultural assets of the city into a common concern, 4. resisting the absence of the city’s commons during the extraordinary conditions of post conflict reconstruction processes.