This essay is a critical and radical proposition to reclaim habitats of life, investigating ecological and pedagogical models of critical and spatial design practices. We examine these in relation to commons which we associate to urbanism and life. We do so via politics of food, fire and affordance, which we explore as agents shaping the assemblage of sapiens life through design and reposition as cues for methods of thinking, learning, designing and constructing (conditions of life). The vilification of fire (when associated to fear) and food (when associated to desire) has a tremendous effect on how we think of and practice life, and presents ramifications for how we design, make and consume objects and environments. We must affirm such phenomena as effects of advanced capitalist networks and societies, and we may in response attempt ecologies and pedagogies of food and fire in urban design practice, promoting larval affordances between bodies, buildings and the commons as urban conflict. We approach affordance as conflict and the collective shaping agent allowing public sharing to form through dynamic and non-stagnant networks and patterns. As with urban commoning practices, these propositions may diverge from dominant institutions and can open up opportunities to rethink life and live differently. The proposal will therefore offer a space for theorisation, interrogating contemporary citizenship in learning to design for and by such experiences and events, and highlight pathologies of urban living.