The article offers an assessment of the process of self-organization of communities and the formation of their living space through the use of grad models (civitas, cités), consideration of the practices of strategic and tactical symbolic construction of the reality of localities (cities). The urgency of the problem is dictated by the need to understand the mechanisms of self-organization of communities in the context of the processes of the Western model of globalization, the implementation of resource flows outside the regulatory administrative boundaries of territories, the development of information and communication capabilities of interested participation. An attempt is made to explain the processes of self-organization of communities and the construction of space in the vector of development and maximization using theoretical models of rent-orientation, as well as the justification of the integrating political platform of the civitas is proposed. Examples of interaction of civitas as models of justification of justice and legitimacy, their synthesis as conditions for obtaining a competitive advantage of individual and collective actors of the political processes of the city are considered. In modern conditions, the dominance of the Market civitas as a universal platform for community self-organization and organization of physical, communicative, symbolic spaces is noted. An approach is proposed to determine the status of a full-fledged subject of the community and the nature of its positioning in space by analyzing the application of political practices of objectification, the organization of structured personal and public spaces of vital activity. In the context of self-organization, the article touches on the mechanisms of interested individual and group exploration of space, the use of the “name — define — involve” algorithm. The practices of self-organization of local communities and the formation of spaces using a symbolic resource and a complex of other intangible and material resources are considered. The study also touched upon the problem of the foundations of citizenship in modern communities, the circumstances of the use of inclusion and exclusion practices by communities.