Yes, it reminds me of another interest group I follow, the Community Informatics research community – see for example Michael Gurstein’s call for an “Urban Community Informatics” – http://gurstein.wordpress.com/2010/08/28/towards-an-urban-community-informatics-movement/ . There’s a current call for articles in a special issue of the Journal of Community Informatics focused on urban planning & communities – see http://ci-journal.net/index.php/ciej/announcement/view/9

The neighbourhood would seem to be where an experience of grassroots participatory, deliberative and direct democracy based on consensus decision making could be a positive learning experience for bigger picture actions.

I’ve been working on this with a PhD student, friend and neighbour Alex. For those who like the theory/philosophy see
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Participation/450097485040069?id=450097485040069&sk=info

…and check out the on-line process which is developing at
http://www.createvillage.net

At Village, people are encouraged as follows –

Something interesting on your mind?
Share it on your own neighbourhood’s
VILLAGE FORUM
with neighbours near or far – just for fun – to build connections – or to inspire action!

If you find others who also want action, you can use Village with some easy on-line steps.

If people elsewhere already did something similar you can even import their steps to help you out.

Village on-line process minimises routine or inconvenient meetings with their time limits, strict agendas, & tendency to create indians and chiefs where real control over your own participation is too easily lost.

Regards
Chris Baulman
@landrights4all

Given human settlements involve a lot of people living close together for economic and social reasons, I think its hard to deny a certain value and necessity in at least some central systems of urban planning and transport.

For example we know for public transport to be effective from cities like Zurich, Curitiba etc, it needs a well coordinated timetable and network between different modes. Can this be done in an entirely P2P way?

I’m all for people having more participation in their environments’ design – including the broader public, not just property owners.

But I think P2P enthusiasts before ‘bashing’ planners and urban designers too much should remember that for all its problems, there has always been a strong ideal within planning theory in the anglo tradition at least of protecting public spaces from poor quality developments – and sometimes the profession even lives up to this ideal 😉 Good planners IMHO are the ones that create the right systems and incentives for good outcomes like equity.

And re the Open Source analogy to cities :- we should remember that even OS projects like Linux, Apache have had fairly strong-minded architects behind key parts of the system at some stages – even if the nature of OS projects puts a useful meritocratic and participatory aspect to this. Or in Eric Raymond’s model, there should be a productive dialogue between the Cathedral and the Bazaar 😉

Anyway look forward to reading more about P2P urbanism – will be interesting to see if they’ve engaged with David Harvey’s and Lefebvre’s ‘Right to the City’ ideas about cities as commons too.