Reality is a bit more complex…

To prove that the sharing movement is alive and thriving, our dear friends from Shareable have been working on a very ambitious project: a collection of the most exciting and innovative cases of sharing and urban commons now underway around the world. With 137 case studies drawn from 80 cities in 35 countries focusing on housing, mobility, food, work, energy, land, waste, water, technology, finance and governance, the Sharing Cities movement is showing that local solutions can really tackle global problems.

Tom Llewellyn, Coordinator of the Sharing Cities Network, spoke to us about how these initiatives are paving the way to a better future.

Let’s start with the basics: how do you define a sharing city?  Is there a framework or methodology?

We set forth a series of 10 principles, rather than a specific framework or definition of what makes a sharing city. We feel that the idea of the sharing city is aspirational, meaning it is a process more than a finish line. In that sense, while there are a number of cities that have declared themselves to be sharing cities, there isn’t a single one that is all the way there yet.

Solidarity would be the first principle we feel a sharing city should work to meet. The idea is for people within the city to work together for the common good rather than competing for scarce resources. The sharing city is of, by and for all people, no matter their race, class, gender, sexual orientation or ability. At a core, these cities are primarily civic, meaning residents would be focused on taking care of each other as well as partner cities, creating a cross-city solidarity.

In your experience, is activating the urban commons more successful when done by grassroots organizations or by local governments?

This intersection was painted in honour of a grandmother who had planted a chestnut tree that died soon after she passed away. The neighbourhood gathers every year to commemorate the tree and reinvigorate the painting.

It takes both. The main idea of the commons, in general, is that for them to be successful it takes a community behind it – to manage that resource – and a certain amount of support from the government to make sure that resources can be managed in a sustainable fashion.

There is also a need to partner with the market forces. There are some great examples of that cooperation, one coming from Portland, Oregon called The City Repair Project. The community there wanted to rethink how to use the commonly held properties. They started by painting murals in the middle of intersections. It was done initially after a couple of children were run over in a neighbourhood, so residents came together to make sure it never happened again. They had a block party and painted the intersection with a mural as a memorial.

Initially, the city pushed back and they destroyed it. This caused a huge outrage in the city by the residents, not only those involved in the project. The government ended up legitimising the policy and allowing residents to paint their streets. Over time, some of the people involved in this project moved into the government, and are now able to help maintain the practice.

There are now more than 70 intersections painted with murals, many with benches on the corners, open libraries, etc. What is incredible is having the community driving it, the city supporting it by giving the permits for no cost at all as well as businesses involved. A number of local hardware stores have sponsored the projects, providing the paint and other resources. This is a great example of the relationships that can form around the commons and the balance between the community, the government and the market.

Have you noticed any interesting trends in the movement? Are some themes more popular, more successful, harder to implement, etc?

Yes! Food is the easiest place to start. Food is historically something that brings people together, be it community gardens or networks of food distribution, these policies are definitely amongst the most popularly adopted.

GrowNYC’s garden program builds and sustains community gardens, urban farms, school gardens, and rainwater harvesting systems across New York City.

A great example is the Grow NYC project. It started as a community that had an empty lot in their neighbourhood. They found out that it was owned by the city, so they worked with the local government and were able to turn it into a community garden. Through their research, they discovered there are 596 acres owned by the city. Some were held back for real estate development but a lot of them didn’t have plans in the near future. Now around 200 of those acres have been transformed into community spaces in less than 10 years. So it was the desire to come together around food that enabled the transformation of all those properties.

On the other hand, the hardest policies to implement are in areas where there is a history of ingrained institutions with a lot of power. The technology sphere is the best example, most notably internet service providers. In the US the market is dominated by three companies, so the entry barriers are immensely high. Yet there are also a number of projects trying to work their way, like FreiFunk in Germany where people have been able to set-up local community-driven internet networks. So even when businesses have a lot of control, there are ways to take a little bit of that back.

Many initiatives that work well in a city, sometimes cannot be scaled and should not be reproduced elsewhere, as the conditions that made it succeed cannot be easily replicated.  How can policy-makers and entrepreneurs better adopt the core learnings of the case studies presented?

This question is one that we reflected a lot when we were writing the book. We decided not to include cases that were hard to replicate in other cities or examples that only made sense in a particular context. The idea was that every single example is either commons-based or is enabling the participation of the community. And as proof, most of the things we chose have already been replicated.

What is the biggest myth or utopian dream that has been proven real by the projects you explored?

Our goal was to show what can actually be achieved; what we refer to as a concrete utopia, or that it pushes for that. Maybe the ideal sharing city does not exist anywhere right now, but the building blocks for that city exist; they are just all over the world. I believe proving that there are amazing projects in a variety of sectors across the world, breaks down the unachievable utopian critique.

Student Jordi PronkFoto tomada por: 19

Humanitas, the very first case study is a wonderful example.This Netherlands-based project has proven how intergenerational living works. This is an elder-care residence that also provides housing to students and young people. The exchange for living there is 30 hours of their time per month, engaging with the elderly community. The project has been so successful they have set up in multiple locations. This is a very encouraging concept when we think of the baby-boom generation globally ageing along with the housing-crisis the millennial generation is going through. This is a model for institutions to copy or for individuals to replicate.

Another great example of things that were thought impossible but are actually possible would be the Community Bill of Rights in the US. It allows a city or a county to draft civil laws that guarantee certain community rights, including the right to clean air, water, the protection of natural ecosystems, etc.

Now when a community passes a law (there have been over 200 so far) it can ban certain extractive businesses because they go against that community bill of rights. The best example is fracking. Many states have passed legislation to bypass local governments, so businesses were able to come in and destroy the local ecosystem. Up to this point, there hadn’t been any way for cities and communities to fight back. Now if companies want to frack they have to unequivocally prove that their activity isn’t going to hurt the environment.  And this was completely driven by the community, and a big number of organisations, most notably The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF). It is incredibly encouraging that out of the 200 cases, only four were taken to court, the rest have been unchallenged.

What are your favourite three case studies in the book and why?

The first one is rooted in France and is the re-municipalisation of water. Back in the early 1990’s, originating in France and then becoming a standard global practice, large multi-national corporations started privatising regional water systems. Veolia, Suez and others began buying water rights all over the world claiming they could provide cheaper services. Over time it became clear that the companies were not actually delivering a superior product, on the contrary, the quality had significantly decreased as they were not investing enough in the infrastructure. Hundreds of cities and regions handed over their water to a very few number of international corporations.

What is really encouraging – and why is one of my favourite policies in the book – is that since 2000 this trend has completely flipped. Between 2000 and 2015, 235 cities have taken back their water. The most notable example is Paris. In 2008 the city council voted against renewing the contract it had with Suez and Veolia and spent the next two years putting in place their management system. By 2010, the first year it operated the city saved 35 million euros and reduced by 8% the cost for the population.

Another one of my favourites, which is very simple and OuiShare actually pioneered, is the idea of the “zero waste party pack”. Cities have started to take this on as well. The city of Palo Alto, California, for example, has now 22 party-packs distributed throughout the city.

And finally, I would say Spacehive, a civic crowdfunding initiative in the UK. In their first five years, they have raised 6.7 million pounds for 306 projects, and many of these projects have been getting support directly from the Mayor of London. His office has pledged 800,000 pounds towards these community-proposed projects. It was basically a pound for pound match against the 900,000 pounds that had been raised. So citizen proposals getting support and being enabled by the local government works. Most of the times we hear about the public-private partnerships, and I see this as a public-commons partnership.

In need of more inspiration? Read about the rest of projects and city-policies described in the book!

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Fablabs, makerspaces, emerging global knowledge commons… These are but some of the outcomes of a growing movement that champions globally-sourced designs for local economic activity. Its core idea is simple: local ownership of the means to produce basic manufactures and services can change our economic paradigm, making our cities self-sufficient and help the planet.

Sharon Ede, urbanist and activist based in Australia has recently launched AUDAcities, a catalyst for relocalising production in cities. She shared her insights on the opportunities of making cities regenerative and more sustainable as well as the limits of cosmo-localization. Interview by Fernanda Marin.

Technology, as we all know, is not neutral. Making the transition to self-sufficient cities needs a cultural shift, not just a technological one. So, how do we design open-source tools that foster a change in behaviours and are inclusive?

Technology will go where cultural, social and economic values direct it. A cultural shift will include open source tools, and the kinds of processes we need to create those – but a cultural shift will require much more.

Governments can and do play a significant role in shaping culture through policy and regulation, and contrary to popular belief about where innovation originates, the state is not only a key entrepreneurial actor but also has a huge opportunity to reinvent itself as the ‘partner state’ – where government responds to the contributory democracy we are seeing emerge as a force that does with, not for or to, the communities it serves. The technology, and who owns it, is just a manifestation of what we value.

There has been a lot of debate about the real benefits of local production, especially that last-mile delivery is more harmful to the environment than the benefits it brings. In your experience, what is the ecological footprint of a product that has been globally designed and locally manufactured?

Any production that is not hyperlocal ie. from materials sourced within a very short supply chain, has to find its way to the consumer somehow. With respect to environmental concern, the ‘last mile’ is a question of the existing production paradigm finding the most efficient and low carbon way to achieve its objective. I’m not sure that the last mile debate concerning the most carbon-efficient delivery by a globalised supply system can be compared to local production. Local production will have ‘last miles’ (and more energy used in transportation, depending on where the materials were sourced for the production), but in general, I’d be less worried about lots of last miles from local production, than many more tens of thousands of miles of transportation required with ‘remote’ production.

It’s also worth noting that shipping is responsible for 17% of global emissions, but neither shipping and aviation are accounted for in international climate change negotiations due to the difficulty in allocating emissions ie. do they belong to the producing or consuming country? In general, local has many benefits, but it’s simplistic to assume local always equals ‘good’. It depends on so many things, for example, is the activity occurring in a water-scarce environment? How intensive is the production? Is the power source for the products generated from renewable energy?

Life-cycle analysis (LCA) is one way of assessing the ecological cost-benefit of different methods of production, but it can get quite complicated. Descriptions can offer a sense of the impacts, however, measuring these and making the trade-offs is less clear and requires not only a lot of data but a lot of consideration and interpretation.

This map of shipping routes illustrates the relative density of commercial shipping in the world’s oceans

Before even considering ecological footprints of production, one of the first things cities could do is look into ‘boomerang trade’ – the new economics foundation produced a report on this activity in the UK, where similar goods are being traded and transported across continents, or across the globe. There are also ridiculous examples, such as what I have dubbed ‘frequent flyer prawns’ – shrimp being flown to Thailand from Scotland, and then back because the labour needed to shell them is cheaper in Thailand.

Trade used to be about genuine comparative advantage. If economics is supposed to be about the efficient allocation of resources, and this is what our systems of economics are incentivising, then we need new economics.

What are the limits to urban manufacturing? Surely not everything can be made/produced locally, so as a percentage of a city’s total consumption of resources, how much can we expect to shift?

In theory, a city could make anything. It depends on factors such as whether we shift to safe, non-polluting products and production processes – one of the reasons for zoning in cities was to separate sensitive uses such as residential areas from the nuisance and potential danger of industrial areas (and there are environmental justice issues with who lives near dirty industry). What a city can produce also depends on what it wishes to prioritise, for example, does it want to invest a lot of land in car-dominated transport, or can it reclaim land for all kinds of productive purposes? Does it have the energy available to relocalise more of its production, or is it willing to invest in building such capacity?And governments and business love to talk about the circular economy, and recycling, but if you’re not making locally, if you’re not providing a way for things to be produced and materials to be remade locally, you don’t have a circular economy.

Most cities could readily produce more of their own furniture, utensils, fixtures and fittings, appliances, equipment/tools, textiles and clothing – as cities once did anyway before cheap fossil fuels allowed production to sprawl across the globe. But not all cities can or would want to make more complex artefacts like aircraft, which require specialised skills and facilities. It is likely that some kinds of manufacturing will still require an economy of scale – regional, or national, but not necessarily international. It depends on the size of the city; the skills of the workforce; whether the city values local production and associated economic and social benefits over windfalls derived from property speculation; and what its policy and incentive frameworks prioritise, though these are often influenced by national policy.

In general, it is wiser not to have your population running an ‘ecological deficit’, or being dependent on supply lines that may suddenly change or be disrupted, for example by a fuel shock or a change in policy elsewhere.

Try a thought experiment – if you cut off all external inputs to your city for a month, could it feed, water, power and otherwise sustain itself to keep functioning? What if you had to design the city anew, under such conditions? Could it be designed to still function in an interconnected global economy, but be resilient enough to meet the majority of its own needs?

For you what is the difference between Robertson’s 1994 idea of “glocalisation” and “cosmolocalism”?

Cosmo localism, or ‘design global, manufacture local’, certainly has some overlap with ‘glocalisation’, or the adaptation of globally marketed products to local culture, in that a shared global design can be replicated (or adapted then produced) locally. But by whom, and how?

Glocalisation is about the top-down marketing of consumer products designed remotely, in a centralised way and then tweaked for local culture. Cosmolocalism, or Design Global Manufacture Local (DG-ML) is based on a different production logic, as explained by Jose Ramos and Chris Giotitsas in ‘A New Model of Production for a New Economy’:

Traditionally corporate enterprises have solely owned the intellectual property (IP) they employ in the production of goods. They source the materials for the goods through national or global supply chains. They manufacture those goods using economies of scale in a set number of manufacturing centres, whereupon those finished goods are delivered nationally or globally.

DG-ML is an inversion of this production logic. First of all, the IP is open, whether open source or creative commons or copy fair, so it can be used by anyone. Secondly, manufacturing and production can be done independently of the IP, by any community or enterprise around the world that wants to.

Relocalised production is said to help people find new meaningful economic activities and be part of a community in a word where jobs are disappearing. So far there isn’t a solid business model supporting this shift. What type of policies could policy-makers implement to assist this?

There are plenty of examples of where local production has a solid business model and operates successfully. There may be some new elements to address in building enterprise and livelihoods around open source – something I am still on a learning curve with. However, it could also be that the issue isn’t just a business model per se, but a range of policy and investment incentives that prioritise non-local business(‘attract and retain’) at the expense of local business, the same way that perverse subsidies for fossil fuel energy incumbents have made it harder for renewables.

This is why ‘relocalised production’ needs further nuance. It’s not just about bringing the process of material production back, but a question of ownership, of who benefits. Is the relationship of that production to where it happens regenerative – mostly staying within the local community, making a social, economic and environmental contribution to the place in which it operates? If not, the value generated is ‘leaking’ out of where it is created, which is an extractive dynamic that weakens economic prosperity.

‘Halifax EcoCity Project – proposal for a fractal of an ecological city, Adelaide, Australia / Paul Downton

Part of audacities’ mission is to give advice to cities on how to invest towards “cosmolocalism”. What is the first step cities should take to make this transformation possible?

Each city will have its own unique way of addressing this, however here are some suggestions:

• Build the understanding and buy-in to get people invested in the idea. Determine how you can best communicate what cosmolocalism means, and articulate the benefits for different interest groups – why would they want to pursue this, what’s the story to engage them with?
• Make an inventory or map of what locally productive capacity already exists, both formal and informal.
• Know when and why local production might not be the best option for a certain activity.
• Keep the emphasis on people and culture first – and then appropriate technology. Give at least as much emphasis to the role of ownership and underlying economic DNA in local production as to the flow of physical materials.
• Appreciate that innovation occurs and is being practised by people who do not identify with the language of innovation, who might not see themselves as entrepreneurs or makers or agents of change. Recognise that remarkable, innovative activity occurs in unexpected places – outside the boundaries of ‘innovation districts’ where, all too often, business and government and the big end of town have determined ‘this is what innovation looks like, who does it, here’s where it happens’ because you will miss many voices, many ideas, and a big part of what’s going on in your city.
• Take some calculated risks – you can’t be innovative, or achieve anything audacious, without it!

Photos by Christopher Burns, AJColores & NASA on Unsplash

B.S. Halpern (T. Hengl; D. Groll) on Wikimedia Commons

And the ‘Halifax EcoCity Project – proposal for a fractal of an ecological city, Adelaide, Australia / Paul Downton‘

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The future of work will be defined by platforms, or so it seems with the “success” stories of the Ubers,  Airbnbs and Taskrabbits developed in a wide range of sectors.

A simple way of defining platforms is that of organizations that connect people, knowledge, and opportunities. These organizations not only minimize resources by sharing them among its users; but the most well-known examples of the so-called “sharing economy” also take the resources of these same users (expertise, time, homes, cars…) and co-opt it as their own supply giving them very little to no power to decide, imposing conditions and preventing contributors from the right of social protection and labor-derived rights we have been enjoying in the past decades.

As the beginning of this post states, most of us will soon no longer work for an employer, but for a series of platforms: “Work” as we know it is disappearing, and we will have the privilege and the challenge to organize our work “flexibly” around gigs.  The estimations predict around 540 M people working in the “gig economy” by 2025, that’s around 15% of the current total global workforce. ²

Can platforms be positive?

Is there any way in which we can build new welfare structures to cover the classic labor-associated benefits or even go beyond these?

How can we turn into positive this new work paradigm that technology is enabling and propelling at a much larger speed than regulations can (or want to) adapt to?

These and many other questions are discussed in the research of the  IFTF  revolving around the topic of positive platforms: “Positive Platforms are systems for on-demand work that not only maximize profits for their owners but also provide dignified and sustainable livelihoods for those who work on them”. ³F

Under this umbrella we developed our research on “Designing positive platforms: a guide for a governance-based approach”.

Positive by design

Our approach is on the design of the governance of the platform, so that the matters of shared power and welfare are dealt with directly and intrinsically, by design.

After studying fifteen examples of platforms (chosen after the criteria of size, scalability, years of existence and shared-value in the network), the research lead us to the following five principles for the design of governance:

The relevant part of the paper, however, is to spur a thorough discussion on certain key elements and come out with customized mechanisms and solutions for each particular platform. This is the case around for “Recognition of the generated value” and  “Welfare”. These two principles trigger a crucial discussion both on the resilience of the platform and what that organization stands for ideologically.

Defining value:  What do we stand for?

The complexity of value lies on its intangibility and its very broad nature ⁴:  value is an individual perception, and, therefore, not really measurable ⁵.  In platforms we talk about generated value: the user’s contribution to the platform. And distributed value: what the user receives from the platform in the form of benefits (because of her contribution).

Probably, no two members of the same platform will perceive value in the same way: this link leads to a mindmap that illustrates the main dimensions of value and gives a quick idea on the complexity of this issue.

The contributors of a platform are, ideally, bound by a common definition of “Values and principles”. Therefore, there will probably be some similarity on what is considered to be “a value-contribution” and a “benefit” received for it. Nevertheless, it remains a challenging process that arises many key-questions:

• Is value (types of contributions) pre-defined by the platform or is left to each individual member to decide?
• What is considered as a value-contribution:   do we use a resource-based logic? (eg: time, expertise, amount of contribution, etc)  or an efficacy-based one? (eg: related to the goal that wanted to be achieved), can we think of other criteria? How do we value “soft” (intangible) contributions like a member “creating a good atmsophere”, or  “being available for others”, or “facilitating collaborative work”, etc?
• What are the benefits that the contributors receive? How is the process of value distribution made transparently?
• What mechanism should be designed to trace and balance value contributions and benefits received?

Creating solutions for welfare: mutualism.

Welfare is one of the main challenges of the gig-economy: in a professional world dominated by platforms that are not employers and with laws that are not adapted to this new reality – leaving continuously more people out of a minimum labor-benefit system – how can platforms be designed to cover these growing needs?

The only possibility is to take welfare in the governance system:  welfare is distributed value (benefit) generated through contributions.

To go on with this discussion, it is necessary to have previously defined what value-contributions are for the platform and the benefits to be received for those;  welfare might (should) be one of those benefits.

Different types of mutualism provide an answer to the need to cover welfare internally.

It’s important to take into account that welfare is understood in a broader sense than labor-benefits including the psychological / social welfare we get by being a part of a community, for example.

Mutualism can be understood as sharing a co-working space, sharing knowledge, pooling any type of resource, even income. Such is the case of Enspiral’s “Livelihood pods” in which income is pooled to provide all members with a stable income and labor benefits throughout the year.

By now, the more trust there is in a community, the more that can be mutualized; unfortunately, this sets huge barriers to scalability in such sensitive matters of sharing resources.  But there is still  an open door: could technological innovation in-hand with social innovation and shared governance models lead to scaled trust? This would allow for larger communities to become more resilient pooling more resources to build their own system within the current global one that threatens the welfare of millions of workers worldwide.

There are more aspects to each principle to be found with numerous examples in the complete research. We invite you to read it and join the conversation on solutions to the gig-economy and to further develop the principles themselves.

We would also like to point out that, while sharing the content of our paper we have heard quite often that it is ideal for initiators / new organizations like platform coops, networks and other hybrids that might be starting out. Paradoxically though, we find that there is a burning need to work on the resilience of many of the already existing platform coops, networks and hybrids. These organizations are for sure facing other challenges such as financiation and technical development; nevertheless, caring for welfare is key for the resilience of the community undertaking the project. Even more important and more challenging for organizations that envision and work for a new system, but have to survive in the current one while being as coherent as possible with that vision.

Governance is the heart of an organization, it should hold and irradiate the common agreement that the members of that organization have gotten to. For that end, governance design and addressing key issues such as “value and welfare” are a “must” so that platforms geared towards the common good and that want to impact positively the future of work can achieve their vision.

^{1. [Chase, Robin (2015) https://wtfeconomy.com/everything-that-can-become-a-platform-will-become-a-platform-216bcfb89855 ]}

^{2. [https://datos.bancomundial.org/indicador/SL.TLF.TOTL.IN ]}

^{3. [https://medium.com/institute-for-the-future/hacking-the-future-of-work-69454b344eb9 ]}

^{4. [Proportioned to us by Ben]}

^{5. [Sensorica]}

Photo by szwerink

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Albert Cañigueral: You were in London working for the U.K. innovation agency Nesta. Why did you accept the offer from the Barcelona Mayor Ada Colau?

Francesca Bria: I was working for Nesta and had already done a lot of work on a European level and with movements around open access, democracy and technology for social good. I was excited to come work for the new government in Barcelona because they have a very new approach to the city. They were making it clear that you cannot have a digital revolution without a democratic revolution. It was the start of my mandate to rethink the smart city, not just in technological terms, but in ways that put citizen needs and the city’s (political) questions at the core.

What have some of the key actions been on the Barcelona agenda since then?

One key point is access to housing. The government is not only tracking down big banks that leave apartments empty but also confronting platforms like Airbnb whose business model has a negative impact on affordable housing.

Another big theme is energy transition and renewable energy. Barcelona wants to create a municipal energy company to fight the current monopoly. We are also looking into more distributed energy models, like smart grids, models that are more affordable and which allow citizens to be in control of their data.

We are also rethinking urban planning with projects like the SuperBlocks(Superilles). Aimed at giving back public spaces to citizens, they were created in a very innovative process with a digital democracy platform for large-scale citizen participation. Opening the debate brought many great ideas, but it also showed us the complicated aspect of participation. There were many conflicting interests and it was learning by doing in an iterative way.

Finally, instead of working only with big companies as governments typically do, we are also rethinking the economic model to support new economies like the solidarity, collaborative and digital economy. This also helps us fight corruption since often a lock-in of the public administration with big companies leaves little space for other players.

Sounds like there are some real challenges ahead. How did you start to address them and what’s the role of technology here?

Over the past year, I created a Barcelona Digital City plan to address how technology and data can help solve urban challenges. It’s divided into three main areas.

The first is digital transformation of the government through technology. This involves aspects like procurement -how we purchase technology — avoiding lock-in by working with smaller companies and ensuring that public money is invested in open technologies. To increase transparency, the city hall is also testing an open and participatory budgeting system in Barcelona neighbourhoods with the Gracia projectfor example, which then can be scaled up.

Together with the activist group X-Net we have also created — and this is pretty unique- an encrypted infrastructure TOR that is integrated into the main city infrastructure. It functions as a whistleblower tool for public workers to denounce cases of corruption and help us open up the public administration.

In terms of procurement, we are also integrating clauses that address sustainability, gender and the solidarity economy. The goal is to get citizens more involved in how their money is spent and make them part of the procurement process.

We are also focusing on digital innovation with the new socio-economic innovation activity line inside Barcelona Activa as well as an incubator and accelerator for tech companies. However, most innovative are programs for digital social innovation (associated with https://digitalsocial.eu/) that acknowledge the impact of open technology on the economy, democracy and manufacturing. The Barcelona MADE project for example (Maker District in Poblenou or hosting the MakerFaire) is aimed at rethinking the future of production in cities and urban manufacturing in a circular economy way. It’s important that cities regain some industrial capacity to make them more sustainable again.

The third aspect addresses digital empowerment and collective intelligence. We are expanding this to many areas like city planning, cultural activities and citizens initiatives with experiments like PAM. But above all, the digital education project is aimed at rethinking education and the future of work. We not only need new skills to be able to transition to the digital society — or should I just say future —  but in a time of extreme automation, we also must invent new jobs. Along these lines, we are piloting a basic income scheme related to digital currency infrastructure as part of an EU-funded project. Barcelona also recently hosted an international  conference about alternative currencies.

A core topic in this tech strategy is “city data commons.” Why is data so important?

The question of data ownership and sovereignty, or “City Data Commons,” is particularly important because it raises the question of how we can make the most out of data by putting the digital right of the citizen at the core. In a world where machines are doing more and more, it’s important to acknowledge that this data belongs to the citizens, not governments. Cities should act as the intermediary and as custodians of these new rights.

What are the mechanisms you can put in place to progress in this direction?

One way to go is by changing the regulations. Another way is through decentralised and encrypted infrastructure that makes citizens aware of how the data is used. At the moment, when you use a digital service it’s not necessarily clear what happens to the data and how it’s monetized. People sign some terms of contract but it’s all very opaque.

DECODE is a new 5 million euro project we are currently working on together with 14 partners across Europe. We are experimenting with encrypted decentralized data management architecture using blockchain and distributed ledgers to make these data commons clearer.

There is no lack of technical tools. But are we, both citizens and adminstration, culturally ready for it?

Tools are not just technical devices, but regulation, economic models, technical infrastructure and cultural organizational change. Making them align is the difficult part, The problem is definitely not the tech, but the culture and the institutional boundaries. Even though at the moment there are citizens in the government who don’t think like bureaucrats, they still have to work within certain boundaries. Institutional hacking is great, but to truly expand these it must come from the bottom up. Sure you also need the right people in power, but if society can’t enter and do things, monitor and track activities, nothing will change.

For all these ideas Barcelona has been named a Rebel City, but you are not alone in this, right? What are the best practices to connect with like-minded cities? What cities are interested in Barcelona’s developments?

It’s interesting to see how in hard times cities are coming together to solve problems that governments are not (such as immigration, access to water, energy and affordable housing). These solidarity networks are important because they empower people with the feeling that you can actually transform something. Although we need to keep the big vision in sight, what we are doing institutionally are small but irreversible changes. Barcelona just hosted The Fearless Cities Municipalist Summit to strengthen links with like-minded cities as well.

Cities are also coming together to create a more local collaborative economic model that doesn’t rely on big U.S. corporations who dominate the market and take all the data. Regulation is one difficulty, but mainly we need to ensure that collaborative economy models that have a positive local impact can grow and flourish. We are collaborating with cities like Berlin, New York, Moscow and Amsterdam on this and demanding that big platforms give us their data. We need algorithmic transparency to regulate and understand the business model. Currently, it’s a black box.

But let’s be realistic. Cities have a lot of limitations in terms of creating regulation and fiscal leverage.

Absolutely. Cities have to solve all these challenges but they have neither the law-making power nor the fiscal leverage. This is a conflict that we see happening a lot in Spain, and it’s a complex dialogue between city and state.

One way European cities are circumventing this is by articulating themselves as metropolitan areas within a region. The European investment bank is working with cities and regions for example, and also the fact that cities are municipalization infrastructure is interesting. The example of the rebel cities shows that despite fiscal and law making limitations, governments are beginning to feel pressure from cities.

Nevertheless, I believe in federalism, as you need to be able to work at different levels, city, regional, national, global and European. And you have to make them work together.

Let’s fast-forward to the future. When citizens are fully empowered, what will be left for the public adminstration?

We will see after the mandate in Barcelona, but the fact that you can have a citizen movement enter the institution, govern and take power shows that there is already a new approach in policy in terms of political class. This is not a cyber thing, a purely digital model, but the opposite. I think we are going towards hybrid models where citizens will have a type of self-governance and be directly involved in things like allocating budget, taking decisions and managing projects. I really believe that the future will be more and more of these political movements and approaches that are based on the common good.

Meet Francesca Bria at OuiShare Fest, she will share a new exciting vision of where city governments start to think and experiment with what technology would look like if it served the people.

This piece has been re-published from OuiShare Magazine. All images courtesy of OuiShare Magazine

The post Building the Networked City From the Ground Up With Citizens appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Here’s a preview of the program of three days that will be like no other.

Donald Trump’s announcement this June 1st that the United States will be withdrawing from the Paris Accord has caused indignation around the world. On their side of the Atlantic, the fightback was launched by a handful of mayors of big cities, gathered together in an organization called Mayors National Climate Action Agenda. Whatever the mistakes of the White House, they declared, they will work to ensure that within city limits, the fight against global warming will remain a priority. It is city halls, therefore, that will be fulfilling a treaty concluded between nations.

An inconsistent situation some may say. Or could this be a sign of a decisive change to come? Big cities, which already hold substantial demographic, cultural and economic powers, might not be condemned to remain the second order of political actors that they are today. Conversely, in a context of democratic crisis, blurred frontiers, and crumbling Nation-States, our future could well be formed of networked cities that have risen up to the challenge.

THREE DAYS LIKE NO OTHER

As crazy as it may seem, the idea that networks of cities will shape our future is at the heart of the 5th edition of OuiShare Fest Paris. Taking place at the renovated Magasins Généraux in Pantin, this year the event will go far beyond your usual talks, workshops, participative formats and immersive experiences.

Novelties on the menu:

• the Tribunal of Future Generations: can we let robots keep destroying jobs? Should we write the right to laziness in the Constitution? This decision will lay in the hands of the members of the jury, chosen by lottery for this mock trial run by the Magazine Usbek & Rica (Wed, July 5th).
• Masterclasses: in the mornings of the 6th and 7th of July experts from 13 countries will hold 4-hour masterclasses.  Participants can sign up to take a storytelling course with the American publishing consultant Ariane Conrad, learn the A to Z of sharing cities with our Dutch colleagues from ShareNL, or even learn to manage a company without bosses with our New Zealander friends from the Enspiral network. And in the background? Each day is dedicated to a particular dimension of globalized cities
• 3 festive evening events (in comparison to one!)for more opportunities to connect.

DAY 1: REGAINING COLLECTIVE POWER FROM THE BOTTOM-UP

Today, it appears ever more difficult to build consensus at the national level; political identities are fragmenting; politicians are going through a grave crisis of legitimacy. It is at this point that the city can emerge as the stage for a renewal of collective action. From this perspective, it is noteworthy that from New York to Madrid, social movements symbolic of the last few years, have occupied public spaces. Because of its size, among other factors, the city is suitable for experimentation with new forms of participative democracy, fueled by the civic tech revolution.

OuiShare Fest will also welcome two pioneers of citizen technologies: Pia Mancini, co-founder of the platforms DemocracyOS and Open Collective, as well as the Argentine political party Partido de la Red, and Jeremy Heimans, Australian activist and entrepreneur, co-founder of the online petition platform Avaaz and of Purpose, which seeks an in-depth transformation of the very idea of power in connected societies. Alastair Parvin, the creator of the WikiHouse Foundation, which applies the organization methods of the famous online encyclopedia to architecture and design, will be discussing the reinvention of cities by citizens themselves.

And, because it is important to articulate the local and the global, this first day will be concluded with an unusual football match; Pantin vs. the rest of the world!

DAY 2: RETHINKING OUR CITIES AS PLATFORMS

How do we shift from a mass of lonely individuals to an organized and lively ecosystem? Will cities be reborn as platforms for the benefit of their inhabitants? Every local government in the world dreams of replicating Silicon Valley’s success story. But aren’t there other relevant examples to look for, other paths to follow? This topic will be debated between Nicolas Colin (The Family), Jennifer Clamp (Techweek NZ) and Rui Quinta (With Company). Professor and renowned management thinker Anil Gupta (Indian Institute of Management of Ahmedabad) will deliver a talk on what corporate innovators can learn from grassroots movements.

Juan Pablo Ortega (Innotegia, the city of Medellin) and Malik Yakini (Detroit Black Community Food Security Network) will share their stories, which attest to the fact that it is often in cities which went through the worst crises that the drive to innovate is the strongest.

During a “fishbowl” discussion – a OuiShare-favorite hybrid format, somewhere between a business-as-usual conference and a participatory workshop – participants will be invited to reflect on how local authorities can efficiently regulate global collaborative platforms.

DAY 3: BUILDING GLOBAL URBAN NETWORKS

Cities with more power and autonomy should by no mean be mistaken for a temptation to retreat. There is no point arguing with the fact that there is already a chasm between globalized metropolitan and peripheral areas. But how do we prevent it from widening?

To echo Mark Watts’ (Executive Director of the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group) opening talk, day 3 will be all about global urban networks. Founder of the Fab City Global Initiative Tomas Diez will share his vision for a future of locally productive and globally connected self-sufficient cities. Dylan Hendricks (Ten-Year Forecast) will talk about the Internet of cities and the future of borders in the post-Brexit Europe. Another must-attend session: a discussion with the creators of the Darwin Ecosystem and Ateliers La Mouche about the role of alternative spaces in urban revitalization.

And to conclude this Fest in due form, you are warmly invited to a genuine Brazilian Festival on the banks of the Canal de l’Ourcq!

Don’t miss out on this one and explore the full program

Get your ticket at http://paris.ouisharefest.com

The post OuiShare Fest Paris: Cities of the World, Unite! appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Show Notes:

• Michel Bauwens: Four Scenarios for the Collaborative Economy at OuiShare Fest:
• How Platform Coops Can Beat Death Stars Like Uber to Create a Real Sharing Economy
• Commons Transition Wiki
• OuiShare Fest Paris 2017
• Value in the Commons Economy
• Re-imagining Value: Insights from the Care Economy, Commons, Cyberspace and Nature
• P2PFoundation.net
• CommonsTransition.org

The post Michel Bauwens On Value Regimes And Where Your Job Might Be Going In The Future appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Do completely horizontal organizations truly exist? Fueled by growing excitement about self-management, bossless leadership and new governance models such as Holacracy, I increasingly hear large claims about the potential of “flat organizations”, which are being used as synonymous to “having no hierarchy”. I often wonder whether I am reading correctly: Organizations with no hierarchy at all, with real live people in them? I feel like there has been a misunderstanding here. I might be wrong, but from my 5 year experience running the distributed organization OuiShare, my conclusion is: there is no such thing.

To explain why I’ve been quite frustrated with this misunderstanding, let me describe a scenario I have been confronted with multiple times in the past years: a new person, let’s call her Lisa, joins OuiShare to actively contribute to our network. Most likely, due to the way our organization was initially presented when we started in 2012 (the first draft of our values described us as a horizontal organization), but also the way this description has been interpreted and retold again and again by people from all corners of our network, Lisa arrives with a set of expectations. She expects to find a workplace free of power dynamics, where “everyone is equal”, she can do anything, nobody will tell her what to do and often, where leadership is not tied to specific people.

Pretty soon after joining and getting to work, Lisa notices she is having a hard time putting things in motion and garnering support for their work. This is when Lisa comes to me for help. I then suggest she talk to a specific person with more “power” than them on this matter—a “superior”, which is mostly followed by a confused and disappointed reaction. “I thought you had no hierarchy. Now you are telling me that some people here are superior to others? OuiShare is just like any other organization.” The fact that person A could be superior to person B in a given situation clashes with Lisa’s expectations. The answer I give her is “YES, we do have hierarchy; I don’t remember having ever said otherwise. But there is hierarchy and hierarchy.”

It’s dynamic hierarchy, stupid!

In most organizations today and in line with much of organizational theory, job titles correspond to a specific position within the organization’s hierarchy. There is a defined path for getting into this position (a specific degree, followed by climbing the corporate ladder for x number of years, maybe skipping some steps if you are good at politics) and job titles correlate with specific lines of communication and decision making power.

Rather than having abolished hierarchy all together, what I have perceived as different about the new genre of “emergent organizations” to which I count OuiShare and the Enspiral network, is that hierarchies in these organizations are dynamic. Authority shifts based on who has the most knowledge and experience in a specific context. There is no clearly defined path for holding a specific role.

Hierarchy does not need to disappear from our organizations, but it needs to change.

In such dynamic structures, sometimes authority correlates with age or time spent in the organization, but not necessarily. A new person entering may have superior expertise on a subject to others in the organization, putting them at the “top of the hierarchy” for this area. Simultaneously, they may be answering to a person with more history in the organization in the context of another project. I can both be the chair of OuiShare Fest Paris and answer to those same team members in another context.

Without formal structures, informality rules

So why not just get rid of hierarchy all together and “declare everyone equal”? In any system with humans in it, power relations exist, whether you formalize them or not. And as Jo Freeman states in her essay the Tyranny of Structurelessness, “structurelessness in groups does not exist”. If you refuse to define power structures, informal ones will emerge almost instantly. Not expressing these can be extremely harmful to your organization.

Though I understand why telling stories of fully flat and bossless organizations is enticing for those of us working on new organizational models, I don’t think we’re doing ourselves a favor with this. That’s why my request is that we stop creating unrealistic expectations for newcomers to this field and use this opportunity to truly understand what differentiates us from traditional hierarchies and how we could help others transition to becoming more dynamic hierarchies themselves.

To distribute power and leadership in organizations, we need to acknowledge their existence first.

What happens to bosses in a dynamic hierarchy? It might just be a matter of finding a new term, but contrary to what one often reads about self-organization, I am not convinced organizations should be bossless.

Rather than removing bosses from the workplace, I think their role needs to evolve to that of a facilitator, coordinator and leader—

Stewarding and coordinating rather than commanding,
Holding space and supporting rather than controlling,
Empowering team members to do their best work,
and be their best selves.

More reflections on what it means to be a “boss” in a dynamic hierarchy are upcoming in future articles!

You don’t agree? I look forward to your comments!
These thoughts are based on my personal anecdotal experience, not academic research, so please bear this in mind when commenting.
To learn more about my experiences with dynamic hierarchy, please get in touch and check out francescapick.com.

The post Cut the bullshit: organizations with no hierarchy don’t exist appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Benjamin Tincq: Hi Thomas. Can you give us a brief introduction and tell us how you ended up launching the Fab City cities project in Barcelona?

Tomas Diez: I am an urbanist and technologist from Venezuela. I moved to Barcelona 10 years ago to work at the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia (IAAC). They were setting up a fab lab at the time and I took charge of it. It was the perfect way to combine my previous education with my interest in cities and distributed production. It also taught me that if we want to change cities, we need to look beyond the design point of view and consider the dynamics at play. It’s not just about putting sidewalks or trees here or there, but thinking about the fundamental dynamics that could transform the way people live in an urban space.

So, Fab Cities are basically a combination of digital manufacturing, sustainable and smart cities, and circular economy. Is that right?

Yes, one could say so, but remember that digital production is more than just 3d printing! The Fab lab is really a base for a larger vision to digitize and relocate fabrication. It’s a playground for experimentation where we can prototype new distribution models and reinvent the relationship between consumption and production. We are mainly researching fabrication models that allow people to make their own things closer to home, instead of buying everything from China.

Fab Labs are not about technology however, they are about the culture around technology. And they are spreading fast. Today there are over one thousand fab labs across the world, that together function as a distributed production system on a small scale. I can design something in Barcelona, and without using fossil fuel, create the identical product in Cape Town, Wellington or Tokyo.

“Fab labs are the cultural agents that will help transform the industrial and fabrication industry.”

Our approach is closely linked to the notion of circular economy, in the sense that we aim shorten and localize production loops. With the right infrastructure and knowledge we could reduce the amount of material that a city imports and rescale globalization. It also allows companies to create social value and not only profit.

Can you day a few words on the Fab City project that was initiated in Barcelona?

In 2011 we had the opportunity to take our ideas to a more the political level. We proposed the Fab city project, which challenges cities and regions to start building the infrastructure to be locally productive and globally connected by 2054. In 2014 the city of Barcelona opened the first public Fab Lab. The aim was to inspire other political leaders by offering an example.

This year we were joined by Amsterdam, Paris, Santiago de Chile, Detroit and even the kingdom of Bhutan. In total the challenge now gathers 12 cities, 2 regions, 2 states and 2 countries. Of course, being part of the fab city initiative does not mean you will become one tomorrow. It’s about establishing a roadmap for cities that want to collaborate on building productive and resilient cities and empower citizens through technology.

What are the most interesting projects emerging from the Fab City Challenge?

We don’t have a flagship project yet, but several are beginning to look quite promising. Products such as the shower loop, an idea initially developed during POC21, are being developed. They could become part of the fab city ecosystem, contributing to a new mindset and relationship between people and products.

Another example is the Poblenou neighborhood, which was recently announced as Barcelona’s “Maker District” by the city council. With their support and in collaboration with Ikea, this neighborhood was turned into a 1,5km2 Fab City prototype. We mapped existing businesses and institutions that align with the Fab City vision, from fab labs and makerspaces to restaurants that serve local produce. Soon to come is also Poblenou’s “Super Fab Lab”, which will connect all the individual initiatives of this little productive ecosystem.

“A fab city is not a city full of fab labs. It’s ecosystem that is varied, coherent and connected”

Paris and Toulouse are joining the Fab City Network. How do you see them contributing to the network with their specificities?

We have been working on a type of charter that lists the minimum actions required for a city to join the network. Examples are sharing data with the rest of the network, supporting local teams that are contributing to our vision, like Ouishare in Paris or Artilect in Toulouse, and participating in our activities like the annual Fab Cities Summit.

The network is meant to spread good practices to cities, but also we hope to see each city develop their own roadmap. We expect the next Fab City Summit in Paris 2018 to show some concrete results that can help us clarify the entire network’s vision and establish a trajectory for the next 10 years.

Tomás Diez

What do you see the impact being on companies in terms of their business models and supply chain? What is their role in this urban and industrial transformation?

Many large companies today rely on closed off and controlled access to production means and information as their main source of wealth and growth. So, naturally the concept of redistributing access disrupts this business model and poses a threat to several people’s interests.

Today the business model of companies like Ikea and that of Opendesk, a platform with local open source furniture, are vastly different. However, I could imagine OpenDesk-like models being replicated by the latter in 5 or 10 years. We have been working together with Ikea to explore potential scenarios like this. Today people buy unassembled furniture in a warehouse outside the city and bring it home to put it together with instructions. Soon people could design their own furniture on demand in micro factories that are located in city centres. This would not only avoid storage costs but allow for personalized and customized furniture.

Other larger enterprises interested in bringing production closer to consumption for example are Adidas, Nike, Airbus or Saint Gobain. They are especially interested in the culture around the technology as well as ideas on open society, open innovation, distributed networks and blockchain.

I see a convergence with another big trend, the evolution of work as something more independent, platform economies and automatization through digital technologies.

Absolutely. Many people nowadays don’t want to work as full-time employees anymore. I like to connect it with the Zygmunt Bauman concept of “liquid society”: Time, work, family, love… all the structures that we considered to be fixed and to which we hold on to are becoming more and more liquid and fluctuating.

Being able to adapt to these changes means building more resilient organizations and networks. The Fab city could in a way be considered the productive organ for this liquid life.

Story by Benjamin Tincq, edited by Bianca Pick.

Cross-posted from Ouishare Magazine
Lead Image from the Fab City Summer School in Milan

The post The Fab City: It’s More Than Just a City Full of Fab Labs appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Francesca Pick: “Get paid for every play” is one of the mottos of Resonate. What is this project about?

Peter Harris: If Spotify was a cooperative, that would be Resonate — built and owned by the people that use it. We’ve developed a new listing model called “stream to own,” which aims to solve a lot of the problems around unfair compensation for artists.

What makes Resonate different from other music streaming services?

First, that everyone owns it. It isn’t like entertainment platform Tidal, where only a small number of super-rich rock stars can call themselves owners. This is about everyone — musicians, indie labels, fans, and the people who work and volunteer to make this happen share in decisions and profits, alike.

Apart from that, we don’t have a monthly subscription, but have developed the stream-to own-model because we think that this is where a lot of the problems arise around unfair payments. Stream-to-own makes it more affordable for fans to experience truly engaging music discovery and will track micro-payments through blockchain technology so there’s no dispute about what got played and what needs to get paid.

How would you like to see the music industry transform with the help of services like this?

The music industry needs to become more open and inclusive, with better tools for artists to manage their careers so they can focus on the art and not have to worry about the business and promotion side of things. A lot of energy and efficiency is wasted by having separate silos for everything. We hope to provide tools and solutions to integrate data, content, and payment flows in a number of ways to make music careers much more sustainable.

You’ve been working on this project for a while now. How did it get started?

Resonate was birthed out of 15 years of stewing on the fundamental question of how to adapt music consumption from scarcity to abundance. Streaming service Napster hit in 1999 and changed the model for music consumption completely, almost overnight. But with all of the services and projects that have come and gone since then, it always felt like no one had designed a system that helps us get back to the unique process of passionate music discovery, while also fairly compensating the creators.

We’ve been hearing a lot about blockchain technology recently, but it seems there is often more myth than talk of real-life applications. How will Resonate use blockchain?

There’s a lot of hype around blockchain simply because people don’t understand it yet. Much like they didn’t get the Internet in the late ’90s. At Resonate, we’re going to build a metadata blockchain which will help secure authorship and ownership for creators, whilst allowing other services to increase efficiency, as well.

Resonate is a so-called platform co-op, which is defined as web-based products or services that are collectively owned and governed by those working for the platform or using the service. Your website says you aim to have 70,000 co-owners of your service when you launch. How will this group govern itself and make decisions once you reach this goal?

We plan on using collaborative decision making tools like Loomio to create working groups around key issues, so individual communities can hash out ideas and draft proposals. Although 70,000 people could participate in decision making with such a tool, we doubt everyone will want to stay fully in the loop, because not everyone has time for that. What is key for us is that there is an open access that lets us deal with issues in a truly democratic fashion when they arise and integrate them into the service efficiently.

You’ve just started raising $350K to launch the service. How can people support and be part of this project?

There is lots to do and lots of ways to help! We just launched our crowd campaign calling for people to join as co-owners of the platform and spread the word about the concept. We also have a volunteer channel and a Github account for developers, if you would like to get more involved.

Article cross-posted from OuiShare. Images courtesy of Resonate.

Author Francesca Pick is OuiShare Fest Chair, writer, and project manager. She helps teams working on meaningful projects increase their impact through collaboration and communication. She likes to experiment with new forms of distributed organization and leadership.

Photo by Analog Weapon

The post Take Back the Music – With Platform Coops appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Happy browsing!
Khushboo Balwani, Fest communications & OuiShare Fest Team

The post The OuiShare Fest Report and Toolkit is now live appeared first on P2P Foundation.