Executive summary

This report introduces a new institutional framework for a transformative socialist politics: the Public-Common Partnership (PCP).

Whilst the era of new public-private partnerships in the UK has apparently come to an end, more than £199 billion of Public Private Partnership (PPP) payments from the public to the private sphere are due into the 2040s. This accumulation of wealth for the few comes at the cost of deteriorating services for the many. The debt itself serves to foreclose political alternatives by tying the hands of future authorities with ceaseless debt repayments and the further entrenchment of market logic.

The popularity of calls for the nationalisation of utilities or services – such as energy, water, and housing – points to a widespread rejection of the marketisation of essential services. Yet straightforward state ownership through nationalisation or municipalisation, often treated as a panacea, is not the only alternative. As well as questioning when and where centralised ownership is appropriate, we need to think about the institutional forms of ownership and governance that are most appropriate to a radical project of social transformation. What are we trying to achieve, and what institutional forms can help take us there?

Drawing on partial examples such as the co-owned energy company in Wolfhagen, Germany, we provide an outline of what we call a Public-Common Partnership (PCP). PCPs offer an alternative institutional design that moves us beyond the overly simplistic binary of market/state. Instead, they involve co-ownership between appropriate state authorities and a Commoners Association, alongside co-combined governance with a third association of project specific relevant parties such as trade unions and relevant experts. Rather than a mono-cultural institutional form applied indiscriminately PCPs should emerge as an overlapping patchwork of institutions that respond to the peculiarities of the asset concerned, the scale at which the PCP will operate (whether it be city-region wide energy production in Greater Manchester or the commercial activity of a North London market), and the individuals and communities that will act together as commoners.

PCPs can help address challenges of political risk and economic cost, enabling more innovative and “risky” initiatives. However their real strength comes from setting in motion a self-expanding circuit of radical democratic self-governance. The aim of this circuit is to bypass the need for private financing and sidestep the mechanisms through which finance capital exercises its discipline and structures the economy. PCPs will function as a “training in democracy” and help foster a new common-sense understanding of how we relate to one another. They are a method for “taking back control” of the infrastructures and resources that underpin our collective well-being – from food markets to water basins – while increasing our collective ability to fight for the wider structural changes in our society and economy that are so urgently needed – from a reduction in the working week to the implementation of a comprehensive Green New Deal.

This report is aimed at policy makers and social movement actors, both of whom are essential to the implementation of PCPs. Whilst a Left Labour government could dramatically increase the potential for the rollout of PCPs, there is already scope for their implementation by progressive municipalities such as Preston and new city-regions such as the North of Tyne. If these projects are to succeed, however, they will also need the mobilisation of social movements, ranging from housing unions such as ACORN or environmental groups such as Frack Free Lancashire. These movements can help define the problems to be addressed, add pressure to change calculations of political cost, and act as seeds in the formation of the Commons Associations that will drive the creation of PCPs.

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“I’ve lived in six places in five years,” one mother living in substandard private rented accommodation told me. “I am not happy because I can’t give my daughter the stability she needs while she does her GCSEs.” She showed me a box of anti-depressant pills. “And this is what they give me. I just want a place where I can raise my daughter.”

According to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, a lack of social rented homes and falling home-ownership has forced more low-income families with children into the private rented sector. The proportion of children in the poorest fifth of the population living in the private rented sector has more than doubled to 36%. Many Londoners see no way out of their precarious and poor conditions except by leaving London. Of those who can’t or won’t leave, many shrug in despair and accept the situation. 

A collective response begins

But another pattern is also emerging across the city: someone is in distress with their housing, but rather than suffering alone, suddenly there are others around them, human blockades, collective lobbies working in their favour, campaigns emerging to address the systemic problems. London Renters Union has arrived.

Arthur had been trying to get repairs done on his flat for months when the renters union showed up at his door. “They said, if I have a problem come to a meeting,” he recalls. “That’s when I came to the union. I went to the meeting and told my story.” With the intervention of London Renters Union the necessary work got done within days. “I’d been through hell. I tried to get help from my doctors, councillor and MP – they couldn’t do anything. I didn’t have money for a solicitor,” Arthur says. “You need a union to be successful – they’ll fight for you.”

While the union takes on some individual cases, the point is to bring out the commonalities among renters so they can fight together. Many renters feel too isolated to go up against a landlord who holds all the power. Without support they bear the burden alone of the stress and insecurity that comes from a conflict with a person or agency who can make them homeless. The renters union aims to build support between members in order to create the confidence to take action. As one LRU member put it, “I thought it was just me struggling in this block. Then I got the renters union leaflet through my door and I realised it was everyone.”

London Renters Union’s membership is now over a thousand, and it could be one of the most significant new housing organisations for a generation. Several years in gestation, it is a product of other organisations already involved in housing struggles. “Organising locally as renters had taken us only so far.” says Heather Kennedy, one of those on the initial steering group for the project. “Our members got evicted and priced out to other bits of London all the time, and lots of the problems we face can’t be fixed by the local council. We needed something bigger and stronger, that could bring renters together across london to stand up to the power landlords wield over us.”

A new strategy

London-wide there are many organisations focused on defending social housing from attacks by governments national and local. It is a vital and necessary struggle, and a key front in the battle against housing as a commodity, but all the while the number of private renters has been growing, from the bottom of the market as social housing is lost, and in the middle of the market as buying became more unaffordable. The few organisations addressing private rental issues were struggling to make an impact.

London Renters Union saw the need for a London-wide organisation focused on renters, but don’t claim to solve the problems alone. lRU is part of the movement ecology of housing organisations from which they emerged, and solidarity between organisations as a key part of building a successful movement to confront the housing crisis.

Not only have private renters been growing in number but they have also borne the full brunt of decades of bad housing policy in the UK. When London Renters Union meets new members the same problems appear again and again: poor repair and no way to seek redress, rents too high, bad and even illegal behaviour by landlords, exploitation by letting agents, arbitrary evictions. Sometimes the union might simply help a member with advice, or help write a letter to a landlord. Sometimes members have participated in simple but impactful collective visits to the office of their letting agents: once an agent knows the member has back-up they are usually quick to realise they must do the repairs needed to make a home decent. 

Evictions are particularly difficult to resist in the UK, where, unlike some other countries, bailiffs can return again and again until they succeed. But London Renters Union turned out early one morning when bailiffs were due at a members’ house. Alongside other local people they formed human barricades at the front and rear of the property. When the bailiffs arrived they saw the people and renters union banners, and drove off without even getting out the car. The action bought the member precious time to find another place to live. Other landlords, say union activists, have called off illegal evictions at the mere mention of the union’s name. 

Talking about these victories is important to the union. Meetings aim to be inspiring and participatory, not just about dry administrative tasks or voting on position statements. Celebrating successes creates positive, sociable and accessible spaces in which members support each other. The everyday work of running local branches such as writing meeting agendas still has to be done, but it is shared between members as much as possible, ensuring nobody gets caught up in only doing the admin.

London Renters Union describes itself as a fighting union and a campaigning union. It wants not only to defend individual members, but also to change the landscape of housing. Demands that most housing charities consider radical are just the beginning for the union: rent controls, an end to arbitrary evictions, forcing landlords to take tenants on welfare. “We aim to mobilise our members to transform the housing system in the UK,” said Jacob Wills, a member of the coordinating group. But that doesn’t preclude joining more immediate campaigns, such as the campaign to End Section 21 with their partner organisation Generation Rent. Campaigning pressure from housing organisations recently forced the government to scrap Section 21, which had permitted ‘no fault’ evictions – a sign of the movement’s growing influence.

Long term transformation

The aims of the LRU include organising their membership into a radical fighting body. “Education is a really key idea in the union,” says Heather Kennedy. “We are providing training to all of our members so that we can all learn together how to fight for change.” As the union sees it, skilling up all members – not just a few – to take on leadership roles is key to building a truly mass housing movement in London. Not everyone who joins the union will from the outset sees their housing problems as political, but the union is determined to expose the politics of housing for all to see, and to show that it is possible to fight for change. 

The union is also democratic, and that means training people to be in control. Branches are designed to be largely autonomous, and the coordinating group of the union is elected by members for only six months at a time. Policy and demands can be made by members at democratic general meetings. The union aims not just to build a housing movement but also to create a legacy for London: large numbers of people who know how to act together.

It is still at the beginning of its journey: it has three branches and is focused on building them slowly and surely before creating new ones. “LRU has to reflect the diversity of this city to be successful.” said Jacob Wills. “realistically it’s those most affected by housing injustices who are going to see the changes needed and win them.” This means the union sees recruiting on the street and in existing community organisations as essential to ensure that the organisation doesn’t get stuck at the level of recruiting the usual activists.

While driven mostly by volunteer work, the founders also decided that it would need paid staff to operate at scale. From two staff at present, the union plans to grow its paid staff in 2019. While taking money from funding organisations, it is also asking for membership fees so that it can begin to self-fund its expansion. At the recent Labour Party conference the party pledged  to fund independent renters unions if they get into office.

As the plight of renters becomes more stark, the union are happy to have some policy-makers onside, but they don’t want to be reliant on politicians. “Our union is all about building skills, agency and strong community between renters,” said Heather Kennedy. “Building durable supportive relationships with one another is how we can take on the landlords, developers and politicians we’re up against. We see this as a long term project to build community, as part of building our capacity to fight.”

The ultimate goal of the London Renters Union is to ensure that everyone can have a decent home, to turn anger and frustration at the housing system into systemic change. It is an aim both simple and ambitious, and the members know that to succeed they must help promote the demand that housing should exist to serve people, not be a mere commodity. Just as importantly, they know that for long-term success, the union must continue to build the ability of exploited communities to fight for themselves. 

Republished from Tribune Magazine

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Walking down the high street of a place described as one of the UK’s most ethical towns, the first thing you notice is the absence of national chain stores and fast food outlets. Instead, you find a diverse mix of independent shops selling organic food, clothes, art, antiques and furniture, as well as cafes and restaurants and an abundance of charity shops.

This is Totnes – a small, historic market town in the south-west of England that has garnered a reputation as a thriving hub for art, music, theatre and alternative lifestyles. Noticeboards around the town advertise everything from yoga lessons to Zen meditation, together with posters for various events – including the next Extinction Rebellion non-violent direct action training session.

In many shop windows today, there are stickers which read “Totnes pound accepted here”. Sadly, after 12 years of operation, the Totnes pound will come to an end on June 30, 2019. This highly symbolic initiative inspired other local currencies including the Bristol pound and the Brixton pound, which encourage people to spend locally and keep money in the community.

But the gradual shift to a cashless society and a lack of uptake by local government agencies have ultimately led to the Totnes pound’s demise. Rob Hopkins – co-founder of community-led charity Transition Town Totnes and initiator of the local currency – thinks the Totnes pound has helped to build a sense of community and strengthened the town’s identity, with the £21 note reflecting the local sense of humour.

The impact of austerity

The Totnes pound is just one example of the kind of outside the box thinking that has kept this local community resilient in the face of austerity. Since 2010, the pressure on local authority budgets across England has been intense, with a 50% decline in central funding support. The result has been cuts to public services and less money circulating in local economies.

In Totnes – as elsewhere – there are visible signs of these trends, with the closure of local bank branches and “to let” signs on vacant shops. According to Francis Northrop, former manager of Transition Town Totnes, smaller rural communities like Totnes face difficulties because they lack the economies of scale which make cheap goods and services more accessible in big cities.

Leer más: Retail decline, in maps: England and Wales lose 43m square metres of shop space

Totnes has responded by developing a new ethical economy that puts community values at the core. The closure of the Dairy Crest factory in 2000 convinced many locals that the answer was not to wait for inward investment from big businesses outside of the town. Instead, the focus is on internal investment: harnessing community wealth to address community needs.

But unlike anti-austerity efforts seen in larger cities – such as Preston – a small town like Totnes cannot rely on anchor institutions including local government, universities or hospitals, to redirect their spending into the local economy.

Indeed, one such institution – Dartington College of Art – relocated to Falmouth in 2010 with the loss of an estimated £6m a year in local spending from 900 students and staff. Instead, Totnes has had to show it’s possible for small towns to withstand such losses, by drawing from a toolbox of different methods to build community wealth.

A new ethical economy

The response has grown from more than a decade of community trust building, since the launch of Transition Town Totnes in 2006. Initially set up to promote local resilience in the face of climate change and peak oil, Transition Town Totnes now coordinates an extensive range of local projects, and forms part of a global Transition network, with initiatives from around the world sharing knowledge and ideas.

Some of these projects focus directly on combating the effects of austerity. For example, Caring Town Totnes is a collaboration of around 80 organisations seeking to counter the impact of budget cuts on local health and social services.

Current Transition Town Totnes manager Jenny Gellatly is also working with the Common Cause Foundation to explore how it may be possible to place compassionate values at the heart of the future transformation of the town. During a recent visit for my research, she explained to me how initiatives like these promote caring for neighbours, friends and family, to help ensure that the most vulnerable people in the community get the support they need.

Other projects focus on building up the local economy and making it more self-sufficient. An important breakthrough came with the launch of the Reconomy Center, to support new enterprises and promote local investment. The centre hosts an annual Local Entrepreneur Forum to crowdfund low carbon, ethical and sustainable business projects.

A number of organisations also came together to produce a Local Economic Blueprint, which highlights the economic benefits for small independent businesses in Totnes of sourcing goods and services from other local businesses and suppliers, to ensure more money circulates in the economy.

The next critical step was the launch of the Totnes Community Development Society – a not-for-profit that raises funds and implements local development projects. It’s currently implementing the Atmos Totnes project, to transform the disused Dairy Crest site into a school for food entrepreneurs and a business incubator, with affordable housing.

In the face of severe challenges, Totnes has shown how a community can mobilise to achieve a more ethical and resilient local economy. It will be fascinating to observe how the town changes in the years ahead, and to see what the next initiative will be, to replace the Totnes pound.

Author Brendan Barrett is Specially Appointed Professor, Center for the Study of Co*Design, Osaka University

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Minneapolis had ambitious climate action goals, but was making no moves to upgrade its energy strategy to do so. Moreover, people of colour, renters, and low-income energy users were at a disadvantage both in terms of financing clean energy solutions for their heating (e.g. solar panels), and in getting jobs in the local clean energy sector. Community Power saw the need for a different model centered on equity and local benefits, ownership and decision-making power.

The initial aim of the campaign was to give the city the option to municipalize its energy utilities. The campaign stirred discussion within city leadership, which led to the crafting of the country’s first city-utility partnership, known as the Minneapolis Clean Energy Partnership (CEP). Community Power pushed to shorten the franchise agreement to 5-10 years for increased accountability, and established a 15-member advisory committee including representatives from diverse constituencies. In coalition with a black-led grassroots group it also defended the partnership’s and racial equity funding at City budget hearings.

After the establishment of the partnership, Community Power began to broaden these processes to support energy democracy and community wealth-building in a variety of ways, including continuing to influence the Partnership’s work plan and hold it accountable through the Partnership’s citizen advisory committee and grassroots members; building a movement around inclusive financing (a tariff-based financing model designed to require no credit score, no upfront capital, and savings starting day one); local access to community solar, and renter engagement, working for renters’ rights broadly, including energy access and affordability issues.

Would you like to learn more about this initiative? Please contact us. Or visit  communitypowermn.org

Transformative Cities’ Atlas of Utopias is being serialized on the P2P Foundation Blog. Go to TransformativeCities.org for updates.

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Last week, 12 students of the OD&M training visited the training nodes (Florence, Bilbao, London, Dabrowa Gornicza) exploring the local ecosystems of alliances between Universities, makers communities and enterprises. The mobility gave the possibility to build mutual knowledge and relations between students from the four countries, and has been a very positive experience for both visitors and hosting organisations.

Student’s experiences describe the rich learning environment of the four nodes of the project:

• In Poland, students had the occasion to work together on robotics based on open source hardware, and visited Łódź where they were able to customize their robots and see how revitalization of textile city looks like.
• In the UK, the week has been focussed on Social Enterprise and Intellectual Property in a context of Open Design, Co and Participatory Design Practices. Through tours, design activities, and workshops the students worked in teams to develop enterprise propositions focused on OD&M activities.
• In Spain, mobility focused on transferring to students the experience of the exercise carried out in collaboration with Fekoor – Etxegoki, an association that manages a group of apartments that provide autonomy to people with reduced mobility. During the week the students had the possibility to know the city of Bilbao and its transformation model, and they visited the most important open work spaces in the city.
• In Italy, they visited the spaces of Manifattura Tabacchi, and reviewed the solutions for the space developed by Italian students, with the aim of adding elements draining from their local learning experience in their OD&M training. Mobility students also presented, as a moment of peer learning, the solutions developed on their own challenges/contexts. Moreover, they participated to the event “Erasmus4Ever, Erasmus4Future” organised by Impact Hub Florence and INDIRE – Italian National Agency for Lifelong Learning Education.

The mobility has been aimed at defining commonalities and differences with their local context and with the solutions prototyped in their learning experience to inspire and influence both visiting and local students and their ideas/prototypes. It has been a success that hopefully will be replicated in next years.

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“Dig deep enough into many of the problems this country faces, and you will soon hit land,” writes Monbiot. “Soaring inequality and exclusion; the massive cost of renting or buying a decent home; repeated financial crises, sparked by housing asset bubbles; the collapse of wildlife and ecosystems; the lack of public amenities – the way land is owned and controlled underlies them all. Yet it scarcely features in political discussions.” (The six report coauthors are Robin Grey, Tom Kenny, Laurie Macfarlane, Anna Powell-Smith, Guy Shrubsole and Beth Stratford.).

The report contains recommendations to the British Labour Party as it develops a policy agenda in preparation for the next general election. Given that much of the world suffers from treating land as a speculative asset, the report could be considered a template for pursuing similar reforms around the world. (Monbiot’s column summarizing the report can be found here.)  

For me, the report is quite remarkable:  a rigorous, comprehensive set of proposals for how land could be developed, used, and protected as a commons.

There are succinct, powerful sections on making land ownership data more open and available; ways to foster community-led development and ownership of land (such as a “community right to buy”); and codifying a citizen’s “right to roam” on land for civic and cultural purposes. One effective way to curb speculative development and revive farming and forestry is by creating community land trusts and curbing tax privileges and subsidies.

The bald financial realities about land are quite troubling. The report notes that in the UK, “land values have risen 544% since 1995, far outpacing any growth in real incomes.” Housing is simply unaffordable for many people. “Two decades ago, the average working family needed to save for three years to afford a deposit [downpayment] on a home,” the report notes. “Today, it must save for 19 years.”

Much of the blame can go to tax laws and other policies that encourage people to treat homes as financial assets. This fuels fierce speculation in housing that raises prices, greatly benefiting the rich (landowners) and impoverishing renters. Similarly, thanks to speculation and tax subsidies, wealthy landowners consolidate more land while small farmers are forced to give up farming.  Fully one-fifth of English farms have folded over the past ten years. 

Politicians are generally far too wary to propose solutions to these problems. It would only enrage a key chief constituency, the wealthy, and alienate some in the middle class who aspire to flip homes as a path to wealth. But there are in fact many ways to neutralize the speculative frenzy associated with land and mutualize the acquisition and control of land to make something that can benefit everyone.  

Land for the Many recommends a shift in “macroprudential tools” – financial assessments of systemic risk – to prod banks to make fewer loans for real estate and more loans that help productive sectors of the economy. The report also urges restrictions on lending to buyers intending to rent their properties.Other healthy ways to make land more accessible and affordable for all:  a progressive property tax on land; a reduction of tax exemptions for landowners; and a cap on permissible rent increases at no more than the rate of wage inflation or the consumer price index, whichever is lower.

Since profit-driven development can have catastrophic long-term effects on ecosystems, wildlife, and future generations, the report calls for the creation of Public Development Corporations. These entities would have the power to purchase and develop land in the public interest.

I especially like the idea of creating a Common Ground Trust, a nonprofit institution to help prospective homebuyers buy homes. As the request of a buyer, the Trust would buy the land underneath a house and hold it in trust for the commons. Since land on average represents 70% of the cost of a house, the Trust’s acquisition of land under housing would greatly reduce the upfront downpayments that buyers must make. “In return,” write Monbiot et al., “the buyers [would] pay a land rent to the Trust.”  Home buyers could reap any appreciation in value of their house, but land would effectively be taken off the market and its value would be held in the commons.

“By bringing land into common ownership, land rents can be socialized rather than flowing to private landlords and banks,” the report notes. “Debt-fueled and speculative demand can be reined in without the risk of an uncontrolled or destabilizing fall in values.”

Land for the Many is major achievement. It consolidates the progressive case for land reform and explains in straight-forward language how law and policy must change. Of course, the politics of securing this agenda would be a formidable challenge. But given the grotesque inequalities, ecological harms, declines in farming, and unaffordable housing associated with the current regime of land ownership, this conversation is long-overdue.

Originally posted on bollier.org

Header image: mini malist/Flickr (CC BY-ND 2.0)

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As the European Elections unfolded last week, many activists and progressive forces around the world paid particular attention to the municipal elections taking place at the same time in Spain. For years, Spain has been a beacon for the possibilities of progressive change at the municipal level. This explains the shock that came with reading headlines or tweets announcing the electoral defeats of political projects built around a new form of municipalism. The defeat of these political projects, known as Fearless Cities or Cities of Change, was particularly painful in Madrid, and in Barcelona, where Barcelona en Comú had put a lot of effort in building an international movement and network of Fearless Cities.

However, this defeat is mainly a perception for now, as the tight results mean that complex negotiations will happen, where the new municipalists will have a strong voice, even with possibilities to keep the mayor’s office, albeit with less power than four years ago.

Still, in light of these developments, we need to ask: what went wrong with the municipalist project in Spain? This text aims to give some insight into these electoral results. It attempts to unpack what happened in Spain for those aiming to better understand the context, and to draw some lessons for their own similar, or comparable projects.

The three souls of the new municipalist projects

The new municipalist platforms that came to power in 2015 resulted in one of the more remarkable political successes of the “left” forces of the last decade. This was achieved right when Podemos as a political party was on the rise in Spain, Syriza was at the height of its influence in the midst of the negotiations with the Troika to end austerity in Greece, and social democratic parties were in free-fall in the EU. Their success was presented by Podemos as the first stage of a major assault on state-level power. However, that picture was not completely accurate. Podemos had a strong influence in the constitution of the municipalist projects, but the new municipalists were much more than that.

There are a few good texts about what elements define the new municipalist practices, particularly from the Barcelona en Comú perspective. However, in this text I propose an alternative angle to understand their success and their apparent defeat last week. I argue that we must focus on which forces made a victorious dynamic possible under the umbrella of the new municipalism in record time. Only then can we better understand last week’s outcomes.

The new muncipalist projects enabled the convergence of three main groups: first, traditional “left” forces – understood as mainly Izquierda Unida (IU) and the old Communist party; second, grassroots activist veterans of the anti-globalisation movements of the 2000s, hardened by the massive mobilisations and action as part of the anti-austerity 15M ; and third, the mass of unmotivated social democratic voters that were looking for a left and progressive alternative to the status quo in the aftermath of the Troika-driven policies. The first two were the core organizers of the new municipalist movement, with various degrees of influence depending on the municipality. The latter was an important mass of voters whose influence would be decisive in the elections. When these three souls were dancing together, a process of “desborde” (overflow) would unfold, meaning that the political campaign would escape the control of its protagonists, and be appropriated by the general public who would in turn re-shape it to their own image and wishes. A comparable process happened with the Mayoral Campaign of Manuela Carmena in 2015.

One of the most important theoretical and dialectical debates within Podemos the last years has been to what extent the political project had to build a discourse closer to one of these three groups. One of the main reasons behind the current crisis facing Podemos has been an inability to articulate itself around all three consistently. There were passionate and deep differences of opinion among the most politicised sectors of the party, and the tendency to make these tensions public exacerbated the internal crisis. For those looking in from the outside, the debates were confusing. This was used strategically by the party’s opponents, and likely contributed to the loss of support. The new municipalist projects, thanks to their focus on local politics and day-to-day problems instead of grandiose debates about political theory, were best suited to face these tensions. As we will see, those places that were able to hold the “three souls” together have been the most successful ones.

What happened?

The best way to sketch the current landscape is to look a bit closer at each of the most paradigmatic cases.

Barcelona and its mayor Ada Colau have deservedly garnered most of the attention globally. Barcelona en comú developed a solid campaign. Its project included all three souls. It included the traditional left and Podemos – with Pablo Iglesias joining the campaign. It incorporated grassroots activists, who brought enormous imagination, and PR successes like public support for Colau from Bernie Sanders and Naomi Klein among others.

The movement deployed a successful political message centred on how to make the city a better place for all, and a process of desborde, which attracted many social democratic voters and others, unfolded. Last week’s outcome only appears to be a defeat because out of a total of 756,000 they got 4833 less votes than, and the same number of city councilors (10 each of a total of 41) as, their main rival, the Republican Independent Left (ERC). The ERC was the only rival capable of getting more votes in the city, and for very particular reasons. The ERC based its campaign on attacking Colau, and on the need for a capital for an eventual Catalan republic. The imprisonment of their leadership in Madrid as a consequence of the push for independence only dramatized their message. Nevertheless, at the time of writing, Barcelona en Comú is calling to form a government together with the ERC and the social democrats.

Madrid is a complex story. Here the defeat is also only relative. Manuela Carmena’s party, Mas Madrid, has obtained 19 out of 57 council seats and 31% of the vote. Her party’s main rival, Partido Popular, garnered 15 council seats and 21% of the vote. Carmena’s mayorship is in trouble only in the case of a tenuous alliance between the conservative right and the liberal right who are ready to form a pact with the new far right party Vox. An alliance of this kind would be unthinkable in France or Germany, but not in Spain. However, the division of the three souls explains why Madrid is in this situation.

Carmena came to power with Ahora Madrid, the new municipalist platform that in 2015 gathered the three souls of the movement. However, an internal split with the grassroots activists and traditional left, who for instance advocated a default on the huge public debt of the city, led Carmena (a former judge and vocal against institutional disobedience) to create her own municipalist group under her direct control – Mas Madrid. IU Madrid, Anti-capitalist Madrid and a number of the grass roots municipalists created their own party outside Mas Madrid, Madrid en Pie Municipalista. To make things more complicated, regional elections in Madrid were conducted at the same time, exacerbating the internal crisis of Podemos as regional, local and national allegiances were tested to their limits. The perceived infighting and bickering undermined momentum.

In sum, a cohesive municipalist project uniting the three souls was not possible in Madrid. Some would call it the typical division characteristic of the left, but here the issue is not about a mere aggregation of the votes of the different groups, since they would be enough to form a majority. The problem here is that when there is no synergy among the “three souls” the dynamics of desborde (overflow) do not happen. This translates into passivity on the part of a significant number of people. When you feel you are part of the something big and open, you go the extra mile to make another call, another meeting, another meme, the next tweet, a drawing that captures the feeling of your neighborhood, as was the case in 2015. These small bites do make a difference, especially in left and progressive groups who vote based more on conviction and ideals, than those on the other side of the spectrum. Lack of motivation can explain how the poorest neighborhoods of Madrid had less participation this time, while the richest ones did mobilize and made a difference by voting for one of the three right wing candidates.

Cadiz is the only relevant municipality with a municipalist candidate that has kept its leading position, even winning more seats. Its representation grew from eight to 13, of a total of 27. Four years ago, the charismatic leader José Maria Santos, known by all as Kichi, was the only one from the new municipalist platforms that came directly from the Podemos rank-and-file, although from the Anti-capitalist arm and not the “central” headquarters. The leadership of Kichi has been able to keep the three souls of the municipalist project together, under the flag of Adelante, the brand of Podemos in Andalucia under the control of the Anti-capitalists. Cadiz was the “poor” southern cousin of the municipalist projects, with an inheritance of huge debt from the previous mayors, and much smaller capacity to address it. Kichi´s management reduced Cadiz´s debt with suppliers from 265 to 44 million Euros, and average payment occurs now in 30 days instead of 130. These changes might seem small from a broader revolutionary perspective, but they do change people’s lives, especially small businesses that depend on their deals with the administration. Kichi has consistently defended the need to remain humble and close to the people. He was at the center of the heated debate within Podemos after Iglesias bought a villa worth 600.000 euros. In the midst of the media scandal that unfolded, (exacerbated also by the many opponents of Podemos), Kichi wrote a letter expressing that “the ethical code (of Podemos) is a guarantee to live like the common people”.

Zaragoza. The new municipalist platform that was created in 2015, Zaragoza en Común has plummeted from nine to three out of 31 council seats. Here, the main reason is that Podemos and IU presented a different platform than Zaragoza en Común, obtaining two councilors. Social democrats grew substantially, capitalizing on the charisma of the new President of Spain, Pedro Sanchez. Unfortunately, similar to Madrid, an anticipated pact amongst the three right-wing parties would mean the end of a progressive mayor in the city.

Valencia was a special case because Compromís, an older party, holds office. Compromís is a left progressive party from the Valencia region with a nationalist character although not pro-independence. Before the creation of Podemos and the new municipalism, Compromis was the main voice against corruption in the institutions run by the governing Popular Party. Compromis’ leader, Monica Oltra, was expelled from the Regional Parliament on several occasions, due to her interventions about the corruption scandals there. These interventions made her very popular. The new municipalist platform Valencia en Comú, with three councilors out of 33, together with the support of the social democrats, was key to giving Compromís the mayor´s office in 2015. Valencia en Comú decided to disappear and join Podemos and IU this time round, but they did not get enough votes for a council seat this time. However, Compromis keeps the mayor´s office due to higher support and its alliance with the social democrats. Despite its different nature, Compromís has employed strategies and tactics that municipalist projects have used elsewhere; like reducing its debt by half, reducing the number of cars in the city, welcoming refugee ships, and increasing social spending. Compromís Municipal will govern for four more years.

Have these projects been transformative?

We can define transformation as the process of a cocoon becoming a butterfly; this is a process that cannot be reversed. After learning the election results Ada Colau declared that they had “broadened the horizon of what is possible”. Indeed, the seed of the new municipalist projects will continue to grow. Amsterdam plans a Fearless Cities Conference in 2020, Belgrade will host one in a few days.

Cities are slowly gathering more power and influence. A week before the latest G20 in Buenos Aires, for instance, the first Urban20 gathered. There, the leaders of the 25 largest and most influential cities came together to put city agendas on the global map. Cities are demonstrating that they are capable of raising the minimum wage, reducing emissions or enforcing more accountable business practices on firms like AirbnB and Uber, even better than states. This dynamic can only grow. Colau’s administration in Barcelona created the biggest public energy utility of Spain, focusing on renewable energy. It is hard to imagine that a future administration would try to undo this. Carmena has reduced the debt of Madrid by almost half, a staggering 2.14 billion Euros. Similar dynamics happened in many other new municipalist governments. This puts paid to the myth that left and progressive administrations hurt the economy, or that they create debt that efficient right-wing administrations then have to solve. The inverse has been proven. If others after them create new debts, the population will take note. The last financial crisis ensured that voters know how dangerous debt is.

The results of Spain’s municipal elections were not what progressives around the world expected. We must wait and see how the political field will reconfigure itself, an open process at the time of writing, in Barcelona and Madrid. We must, however, examine the details so that we can draw the lessons needed to expand progressive political influence at the local level in a way that can tackle global issues such as unaccountable financial power and global warming. We live in a moment of crisis and opportunity, and the Spanish experience shows that it is possible to incorporate veteran left parties, grass roots activists and disfranchised social democratic and progressive voters into broader transformative processes. How to do that sustainably will depend enormously on the local context, and it is the task of the new municipalists to create the tools and narratives to accomplish it.

Do not forget that ¡Si se puede! It is possible!

Republished from OpenDemocracy.net.

Header image: Fearless cities: Ada Colau with Manuela Carmena | CC BY-NC 2.0

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Brussels is a city that’s intimate with inertia. In its center stands the Palais de Justice, a grand 19th-century courthouse that was once described as the eighth wonder of the world. Scaffolding was erected in 1982 as part of a bold plan to renovate the building for the first time since the Second World War, but 37 years later it remains untouched. Political point-scoring and division over budgetary allocations have stalled the project for nearly four decades. Today, the monument serves as an icon for the dysfunction at the heart of Europe’s capital.

For locals, the Palais de Justice is a lesson that it’s often easier to start something from scratch than repurpose an old idea. The city is a hotbed for radical social enterprises, citizens’ initiatives and grassroots activism, each seeking to build alternative business models for a more sustainable and participatory future. Now, a new movement has been born to make them more effective.

Citizen Spring is a network based in Brussels that aims to connect local projects so that groups can identify ways to support each other, coordinate their activities, and promote sustainable and future-facing ideas. It was launched by Xavier Damman, co-founder of Open Collective — a transparent funding platform for open source projects that has attracted donations from big Silicon Valley players like Airbnb and Facebook. During a climate march in the Belgian capital last year, Damman began talking to activists about the support they needed to create a more sustainable Brussels.

“Demonstrating on the streets is the easy thing to do, but it’s also boring. It can be useful, but we should all be asking what else we can do,” he says. “If we want system change, not climate change, we need to recognize the future is already here — it’s just not evenly distributed. We need to bring to the surface the things that people are already doing to initiate change.”

Damman reached out to the city’s community initiatives and invited them to join the first ever Citizen Spring event. He took inspiration from industry open days, where businesses are encouraged to throw their doors open to the public, and decided to recreate the idea for citizen-led efforts.

From March 21st to 24th, the city’s social enterprises and grassroots projects took time out of their hectic schedules to showcase their work. Members of the public were offered tours and presentations of 45 different initiatives where they learned why the projects were founded and how they hoped to improve the city. Workshops were also facilitated to find new ways for social enterprises to work together and pool resources.

“It used to be that big institutions, governments, NGOs and private companies had the monopoly on creating an impact. But citizens are becoming more and more empowered to participate,” Damman said. “We want to accelerate that transition from citizens being passive consumers towards being actors, creators, and contributors. Not just by promoting what they do, but by encouraging people to join them. Opening the doors is just the first step, but it’s an important one.”

The concept is already spreading to other cities in Belgium. Antwerp established its own Citizen Spring network earlier this year, and Damman expects more cities in Europe and elsewhere to join the movement in time for next spring. “There are citizen initiatives in every city in the world, but too often they work in isolation. It’s in everybody’s interest that we connect them so they can find ways to increase the reach and impact of everybody’s work,” he adds.

The municipal authorities in Brussels hope the renovations to the Palais de Justice will be finished sometime in 2028. Political deadlock has prevented the Belgian government from both preserving its history and preparing for the future. Fortunately, the citizens of Brussels aren’t asking for permission to take matters into their own hands.

If you’d like to launch a Citizen Spring network where you are, email [email protected] for more information.

Cross-posted from Shareable

Header image: Communa invites members of the public to learn how they’re transforming disused spaces across Brussels | Image provided by Xavier Damman (CC BY 4.0)

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The main strategy was to notify the speculators who did not reside on their land that if within the next three months they did not come to justify their absence or take up residence there (fulfilling land social function), the property would be put up for resale to poor and young families at original price, cutting owners’ land gains. The resistance from the ‘owners’ of idle lots who resorted to lawsuits and even violence was met with vigils. However, all the ‘owners’ eventually left unoccupied land in favour of poor families.

The initiative has ended speculators’ abuse, and allowed finance for a small library, that has been opened to help children with their schoolwork. Ties of solidarity based on Ayni (a concept of reciprocity or mutualism among people of the Andean communities in agricultural work, constructions of houses and others) and the collective work of building houses according to plan were also strengthened. Residents provided technical resources themselves, such as tools for construction projects, and labour for construction projects was provided by the women and men affiliated to the community council.

From the community share of the small profits from the sale of the land, and another neighbours’ contributions, around US$40,000 was generated. Together with community work, the money was used to finance neighbourhood development such as the building, expansion and improvement of roads and storm drains, and amenities such as a soccer field, equipment for the local library and land housing for poor people – all achieved with no external help.

“This is the first experience I know that is using plus-value capture strategies [capturing the value of land for public investment] in areas of “informal” urban development. The explicit reference to traditional indigenous people collective mechanisms of land control/management (i.e. ayllus) is also inspiring, as well as efforts to protect and guarantee women’s housing rights though self-organized initiatives and strong networking at local, national and international level.”

– Evaluator Lorena Zarate

Would you like to learn more about this initiative? Please contact us.

Transformative Cities’ Atlas of Utopias is being serialized on the P2P Foundation Blog. Go to TransformativeCities.org for updates.

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Mattei is the noted international law scholar, lawyer and activist who has been at the center of some of the most significant commons initiatives in Italy. His chapter is a welcome synthesis of how the commons discourse in Italy arose from the misty-eyed imagination of a few far-sighted legal commoners, to become a rally cry in critical fights against the privatization of water, the Teatro Valley theater in Rome, and other cherished shared wealth. The concept of the commons has since gone mainstream in Italian political culture, animating new initiatives and providing an indispensable vocabulary for fighting neoliberal capitalist policies.

Ugo’s piece is called “Institutionalizing the Commons: An Italian Primer.” (PDF file) In it, he describes the history of the commons in Italy as “a unique experiment in transforming indignation into new institutions of the commons,” adding, “perhaps this praxis ‘Italian style’ could become an example for a global strategy.”

The story starts in 2005 with a scholarly project at the Academia Nazionale dei Lincei, which examined the many ways in which public authorities were routinely privatizing public resources, often with no compensation or benefit to the public. This project later led to a national commission headed by Stefano Rodotà, a noted law scholar and politician. In April 2008, the Rodotà Commission delivered a bill to the Italian minister of justice containing, as Mattei puts it, “the first legal definitions of the commons to appear in an official document” in Italy.

The Rodotà Commission defined the commons (in Italian beni comuni) by dividing assets into three categories – commons, public properties, and private properties. Resources in commons were defined as

such goods whose utility is functional to the pursuit of fundamental rights and free development of the person. Commons must be upheld and safeguarded by law also for the benefit of future generations. The legal title to the commons can be held by private individuals, legal persons or by public entities. No matter their title, their collective fruition must be safeguarded, within the limits of and according to the process of law.

Specific common assets mentioned included “rivers, torrents and their springs; lakes and other waterways; the air; parks defined as such by law; forests and woodlands; high altitude mountain ranges, glaciers and snowlines beaches and stretches of coastline declared natural reserves; the protected flora and fauna; protected archaeological, cultural and environmental properties; and other protected landscapes.

This early (modern) legal definition of the commons is rooted more in state law and its recognition of certain biophysical resources as public, than in the sanctity of self-organized, customary social practices and norms. The definition nonetheless has provided a valuable language for challenging privatization, most notably, the alarming proposal by the Italian Senate in 2010 to sell Italy’s entire Italian water management system.

This outrage led to the collecting of over 1.5 million signatures to secure a ballot referendum to let the public decide whether the state should be allowed to privatize the water commons. In June 2011, Italian proto-commoners prevailed by huge margins and helped make the commons – beni comuni – a keyword in Italian politics. As Mattei puts it, the commons provided “a unifying political grammar for different actions.”

Over the past eight years, the commons has continued to gain currency in Italian politics as the economic crises of capitalism have worsened. The language of enclosure showcased how government corruption, neoliberal trade and investment policies, and state subsidies and giveaways were destroying the common wealth.This was underscored by parallel protests by the Indignados in Spain, the Occupy movement, and the Arab Spring protests, which also focused on inequality and enclosures of the commons. Mattei’s short book Beni comuni: Un Manifesto helped bring these themes to further prominence and connecting many single-issue struggles that had long been seen as separate, but which in fact share common goals, adversaries, and values.

I like to think that most towns, cities and regions of the world could and should begin to write their own modern-day histories of their distinctive commons. It’s imperative that we recover and learn these histories if we are going to learn from the terrible disruptions and struggles of the past, and invent new forms of social practice, culture and politics.

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