By: Tom Christoffel

Tom Christoffel — Wed, 15 Mar 2017 18:58:10 +0000

The City as the original development district. It uses the municipal corporation form as a mechanism for self perpetuation and carrying on the intent of the founders. This is done with the community motive which, in the evolution of humanity preceded the profit motive. Community motive must manage the profit motive. The profit motive exists in all economic systems as the need for power and domination. Cities are grown from settlements which serve a region and expand, in many cases to serve many regions. Cities must nurture the hinterlands, not exploit them. This is the right to the benefit of the City, the product of evolving human civilization. The Nation-State is the region which protects and nurtures it’s Cities and their regions. All must be in dynamic balance, or the natural environment is depleted by the built environment and attendant damage of its wastes, such as plastic in the oceans. This my working theory.

By: Michael Anthony

Michael Anthony — Tue, 14 Mar 2017 20:29:15 +0000

“Business support is needed for platform co-ops that enable shelter, transportation, food, mobility, water, elder care to be provided collaboratively – and in which value is shared fairly among the people who make them valuable.”

I’m a Peer Advocate with Homeless Solidarity Project in Maine, and this is very much in line with the aproach I like to take with my work. I use the language of “peer advocacy” “peer leadership” and “peer run” in discussing what is needed to address the fundamental problem with existing services under capitalism.

Peer advocates need to empower peer leaders to develop peer run co-ops as alternatives to the crumbling social services people need. Peer run co-ops are essentially self sustaining and interdependent social services.

They need to be as much enterprise, creating jobs, and growth for the member owners, as they are social service, serving the unmet needs of the member owners, and those prospective members who first come to such organizations looking for support.

Diversification of funding mechanisms is needed, with ever unstable political and economic climates, social services cannot depend on federal or state agencies for funding, and there are just too many programs and needs in most cities to compete for limitted municipal funds.

Private grants are an option but still, much competition, its hard for more informal peer run efforts to rise above the noise of already large, powerful, and out of touch institutions that are desperate to fight against the rising tides.

By incorporating enterprises into social services, we can all do a part to help sustain the services we depend on, and support those of our peers who may not be able to help in that capacity(they may help in another however, and peers are best suited to identify and empower people to act in whatever capacity we can.)

I’m really eager to see this stuff find root, and grow. I’m also concerned it may not be happening fast enough, and that many are trying to exploit this process, the rise of peer leadership and collaboration in social services.

I’m glad people are learning to acknowledge it as necissary though. As with many things, those on the front lines of these issues have been fighting for this stuff for generations, and now experts and theorists confirm what we already know. It is what it is, and water is still wet!

Thank you for this great outline of alternatives we can all be working on.

Solidarity for a new future!

Comments on: Manifesto For Utopias Are Over: Cities Are Living Systems

By: Tom Christoffel

By: Michael Anthony