Cross-posted from Shareable Neal Gorenflo: The English translation for the Rural Social Innovation manifesto was not ready when Alex Giordano asked me to write the preface to it. I agreed expecting the manifesto to be like many I’ve read online, relatively short and easy to digest. I thought I could quickly write an introduction. This was not… Continue reading
This post by Devin Balkind is reposted from Gotham Gazette Smartphones are transforming transit in cities all over the world, and city governments are struggling to figure out how to best manage the change. If the world was looking to New York City’s recently enacted legislation affecting for-hire vehicle companies, then there will be disappointment… Continue reading
Reposted from Cooperativecity.org The international debate on the commons has a long history but only in recent years has it started gearing towards the definition of Urban Commons and what their role is in shaping our society, especially at the wake of the economic crisis. This debate developed strongly in Italy as a result of… Continue reading
Originally posted on Labgov.city Rok Kranjc | Feb 6, 2018 | The Commons Post: Many of today’s proposals for and experiments with Universal Basic Income (UBI) in so-called developed countries seem to be congruent with, and indeed in some instances explicitly catered towards maintaining the dominant political economic architecture and status quo imaginary. Some of… Continue reading
Originally posted on Oikos.be. Download the full report in Dutch or French. By Dirk Holemans et a. Oikos, 2018: In order to find responses to current societal challenges, citizens increasingly take control, including in the form of citizen collectives that produce goods or services themselves, usually as a quest towards a more sustainable alternative. With the… Continue reading
In 1983, a right-wing mayor was elected in Grenoble. His administration was marked by corruption and the power he gave to large corporations in the management of public services. Elected officials and environmental activists mobilised in the 1980s and 1990s to prove that corruption was involved in many deals, and set up an alternative, municipal… Continue reading
Reposted from Medium.com Socrates Schouten: Digital cities with a conscience — What does a new government mean for Amsterdam? Was it because of the ‘fake news’ epidemic that blew over the Atlantic in 2016? The steady conquest of urban life by platform powers like Airbnb and Uber? Or did the shocking news about Facebook and Cambridge Analytica… Continue reading
Originally published on The Climate Lemon Something amazing is happening in American politics. Wow it felt good, and weird, to type that sentence. Not sure if you noticed, but it’s been kind of a hellish shitshow recently. Anyway… On Tuesday 13th November 2018, a group of young climate activists descended on the office of Nancy… Continue reading
Cross-posted from Shareable. This article was adapted from Shareable’s latest book, “Sharing Cities: Activating the Urban Commons.” Download your free pdf copy today. Anna Bergren Miller: Community Land Trusts (CLTs) are nonprofit entities dedicated to maintaining community control of real property outside conventional, speculative land and housing markets. Though they may serve other ends — including the… Continue reading
Edited by Paige Shipman and Nick Buxton, the following text is republished from the Transnational Institute’s website. Over several sunny days in June 2018, a diverse group of 60 activists and researchers from 30 countries convened for a multi-day meeting to discuss the collective building of post-capitalist futures. The meeting provided the opportunity for a… Continue reading
Jason Davidson: Digital agriculture, broadly defined as the use of mass amounts of data to influence decision-making on farms, has incredible potential to make farms more economically and ecologically sustainable. However, it also poses risks to the privacy, profitability and independence of farmers. This emerging industry is rapidly growing. Already, the same four mega-corporations that dominate the… Continue reading
In the midst of a systemic crisis, it is imperative to create evidence-based awareness of new capitalist and post-capitalist futures. COSMOLOCALISM will advance our understanding of how to create a sustainable economy through the commons. Find out more on the Cosmolocalism Website. Extended summary COSMOLOCALISM will document, analyze, test, evaluate, and create awareness about an emerging mode… Continue reading
Disruptive Innovation Festival – DIF: Imagine if we built an economic system built on abundance rather than scarcity. Taking advantage of the latest digital tools, computational power, material science, biomimicry and a somewhat older idea – the commons – this new system could have the power to transform how we live and work. System Reset… Continue reading
The following is reposted from TESA Collective’s website. The worker cooperative movement is flourishing. That’s because there’s a growing understanding that the economy and the businesses we work in would fair better if they were owned and run by the people. But starting a worker co-op is difficult, and the process can be daunting. That’s… Continue reading
In 2016, I was invited to Uber’s headquarters (then in San Francisco) to talk about the failings of the digital economy and what could be done about it. Silicon Valley firms are the only corporations I know that ask for private talks for free. They don’t even cover cab fare. Like Google and Facebook, Uber… Continue reading
When you get something at 80% off on Amazon, who do you think wins — you or Amazon? If you think that’s a strange question, you ain’t seen nothing yet. Maybe it’s time we re:Invent some things. But, how can possibly getting a huge discount be bad? It’s not, if you actually need what you’re buying, and… Continue reading