The Belgian city of Ghent plays host to a broad range of projects and initiatives around the commons. But it has yet to adopt a model which really places a commons-focused approach and logic at the core of its institutions and processes. Recent work undertaken by experts on the commons provides a roadmap for the city to re-imagine and reconfigure its structures around citizen participation, the sharing of resources, and ‘translocal’ cooperation.

Michel Bauwens, one of the world’s experts on the commons and founder of the P2P Foundation, distinguishes at least three main reasons why cities would want to stimulate initiatives and projects related to the commons. First, these play an important role in the ecological transition, they allow for goods, workshops, and infrastructures to be shared. Second, they enable a faster transfer to a circular economy by sharing information about production chains, in addition to offering opportunities for local jobs and meaningful labour. And instead of outsourcing everything to private companies working with long supply chains, communal knowhow and coordination platforms allow the realisation of shorter supply and distribution chains. And finally, as the commons are based on open systems, they strengthen democracy and participation. What is still missing, however, in Ghent and elsewhere, is the ‘maker city’ model of the commons, namely a production model based on open design.

A strong commons commitment

Ghent, a city of 260,000 residents in Belgium, has a remarkable history of citizen initiatives and other forms of self-governance. In the Middle Ages it was a big, wealthy city with over 50 guilds. During the industrial revolution it was the cradle of new labour movements and cooperatives. For some ten years now there has been a third wave of activity, now comprising over 500 citizen initiatives, ranging from an energy cooperative and a digital citizens’ platform for car-sharing, to numerous local food initiatives.

At the political level, Ghent has a tradition of progressive parties, with a relatively large Green Party that has been on the scene for the last few decades. In the 2012 local election, a red-green ‘cartel list’ won the majority in the town council. It has been governing the city together with the Liberal Party on the basis of an innovative social-ecological city project. The progressive tradition translates into an open culture of policy-making, leaving Ghent’s 4,000 municipal workers quite some leeway to develop initiatives of their own and interact with citizens. All the same, Belgian cities’ scope for policy-making, as well as their fiscal autonomy, is limited compared to a country like Denmark.

It is therefore no coincidence that Ghent city council, witnessing the proliferation of citizen initiatives, is the first city in the world to ask Michel Bauwens to devise a Commons Transition Plan for Ghent. Bauwens and his colleague settled in Ghent in the spring of 2017, talked to 80 Ghent commoners (citizens leading or involved in projects around the commons), held a survey on the nature of the commons and the role of the city, and interviewed various municipal services and town councillors. This resulted in a wiki of some 500 documented citizen initiatives.

The aim however was not just to map projects, as the research question was twofold and of a political nature. It first looked at the potentially new facilitating and regulating relationship between the local Ghent government and citizens to enhance the development of commons initiatives. It then asked if cities can be actors in social, economic, and institutional change at a time when nation-states are no longer capable of regulating the transnational economy. Can networks of cities be part of a new transnational governance model?

On the basis of research into the commons in numerous cities, Bauwens, for the purpose of his Commons Transition Plan, starts from two premises. First, the town council, the commons citizen initiatives, and quite a number of Ghent’s residents are no longer purely local actors. They have become part of transnational and translocal networks, which together can exert influence on socio-economic changes worldwide. This is demonstrated notably in up-and-coming ‘global design communities’. Local projects such as fab labs^[1] are connected to global fab lab information flows, communities, and sometimes even coalitions. Second, cities can more consciously manage the way they cooperate. There are already examples in the field of climate policy or the regulation of Uber, but this can be taken much further. International coalitions of cities should be true institutions for translocal and global cooperation.

Will you be my partner (city)?

Appreciating commons initiatives is one thing, organising as a local government so as to offer structural support is quite another. This requires a fundamental shift in the culture and structure of government, for which Bauwens uses the concept of the ‘Partner State’, here transposed to the city as local government. The city is then no longer a territory which needs politicians behaving as managers; it is, first and foremost, a living community of creative citizens. This means that instead of privatising businesses or outsourcing to public-private partnerships, the aim is the development of public-civil partnerships.

In order to make Ghent a Partner City, Bauwens starts from what already exists in the city in terms of transition policy. In the context of its broader climate policy, Ghent for some years has known Gent en Garde(Ghent and whisk), a sustainable food system strategy for the city. The central organ within this transition strategy is the Voedselraad (Food Council), bringing together all food chain stakeholders, hence consolidating the many existing and new initiatives around local food and the so-called short supply chains and bringing producers and consumers into contact with each other.

The Food Council, as the representative organ, also seats people within vested structures, who cannot or do not want to negotiate on an equal footing with the new commons initiators. That’s why a second organ is needed, the contributive organ, which in this case is the existing working group on urban agriculture. This independent working group itself is a coalition of various urban agriculture projects, experts, and committed citizens. It allows for the mobilisation of expertise in civil society in a power-neutral way.

Based on this existing structure and to boost civil participation, the Commons Transition Plan can help found two new institutions. First, the States-General of the Commons, organised by sector and acting as an umbrella. This is a platform designed for citizens who care for the commons and are committed to them. The second organ is the Chamber of the Commons, analogous to the existing Chamber of Commerce. In this Chamber, citizens sit as entrepreneurs, committed to the resilience and future of the commons economy.

The difference in perspective makes both institutions indispensable. By striving in this twofold way for more voice and influence, the contributive organ gains strength in its dialogue with the representative organ and the city. They make sure that there is cocreation and they erect a barrier against any long term encapsulation caused by policy-making. The whole scheme can be rolled out for many other sectors, with the public authorities being fed constantly by commons initiatives and ideas.

In addition to this, Bauwens proposes to copy successful institutions from Italian cities such as Bologna. First, a Commons City Lab, to support fresh, experimental commons initiatives, to devise commons agreements, and to disseminate successful initiatives and models. Second, the commons regulations, which endorse the right to initiate commons orientated projects and regulate the supportive role of cities and other urban actors. The ‘Right to Initiate’ is a positive right which is not aimed at the replacement of public services, but harbours the values of ‘care’ and ‘reform’.

Where the currents meet

It is a striking fact that whether it is about stimulating the commons or regulating the hyper-capitalist Airbnbs of this world, cities are taking the lead. So it’s London rather than the British government that has the nerve to take action against Uber if it violates existing rules. Cities being in the vanguard is no coincidence. Even if there are more reasons at play, the fact that a local council is more easily approachable for citizens than a national government certainly has something to do with it; conversely, for a mayor it is easier to engage local actors in policy-making.

This pragmatic response, however, conceals an ideological aspect, which in my book Vrijheid & Zekerheid (Freedom and Certainty) I describe as the ‘Land of Two Currents’.^[2] In Europe there is both a dominant neoliberal main current and an alternative countercurrent. The main current is formed by most national governments, international institutions, and big corporations. National governments find themselves in the straitjacket of the Maastricht Treaty values (placing monetary objectives before social and ecological ones). Urban governments have more autonomy in that sense; it is simply impossible for lobbyists of large corporations to be present in every city. The city is the place where a multitude of sustainable citizen initiatives start and, like small streams feeding into a larger river, come together to strengthen each other. It’s mostly the local governance level – which is closest to the citizens – which joins this undercurrent. It’s also the place where local alternatives can successfully develop into a real political alternative. The election of Ada Colau as mayor of Barcelona, running on the citizen platform Barcelona en Comú, is an illustration of how this can take place.

Joining forces

If cities want to be an active part of a novel form of transnational governance, then they have to actively found multi-city commons coalitions. This is at the same time a pragmatic proposal: as commoners and entrepreneurs take initiatives and create local standards, the need increases to make them strong enough and allow them to operate in a classical profit-orientated environment, which shifts social and ecological cost (externalities) onto society. Cities and the commons initiatives can only attain real relevance when they succeed in pooling their knowhow and infrastructure. Jointly, cities might for example support the development of open source software platforms allowing the setting-up of working commons systems for, say, car-sharing and bicycle-sharing, minting complementary coins, or the management of food production in short-chain agriculture, from seeds to online sales.

Part of this will mean sharing knowhow about the commons approach in various towns and cities. Then we can see which regulations and new institutions work most effectively in supporting commons initiatives. As a useful example, Bauwens refers to the coalition of 16 large cities signing the Barcelona Pledge and its FabCity model, which aims at relocalising half of the production of food by 2054.

The new translocal horizon

The importance of the Commons Transition Plan that Michel Bauwens devised for Ghent clearly transcends its local character. The new institutional structures that Bauwens proposes, in particular, are of crucial importance. It is clear that after a ten-year increase in citizen initiatives, Ghent needs new structures to channel this energy so as to change society and its economy in the direction of a more honest, sustainable, and shared future. All the proposed innovations at the city level will absorb a lot of time and energy from local commoners, governments, and generative entrepreneurs. There is a big danger here of everyone recognising the importance of the expansion of translocal networks, but not getting round to making them a reality. In his plan, Bauwens mentions the need for the translocal networks in addition to what has to happen in the city itself. It would be important to anchor the translocal aspect in every new institution from the start.

However, more cooperation is necessary to develop the counter-current needed. Essential in this respect are networks of cities cooperating with university networks to develop and share the necessary knowledge and design. If tomorrow 20 towns and cities allocate funds to develop, say, a digital platform for an alternative ‘Fairbnb’, and then implement it in cooperation with the urban commons actors, then there is real political leverage by a countercurrent against the neoliberal actors. That is the real struggle we are facing and the lesson to be drawn from the 1970s. In those days there was also, from the energy of what today we refer to as ‘May 68’, a broad spectrum of civilian actions and initiatives, staking a claim to more space for citizen autonomy in relation to government and economy. If this space was won in the field of, say, new rights (gay marriage, flexible career options, euthanasia…) in a number of countries, then in the field of the economy the reverse has happened – citizens have lost ground.

By organising globally, the power of the business sector has grown far above and beyond both that of the nation-state and of self-organising citizens. If the new wave of citizen movements is to acquire real power, then it will have to organise itself translocally from the beginning, whereby coalitions of cities with clear political and economic objectives take the lead. This will require an awareness and continuous attention on behalf of Green activists and politicians, which should underpin all of their actions.

Footnotes

^[1] A fab lab (fabrication laboratory) is a small-scale workshop providing services and equipment for digital production.
^[2]2 Vrijheid & Zekerheid. Naar een sociaalecologische samenleving (EPO, 2016, in Dutch). Dirk Holemans. An English essay with the core elements of the book will be available at the end of 2017 on the website of the Green European Foundation (Ecopro project): www.gef.eu

• Originally published in the Green European Journal
• Lead image by Matt B. Additional images by Dmitris Kamaras, Baptist Standaert, Yurek Onzia, Joren De Groof and Nathan Guy.

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From March to June 2017 peer-to-peer expert Michel Bauwens conducted a three-month research and participation project in Ghent on the ‘commons city of the future’. The result of that research is this Commons Transition Plan, describing the possibilities and role of the City of Ghent (as a local authority) in reinforcing citizen initiatives. With this, the City wishes to give further shape to a sustainable and ethical economy in Ghent.

Michel Bauwens (58) has already been working for over ten years on the theme of the commons-based economy and society. He is solicited all over the world as a speaker or to give workshops, and is the author of the bestseller ‘Saving the world: With P2P towards a postcapitalist society’. Bauwens led a similar research and transition project in Ecuador. The major French newspaper, Libération, referred to him as the leading theorist on the theme of the economy of cooperation, following the French edition of the book.

The commons is a way to describe shared, material or immaterial property that is stewarded, protected or produced by a community – in an urban context often by citizens’ collectives – and managed according to the rules and standards of that community. It is fundamentally distinct from state bodies – government, city, state – but also from market actors. The commons is independent of, but of course still holds relationships to, the government and the market. Commons as a new form of organisation is exemplified by a variety of initiatives based around production and consumption with the idea of achieving a more sustainable society. This can for example be the set-up of energy cooperatives or shared work spaces for co-working. Examples in Ghent are EnerGent, LikeBirds, Voedselteams, Wijdelen, etc.

All of these initiatives show that ‘urban commons’ is alive and kicking today in the city.

Aim of the research

For the City of Ghent, the central question of this research and participation project was: how can a city respond to this and what are the implications of this for city policy? The goal was to come up with a synthesised Commons Transition Plan that describes the possibilities for optimal public interventions while also offering answers to the question of what Ghent’s many commoners and commons projects expect from the city.

The intention of this assignment is therefore to investigate the possibility of a potentially new political, facilitative and regulatory relationship between the local government of Ghent and its citizens so as to facilitate the further development of the commons.

With this work the researchers have tried to find out what kinds of institutionalisation is fitting to handle the commons well. This means essentially a shift from a top-down approach and old organisational principles such as ‘command and control’, towards a new way of thinking and an approach as a ‘partner city’, in which the city facilitates and supports projects. Of course, sometimes the city must also regulate projects, in the role of a more facilitative government.

Structure of the Commons Transition Plan

In the first part, the report gives a general introduction to the commons which serves to explain why the commons are important in the context of urban development.

In a second part, the researchers look at the global context in which the revival of the commons is taking place, but most of all at the reality of the urban commons in a number of other European cities, which may possibly serve as a benchmark for the city of Ghent.

Part 3 presents the findings in Ghent itself.

Finally, in Part 4, the researchers give their recommendations to the city council.

At the end of this study there are a series of appendices, including an English-language overview of the commons in European cities, written by the Greek urbanist Vasilis Niaros, who was a Timelab resident during the period of our research. The authors of the report, Michel Bauwens and Yurek Onzia, are responsible for parts 1 and 4. Vasilis Niaros wrote the comparative study.

• Read the executive summaryWritten by Executive Michel Bauwens and Yurek Onzia
• Read the complete Commons Transition Plan(under revision) (2.62 MB)

Originally published in Stad.gent.

Photo by Dimitris Graffin

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Monica Bernardi: Commons represents an issue which has been subject of many studies and discussions. LabGov used to deal with the topic of the commons and its co-founders themselves (Prof. Sheila Foster and Prof. Christian Iaione) talk of  “The City as a Commons”.

Today, indeed, we witness a rise of commons-oriented civic initiatives as a result of a growing inadequacy of Market and State. A commons can be intended as a shared resource co-governed or co-owned by its user community according to their rules and norms. In both Bollier, Bauwens and Helfrich’ opinion there is no commons without commoning, namely without active co-production and self-governance.

A commons emerges from the dynamic interaction of three related aspects: a resource, a community that gathers around it, and a protocols for its stewardship. As pointed by Bollier, it is simultaneously:

• a social system for the long-term stewardship of resources that preserves shared values and the community identity;
• a self-organized system by which community managed resources with no reliance on the Market or State; the wealth that we create and pass on to the next generation (based on gift of nature, civic infrastructure, cultural and creative works, traditions and knowledge);
• a sector of the economy that create values in ways that are often taken for granted – and often jeopardized by the Market-State.

The commons becomes a challenge for the city, that should become what Bauwens defines a “partners city”, enabling and empowering commons-oriented civic initiatives. For the market, that should sustain the commons and create livelihoods for the core contributors; and for the civil society organizations, that still have bureaucratic forms of organization and management, not in line with the commons initiatives.

Bauwens has recently released a report based on the study of the City of Ghent, conducted together with Yurek Onzia – project coordinator and editor-in-chief, with the support of an artistic makerspace (Timelab), the P2P Lab scholar Vasilis Niaros and Annelore Raman from the city council. The study was commissioned and financed by the City of Ghent, in the northern Flanders, with the support of the mayor, Daniel Termont, of the head of the mayor’s staff, the head of the strategy department, and the political coalition of the city (Flemish Socialist Party SPA, Flemish Greens – Groen, and Flemish Liberal Party – Open VLD).

The main request of the administration was to document the emergence and growth of the commons in the city and identify strategies and public policies to support commons-based initiatives, involving the citizens. The three-month research took inspiration from other cities (such as Barcelona, Seoul, Bologna) already engaged in the recognition and promotion of commons practices. It culminates in a Commons Transition Plan that describes the role, the possibilities and the options for optimal public interventions in terms of reinforcing citizens initiatives.

During the research, the team:

• Mapped 500 commons-oriented projects per sector of activity (from food to transportation, energy, etc.) using a wiki
• Interviewed 80 leading commoners and project leaders
• Administered a written questionnaire to over 70 participants
• Managed 9 open workshops divided per theme (Food as a commons, transportation as a commons….)
• Developed a Commons Finance Canvas workshop based on the Hinton methodology (economic opportunities, difficulties, models used by the commons projects)

Bauwens described the city of Ghent (300,000 inhabitants) as a city with a distinct presence of commons-oriented initiatives (more than 500), a lively urban tissue sprinkled by smart young, as well as coworking, fablabs and maker spaces, active civil society organizations that support urban commons projects, and an active and engaged city administration. The city indeed is already involved in actions for carbon and traffic reduction, and it has a staff of social facilitators, connectors, street workers engaged in enabling roles at the local level. In addition, there is an important policy to support the temporary use of vacant land/building by community groups.

Nevertheless, the research highlighted some weakness points of the city:

• the initiatives are often fragmented;
• there are some regulatory and administrative obstacles (especially about the mutualized housing);
• fablabs and coworking spaces lack of real production’s activities;
• there is no connection between university and the commons project, neither a propensity to open source and design projects;
• many commons-project are set in post-migration communities and limited to ethnic and religious memberships;
• civil society organizations often perceive the projects as mainly directed towards vulnerable categories and not as general productive resources; the cooperative sector gives a weak support; the major potential commons are vulnerable to private extraction.

Despite these weakness points, the City showed a great commitment in finding ways to improve and expand the urban commons at local level since it is aware of its potentials for the social and economic life:  1. “the commons are an essential part of the ecological transition”;

2. they “are a means for the re-industrialization of the city following the cosmo-local model which combines global technical cooperation in knowledge commons with smart re-localization of production”;
3. they “are based on self-governance of the value producing systems and are therefore one of the few schools of true democracy and participation”

The report is divided in four parts:

1. The context on the emergence of urban commons (largely increased in the Flanders in the last ten years). This part provides information on the challenges for the public authorities, for the market players and for the traditional civil society organisations and on the opportunities related with the spread of the commons (i.e more active participation of citizens as city co-creators, in solving ecological and environmental issues and in creating new forms of meaningful work at local level).
2. An overview of urban commons developments globally and especially in European cities.
3. The analysis of the urban commons in Ghent with its strengths and weaknesses.
4. A set of 23 integrated proposals for the creation of public-commons processes for citywide co-creation.

The part 3 with the map of the urban commons projects highlights some similarities with the commons-driven digital economy, demonstrating some specificities:

1. productive communities are based on open contributions;
2. the urban commons and their platforms may bring to generative market forms;
3. the communities, platforms and possible market forms require, and receive, facilitative support from the various agencies and functionaries of the city, and the civil society organisations.

About the proposals in the part 4, the report presents:

• some public-social or public-partnership based processes and protocols to streamline cooperation between the city and the commoners. Taking as example the Bologna Regulation for the Care and the Regeneration of the Urban Commons, the report suggests that commons initiatives present their projects and ideas to a City Lab in order to sign a “Commons Accord” with the city. With this contract the city sets-up specific support alliances combining the commoners and civil society organisations, the city itself, and the private sector;
• a cross-sector institutional infrastructure for commons policy-making and support divided in transition arenas and based on the model of a pre-existing practice around the food transition.

Among the recommendations and suggestions listed in the report there are:

• The creation of a juridical assistance service consisting of at least one representative of the city and one of the commoners, in order to systematically unblock the potential for commons expansion, by finding solutions for regulatory hurdles.
• The creation of an incubator for a commons-based collaborative economy, which specifically deals with the challenges of generative start-ups.
• The creation of an investment vehicle, the bank of the commons, which could be a city bank based on public-social governance models.
• Augmenting the capacity of temporary land and buildings, towards more permanent solutions to solve the land and housing crisis affecting commoners and citizens.
• Support of platform cooperatives as an alternative to the more extractive forms of the sharing economy.
• Assisting the development of mutualized commons infrastructures (‘protocol cooperativism’), through inter-city cooperation (avoiding the development of 40 Uber alternative in as many cities).
• Make Ghent ‘the place to be’ for commoners by using ‘Ghent, City of the Commons’ as an open brand, to support the coming of visitors for commons-conferences etc.
• As pioneered by the NEST project of temporary use of the old library, use more ‘calls for commons’, instead of competitive contests between individual institutions. Calls for the commons would reward the coalition that creates the best complementary solution between multiple partners and open sources its knowledge commons to support the widest possible participation”.

In addition, the team also propose:

• A specific project to test the capacity of “cosmo-local production” to create meaningful local jobs (organic food for school lunches) and to test the potential role of anchor institutions and social procurement.
• The organisation of a CommonsFest on the 28th of October, with a first Assembly of the Commons.
• A pilot project around circular finance in which “saved negative externalities” which lead to savings in the city budget can directly be invested in the commons projects that have achieved such efficiencies (say re-investing the saved cost of water purification to support the acquisition of land commons for organic farmers).
• The setting up of an experimental production unit based on distributed manufacturing and open design.
• Projects that integrate knowledge institutions such as the university, with the grassroots commons projects.

The report is the executive part of a short book on the Ghent experience that will be soon available. Many useful indications and more precise recommendations can be found in the “COMMONS TRANSITION AND P2P: A PRIMER”. This Commons Primer co-published with the Transnational Institute, explains the Commons and P2P, in terms of interrelations, movements and trends, and how a Commons transition is poised to reinvigorate work, politics, production, and care, both interpersonal and environmental.

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Michel Bauwens and Vasilis Niaros: We have argued in this overview that we are in a conjuncture in which commons-based mutualizing is one of the keys for sustainability, fairness and global-local well-being. In this conclusion, we suggest a global infrastructure, in which cities can play a crucial role.

See the graphic below for the stacked layer that we propose, which is described as follows:

• The first layer is the cosmo-local institutional layer. Imagine global for-benefit associations which support the provisioning of infrastructures for urban and territorial commoning. These are structured as global public-commons partnerships, sustained by leagues of cities which are co-dependent and co-motivated to support these new infrastructures and overcome the fragmentation of effort that benefits the most extractive and centralized ‘netarchical’ firms. Instead, these infrastructural commons organizations co-support MuniRide, MuniBnB, and other applications necessary to commonify urban provisioning systems. These are the global “protocol cooperative” governance organizations.

• The second layer consists of the actual global depositories of the commons applications themselves, a global technical infrastructure for open sourcing provisioning systems. They consists of what is globally common, but allow contextualized local adaptations, which in turn can serve as innovations and examples for other locales. These are the actual ‘protocol cooperatives’, in their concrete manifestation as usable infrastructure.

• The third layer are the actual local (urban, territorial, bioregional) platform cooperatives, i.e. the local commons-based mechanisms that deliver access to services and exchange platforms, for the mutualized used of these provisioning systems. This is the layer where the Amsterdam FairBnb and the MuniRide application of the city of Ghent, organize the services for the local population and their visitors. It is where houses and cars are effectively shared.

• The potential fourth layer is the actual production-based open cooperatives, where distributed manufacturing of goods and services produces the actual material services that can be shared and mutualized on the platform cooperatives.

Photo by dalobeee

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Dirk Holemans: When Michel Bauwens, founder of the P2P Foundation, started his research for the development of a “Commons Transition Plan” for the Flemish city of Ghent, he was overwhelmed by the sheer number of commons-oriented programs. In three months time, he discovered 500 initiatives. A remarkable figure, related to recent research indicating a tenfold increase in commons.

So what is happening? Is it a coincidence that Ghent is one of the frontrunner Sharing Cities? Fortunately, historical evidence gives us a clue. We are witnessing the third big “wave” of what scholars like Tine De Moor call “institutionalised forms of collective action.” The first wave developed in the late Middle Ages in a period of rapid urbanization with commons being established in great numbers. As there was no real state, people had to organize themselves to respond to the new market developments. And what about Ghent? Well, it was at that time the second biggest city north of the Alps, with more than 50 different guilds.

The second wave came during the industrial revolution, with workers and their families living in miserable conditions. People, in the midst of a market and state failure, built their own institutions like cooperatives and unions. Again, Ghent was the leading city in the region. It was the center of the textile industry and the breeding ground for a wide array of citizen associations. This leads us to the current period: Given the city’s tradition of progressive politics, present-day Ghent has a distinct political and administrative culture that is really supportive of citizens’ initiatives.

So, is Ghent really heaven on earth from a commons’ perspective? Not yet, according to Bauwens’s report. There are very promising developments, but the efforts of the city and the commons initiatives are highly fragmented. Though commons initiatives are present in every sector few activities are is aimed at real production. Also despite its historical legacy, the current cooperative sector is quite weak. To put it frankly, there is no existent support infrastructure for start-ups of the generative and cooperative economy that could work with commons infrastructures.

This is the reality: If Ghent doesn’t give the same level of institutional support to the commons as it does to the mainstream start-ups, the commons could remain marginal as an economic player. This brings us to the crucial part of the Bauwens’s report — coherent proposals for new institutions that allow the consolidation of the third wave. I see three clusters of proposals:

• The first is a clear structure that installs a supportive relationship between the city government and people running and participating in commons initiatives. Bauwens proposes the creation of a City Lab that helps people develop their proposals and prepares Commons Agreements between the city and the new initiatives, modeled after the existing Bologna Regulation on Commons.
• Second, commons should play a key role in the transition towards a resilient city. Fortunately, Ghent already has a transition food strategy — Gent en Garde — which embodies the core institutional logic needed. Central here is the Food Council, which meets regularly and brings together relevant experts. It includes representatives of the current forces at play and has the strengths and weaknesses of representative organizations. The latter have power and influence but will probably defend the existing food system. The Food Working Group is one of the members. It mobilizes those active in commons’ initiatives and works along a contributive logic. This means people are not looking to extract value (make private profit) but want to generate social value in the first place. For Bauwens, the combination of a representative and contributive logic can create a more performant Democracy. This, however, requires people participatings in the commons to have a greater voice in the city. Bauwens proposes the establishment of two new institutions: the Assembly of the Commons, for all citizens active in commons’ initiatives, and the Chamber of the Commons, for all social entrepreneurs creating livelihoods around these commons.
• Last not but least, why don’t we provide people who want to engage in the commons with the same support a mainstream profit-driven start-up gets? In Ghent (and in other cities, too), this entails at least three things: The creation of an incubator for a commons-based economy, the establishment of a public city bank, and the development of mutualized commons infrastructures through inter-city cooperation.

The task in Ghent and beyond now is to shape the institutions of the 21st century.

Here’s the executive summary of Ghent commons transition plan.

Header image of De Site, an urban agriculture commons project in the neighborhood of Rabot in Ghent, courtesy of Dirk Holemans

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Executive summary by Michel Bauwens (P2P Foundation, research) and Yurek Onzia (project coordination)

This study ^[1] was commissioned and financed by the City of Ghent, a city in northern Flanders with nearly 300,000 inhabitants, with the support of its mayor Daniel Termont, the head of the mayor’s staff, the head of the strategy department, and the political coalition of the city which consists of the Flemish Socialist Party SPA, the Flemish Greens (Groen) and the Flemish Liberal Party (Open VLD).

The request was to document the emergence and growth of the commons in the city, to offer some explanations of why this was occurring, and to determine what kind of public policies should support commons-based initiatives, based on consultation with the active citizens in Ghent.

The authors of the report are Michel Bauwens as investigator and Yurek Onzia as coordinator of the effort.

Timelab, an artistic makerspace under the leadership of Evi Swinnen, and the Greek scholar of the P2P Lab Vasilis Niaros, played important supportive roles in the realization of this project. Wim Reygaert and partners provided the graphics used in the original report. Annelore Raman coordinated the connections within the city council.

The consultation, which took place during the spring of 2017, took the form of:

1. A mapping of 500 or so commons-oriented projects per sector of activity (food, shelter, transportation, etc), through a wiki, which is available at http://wiki.commons.gent
2. 80+ one to one interviews and conversations with leading commoners and project leaders
3. A written questionnaire that was responded to by over 70 participants
4. A series of 9 workshops in which participants were invited per theme, ‘Food as a Commons’, ‘Energy as a Commons’, ‘Transportation as a Commons’, etc ..
5. A Commons Finance Canvas workshop, based on the methodology developed by Stephen Hinton, which looked into the economic opportunities, difficulties and models used by the commons projects

The report consists of four parts.

The first part provides the context on the emergence of urban commons, which has seen a tenfold increase in the Flanders in the last ten years. It focuses on the challenge it represents for the city and the public authorities, for market players, and for traditional civil society organisations, and how the new contributive logic of the commons challenges (but also enriches) the logic of representation of the European democratic polities, in this specific case, at the level of a city. It also looks at the opportunities inherent in the new models such as more active participation of inhabitants in co-constructing their cities, in solving ecological and climate change challenges, and in creating new forms of meaningful work at the local level.

The second part is an overview of urban commons developments globally, but especially in European cities, and takes a closer look at the experiences in Bologna (with the Bologna Regulation for the Care and Regeneration of the Urban Commons, now adopted by many other Italian cities), Barcelona (the pro-commons policies of the new political coalition of En Comu), Frome, UK (for its civic coalition that replaced the political parties in the running of the city), and Lille, for its experience with a Assembly of the Commons as a voice and expression of the local commons.

The third part is the analysis of the urban commons in Ghent itself, highlighting some of its strengths and weaknesses.

And finally, in the fourth part, based on our analysis in the three first parts, we offer our recommendations to the City, in terms of an institutional adaptation of the city to the new commons-centric demands that emerge through the commons activities. It’s a set of 23 integrated proposals for the creation of public-commons processes for citywide co-creation. In some way, it represents the shift from urban commons to a more ambitious vision of the ‘city as a commons’.

The P2P Foundation’s Michel Bauwens and Vasilis (Billy) Niaros

The context for the Emergence of the Urban Commons

We define the commons as a shared resource, which is co-owned or co-governed by a community of users and stakeholders, under the rules and norms of that community. There is no commons without active co-production (commoning), and without an important measure of self-governance. Thus, it differs from both public and state- or city-owned goods, and from private property managed by its owners. Both a Dutch study by Tine De Moor (Homo Cooperans), and a study for the Flanders by the Oikos think thank have confirmed a steep rise in the number of commons-oriented civic initiatives (commons-oriented means that important aspects of the initiatives have commons’ aspects). This rise is related to a growing awareness amongst a layer of citizens that a social and ecological transition is necessary given the relative state and market failures, but also by the effects of the great economic and systemic crisis of 2008, which has seen an austerity-driven retreat from public authorities in terms of common infrastructures.

These new urban commons however do not exist ‘on their own’ as fully autonomous projects and entities but by necessity interact with both public and market forces, for access to resources and support.

Thus the commons is a challenge for the other institutions as well:

• It is a challenge for the city, as commons are a claim to both public and private resources that were governed by the city, or which may have been private properties currently in disuse . Self-governance in the commons most often takes a contributory logic, i.e. the contributors and participants manage the projects, but this doesn’t necessarily involve all the citizenry. This also poses a challenge for representative democracy. Conversely, commoners may want support, but may resent control and limitations to their autonomy.
• It is a challenge for market forces, which may feel challenged by commons projects as alternatives to privatized provision, or may profit from them in ways that are considered extractive by the commoners, or their actions may ‘enclose’ and destroy the commons, creating conflictual relations.
• But is is also a challenge to established civil society organisations, which were based on memberships, a professional cadre, and bureaucratic forms of organisation and management; elements which are often rejected in the commons initiatives.

The commons requires a ‘partner’ city, which enables and empowers commons-oriented civic initiatives. It also requires generative market forms which sustain the commons and create livelihoods for the core contributors as well as facilitative types of support from civil society organisations.

An important discovery in our analysis of the 500+ urban commons projects in Ghent, is that their structure strongly resembles that of the commons-driven digital economy. This means that at the heart of urban commons we find:

• Productive communities based on open contributions.
• That these urban commons and their platforms may generate (and are obliged to if they are to be resilient and self-sustaining over time) generative market forms — i.e. entrepreneurial coalitions that have a positive relationship with the commons and the commoners.
• The communities, platforms and possible market forms require, and receive, facilitative support from the various agencies and functionaries of the city, and the Civil Society Organisations, which have adapted to the needs of the new citizen-commoners.

This relationship is shown by the following graph:

Graphic 6: Polygovernance model.

This graph shows the five entry points of the commons economy in which the city is actively intervening (bottom), the 3 elements of the commons economy, and the public-commons processes and institutions which could be set up as a meta-structure to frame the cooperation between the city, the commoners and the generative economic entities.

It is also clear that the commons initiatives and their emerging economy, hold great potential for the social and economic life of the city.

The three main potentials are in our opinion the following:

1. The commons are an essential part of the ecological transition: shared and mutualized infrastructures have a dramatically lower footprint than systems based on ‘possessive individualism’, but on the condition that ‘it is done in the right’ and systemic way. A good counter-example is how the competition between drivers in the Uber model negates the environmental advantages of ride-hailing. Huge reductions in the material footprint (and carbon footprint) are possible with the commons-centric models.
2. The commons are a means for the re-industrialization of the city following the cosmo-local model which combines global technical cooperation in knowledge commons with smart re-localization of production; an example is how city procurement could be used to reintroduce healthy local meals for children in public schools (5 million a year, not counting other anchor institutions which could join); a combination between procurement from the urban/rural short-circuit farmers in the organic sector, carbon-free transportation (Ghent is flat, which allows for bike-cargo transport), and local cooking, would create hundreds of jobs for the local economy. Socially, this means jobs not just for the technically-savvy but for the desperate blue collar workers who have been hit hard by the ecologically unsustainable neoliberal globalization model
3. Representative democracy is, for a number of interlocking reasons, in deep crisis and facing a crisis of trust. And the world of production is still nearly entirely un-democratic. The commons however are based on the self-governance of the value producing systems and are therefore one of the few schools of true democracy and participation. Inclusive and diverse commons could be at the very least an adjunct to representative democracy, creating a system of Democracy+, augmented with participation , deliberation and multi-stakeholder governance models in cooperation with the commons initiatives.

The analysis of the situation in Ghent

The city of Ghent is a dynamic city of nearly 300k inhabitants including a huge number of young people and students. It’s a city in which the commons already have a distinct presence, with support from an active and engaged city administration.

• A tradition of center-left coalitions have created a distinct political and administrative culture with many engaged city officials. The city is actively engaged in carbon reduction, traffic reduction, and has neighborhood and social facilitators, connectors in schools, street workers and other types of staff that is actively engaged in enabling roles at the local level. This includes different kinds of support for commons-initiatives.
• The city has an important policy to support the temporary use by community groups of vacant land and buildings.
• The city counts around 500 commons-oriented initiatives in all sectors of human provisioning, such as food, shelter, mobility, etc. Many of these are active around the necessity of socio-ecological transitions in their respective domains and neighborhoods.

These positive aspects should be tempered by the following issues:

• Both the efforts of the city and the commoner’s initiatives are highly fragmented;
• There are many regulatory and administrative hurdles to hinder the expansion of commons initiatives, for example in the field of mutualized housing; (for example, we received a 7 page memo of such obstacles from housing activists).
• Though there are a number of fablabs/coworking spaces and some craft-related initiatives, there is at present a lack of activity around open design linked to real production;
• Though blessed with a large university, which is active around sustainability issues, there is very little evidence of relations between the university and the commons projects, and some of its spinoffs and players are sometimes distinctly hostile to open source and design projects;
• Though many of the leading commons activists are facing precarious lifestyles and incomes, they usually have good social and knowledge capital and mostly consist of long established inhabitants. There are many commons project in the post-migration communities, but they are mostly limited to ethnic and religious memberships, and there is as yet relatively little cross-over. They are however successful counter-examples such as the initiatives in the neighborhood Rabot.
• Old and newer Civil Society Organisations play a significant infrastructural and support role for maintaining urban commons projects, but perhaps perceive them to be mainly directed towards vulnerable population groups and not as key and highly productive resources.
• Despite the city support, the major potential commons are largely enclosed and vulnerable to private extraction; the current models do not challenge the mainstream consensus but find a way to co-exist with the major imbalances.
• Despite its long history of self-organization with the guilds in the middle ages and a very strong labor movement in the 19th century, the cooperative sector and its support mechanisms are quite weak; there is a weak if not inexistent support infrastructure for a specifically generative and cooperative economy that could work with commons infrastructures.

The proposals for the city administration

The general logic of our proposals is to put forward realistic but important institutional innovations that can lead to further progress and expansion of the urban commons in Ghent in order to successfully achieve its ecological and social goals. We propose public-social or public-partnership based processes and protocols to streamline cooperation between the city and the commoners in every field of human provisioning.

We are not summarizing all proposals here, merely the underlying logic.

Graphic 7 (“proposed transition infrastructure for the city of Ghent’”) shows the general underlying logic.

Graphic 7 (“proposed transition infrastructure for the city of Ghent’”) shows the general underlying logic.

Commons initiatives can forward their proposals and need for support to a City Lab, which prepares a ‘Commons Accord’ between the city and the commons initiative, modeled after the Bologna Regulation for the Care and Regeneration of the Urban Commons. Based on this contract, the city sets-up specific support alliances which combine the commoners and civil society organisations, the city itself, and the generative private sector, in order to organize support flows.

Graphic 9 describes a cross-sector institutional infrastructure for commons policy-making and support, divided in ‘transition arenas’.

Graphic 9 describes a cross-sector institutional infrastructure for commons policy-making and support, divided in ‘transition arenas’.

The model comes from the existing practice around the food transition, which is far from perfect and has its problems, but nevertheless has in our opinion the core institutional logic that can lead to more successful outcomes.

The city has indeed created an initiative, Gent en Garde, which accepts the five aims of civil society organisations active in the food transition (local organic food, fairly produced), which works as follows. The city has initiated a Food Council, which meets regularly and could contribute to food policy proposals. The Food Council is representative of the current forces at play, and has both the strength and weaknesses of representative organisations. The Food Council contain a contributive ‘food working group’ which mobilizes those effectively working at the grassroots level on the food transition by following a contributive logic, where every contributor has a voice. In our opinion, this combination of representative and contributory logic is what can create a super-competent Democracy+ institution that goes beyond the limitations of representation and integrates the contributive logic of the commoners. But how can the commoners exert significant political weight?. This requires voice and self-organisation. We therefore propose the creation of an Assembly of the Commoners, for all citizens active in the co-construction of commons, and a Chamber of the Commons, for all those who are creating livelihoods around these commons, in order to create more social power for the commons.

This essential process of participation can be replicated across the transition domains, obtaining city and institutional support for a process leading to Energy as a Commons, Mobility as a Commons, Housing, Food, etc.

We also propose the following: (not exhaustive)

• The creation of a juridical assistance service consisting of at least one representative of the city and one of the commoners, in order to systematically unblock the potential for commons expansion, by finding solutions for regulatory hurdles.
• The creation of an incubator for a commons-based collaborative economy, which specifically deals with the challenges of generative start-ups.
• The creation of an investment vehicle, the bank of the commons, which could be a city bank based on public-social governance models.
• Augmenting the capacity of temporary land and buildings, towards more permanent solutions to solve the land and housing crisis affecting commoners and citizens.
• Support of platform cooperatives as an alternative to the more extractive forms of the sharing economy.
• Assisting the development of mutualized commons infrastructures (‘protocol cooperativism’), through inter-city cooperation (avoiding the development of 40 Uber alternative in as many cities).
• Make Ghent ‘the place to be’ for commoners by using ‘Ghent, City of the Commons’ as an open brand, to support the coming of visitors for commons-conferences etc.
• As pioneered by the NEST project of temporary use of the old library, use more ‘calls for commons’, instead of competitive contests between individual institutions. Calls for the commons would reward the coalition that creates the best complementary solution between multiple partners and open sources its knowledge commons to support the widest possible participation.

We also propose

• A specific project to test the capacity of ‘cosmo-local production’ to create meaningful local jobs (organic food for school lunches) and to test the potential role of anchor institutions and social procurement.
• The organisation of a CommonsFest on the 28th of October, with a first Assembly of the Commons.
• A pilot project around ‘circular finance’ in which ‘saved negative externalities’ which lead to savings in the city budget can directly be invested in the commons projects that have achieved such efficiencies (say re-investing the saved cost of water purification to support the acquisition of land commons for organic farmers).
• The setting up of an experimental production unit based on distributed manufacturing and open design.
• Projects that integrate knowledge institutions such as the university, with the grassroots commons projects.

^[1] A slightly graphically improved version of the official Dutch language version of the report can be found here. Suggested citation: Commons Transitie Plan voor de Stad Gent. Michel Bauwens en Yurek Onzia. Ghent, Belgium: City of Ghent and P2P Foundation, 2017
Header photo by estefaniabarchietto

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Mai Sutton: Urban commons initiatives are booming in the Belgian city of Ghent, according to a new report. One of the researchers behind the study, Michel Bauwens of the P2P Foundation, says that “the ecosystem of commons-based initiatives in Ghent is quite exemplary precisely because it covers an ecosystem in an area that requires a lot of capital and has to overcome a lot of commons-antagonistic regulation.” So against the odds, approximately 500 urban commons projects have sprung up in the last decade.

>A canal in Ghent. Photo: Dimitris Kamaras (CC-BY 2.0)

Last week, we wrote about the overall findings about the report. Below, we highlight a few standout examples of urban commons projects that are thriving in Ghent:

1. Wooncoop is a housing cooperative that gives home renters the same housing security as home owners. The cooperative buys, refurbishes, and mutualizes buildings — not the land on which they stand like a Community Land Trust. Once someone buys a share of Wooncoop, they can rent a house or apartment in one of their properties owned by the co-op. They are guaranteed housing there for a lifetime while paying reasonable rent for a well-maintained residence.
2. There is a multitude of innovative co-housing initiatives that have emerged in Ghent. But what is interesting is that people are not simply living together in a shared space, but rather, sharing various amenities. This includes sharing kitchens, guestrooms, and laundry rooms. This model works when a group of houses are designed collectively to share their facilities. However, local regulations have hindered the growth of this kind of co-housing development. Labland is a workshop and think-and-do-tank that is working to change policies on behalf of these experimental initiatives.

A park in Ghent. Photo: Dimitris Kamaras (CC-BY 2.0)

3. The City of Ghent facilitates the temporary use of local land and buildings. The most notable one is the Driemasterpark, a park that sits on a former industrial site in a poor neighborhood that is entirely managed by nearby residents. It was opened in late 2016, and in addition to having a playground, the park has spaces for chickens and dogs, and a vegetable garden.
4. Ghent has a thriving Community Land Trust(CLT). When public land becomes available, the city occasionally sets aside a percentage of land to the CLT so that it bypasses land speculation by real estate developers. The CLT keeps properties affordable and accessible to low-income residents.

View of Ghent from above. Photo: Gunvor Røkke (CC-BY 2.0)

5. Ghent’s food sector is where the commons is most developed. This is partly due to the public organizations in the city that are building political support for this work. Gent en Garde is a transition platform that endorses the demands of civil society for fair, organic, and local food. It created, among other things, the Urban Agriculture workshop, which is a working group of individuals and organizations whose mission is to create a more sustainable and healthy food ecosystem in Ghent.
6. Ghent’s public schools collectively provide about five million meals a year to their students. However, much of it tends to be the cheapest food they can order from remote multinational food producers.L unch met LEF is an initiative that aims to counteract this by bringing local, organic food to public schools. The group plans to transport the ingredients using cargo bike sharing, a zero-carbon transportation system.
7. A brainstorming session between a few Ghent urban commons leaders led to the idea of introducing pigs to vacant land, as an experiment in maximizing the use of unused public property in Ghent. Spilvarken started as a pilot project in 2014. A few weeks after three pigs were brought to the neighborhood, nearby residents voluntarily began taking care of them. Soon thereafter, the pigs because a center of community socializing, and a way for nearby residents to dispose of food waste as feed to the animals.

Solar panel installation in Ghent. Photo courtesy of Johan Eyckens

8. As a city that was inthe first cohort to sign the EU Covenant of Mayors in 2009, Ghent has created an ambitious plan to reduce its carbon emissions by the year 2030. One critical part of its strategy is the creation of a central governmental body called Energiecentrale. The agency serves as a contact point for locals to get support for anything related to making energy efficient renovations to their homes, businesses, and facilities. The agency provides free energy audits of homes and facilitates a “sustainable neighborhoods” program, by providing advice and financial support to get community-led energy efficiency initiatives, such as energy co-ops, off the ground.
9. The crown jewel of the city’s energy program is the community-owned Energent — a renewable energy cooperative with cheap shares that make membership accessible to most Ghent residents. The co-op started as an ambitious project, in coordination with the city, to furnish the majority of houses in the neighborhood of St. Amandsberg with solar panels. Individual solar power — in which people only get the power harnessed from their own panels — are expensive. Under a system like Energent, more people can afford to install solar panels. The problem of less productive, east-west roofs — called the intermittency problem or the unequal provision of energy due to weather — gets solved. This shows the the advantage of having a collective approach to energy provisioning.

Header image courtesy of Nathalie Snauwaert

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Maira Sutton: A renewable energy cooperative, a community land trust, and a former church building publicly-controlled and used by nearby residents — these are just a few examples of about 500 urban commons projects that are thriving in the Flemish city of Ghent in Belgium. A new research report shows that within the last 10 years, the city has seen a ten-fold increase in local commons initiatives. The report defines commons as any “shared resource, which is co-owned or co-governed by a community of users and stakeholders, under the rules and norms of that community.”

With a population of less than 250,000, Ghent is sizably smaller than the other, more well-known Sharing Cities such as Seoul and Barcelona. But this report shows how it is quickly becoming a hub of some of the most innovative urban commons projects that exist today.

The study was commissioned and financed by Ghent city officials who were keen to understand how they could support more commons-based initiatives in the future. It was conducted over a three-month period in the spring of 2017. The research for the report was led by the P2P Foundation’s Michel Bauwens, in collaboration with Yurek Onzia and Vasilis Niaros, and in partnership with Evi Swinnen and Timelab.

Given how self-governance is central to the success of a commons, the primary methodology employed by the researchers was to meet and talk with the members of various projects. Additionally, they conducted a series of surveys, workshops, and interviews with Ghent residents to explore how these projects came about and what could be done to encourage more commons initiatives to emerge. One result of this process is an online wiki that maps hundreds of successful such projects in the region.

These are a few notable projects mentioned in the report that embody the type of commons work currently underway in Ghent:

REScoop — Renewable energy cooperative

For a moderate sum, a resident can become a member of this green energy cooperative to co-own and co-manage the enterprise. Not only is this model more affordable for lower income residents, members can share the efficiency of solar panels. For example, many members’ roofs may not be optimally located to get enough sunlight at all times of the year. But with collective ownership, people can access and share the available energy, whether or not their own home is collecting as much solar power as other locations.

Buren van de abdij (“Neighbors of the abbey”) — Neighborhood-managed church building

A decade ago, the city gave the keys to a formerly abandoned church to neighboring residents. Since then, the space has been turned it into a thriving center for exhibitions, meetings, and other community events, and it is entirely self-governed by the residents.

CLT Gent — Community land trust

Community land trusts (CLTs) are associations that develop and manage land in order to keep housing or other types of properties affordable and accessible to lower income populations. When the city of Ghent develops housing, it dedicates a percentage of it to CLT Gent to manage and oversee it.

NEST (Newly Established State of Temporality) — Former library building turned into a temporary urban commons lab

The city made plans to renovate an old library. Instead of leaving the building empty for the eight months leading up to its reconstruction, officials decided to turn it into an experimental urban commons project. Now, the space is a thriving community center with meeting and event spaces, a music studio, children’s play area, and more. Each of the services and spaces are operated by different community organizations and enterprises. They also have a contributory rent arrangement, where organizations that are more participatory and sustainable in their practice pay less rent. That means 20 percent of the enterprises pay 60 percent of the rent, thereby subsidizing the commons activities of the other spaces.

NEST opening day. Photo courtesy of Evi Swinnen

The strength of Ghent’s commons can be traced to how the projects encourage participation by individuals and community organizations to steward the shared resource, according to lead researcher Bauwens. There are a few factors that stand out among Ghent’s various commons projects. The first is that the projects’ members invite residents to openly contribute their time, skills, money, or goods, while at the same time not requiring contributions by people to make use of the resource. Secondly, these urban commons projects rely on some aspect of their operation on “generative market forms” that can produce income to sustain them. And finally, they also require support from government agencies or nonprofits to help manage the resource.

Despite the plethora of commons projects that are there, however, the commons-based economy is still relatively small. The report concludes with a series of 23 proposals for actions the city could take to support and strengthen the urban commons in Ghent. Much of the recommendations are aimed at addressing the underlying problem that the researchers identify — that the movement is very fragmented.

The local commons initiatives do not actively collaborate or cooperate with one another. Bauwens noted that he saw members of commons projects within the same domain not know of one other’s commons initiatives. That’s why the report suggests the city set up alliances and other opportunities for cooperation between individual commoners, civil society organizations, the private sector, and agencies within the government itself.

An innovative proposal is what one of the researchers, Swinnen, refers to as a “call for commons.” The idea emerged from the way the NEST Experiment came about. Where major work is required to build a shared space or resource — such as a new library or community space — heavy institutional support is needed to carry forth the project. The idea is that instead of having potential developers individually compete to win the bid for the project to build it — as is the case in most commercial-style development contracts — the project would be rewarded to the strongest coalition of community partners and organizations. And instead of giving it to one developer of one winning proposal, this method enables several organizations to have all their winning ideas realized in tandem. The coalition would have to prove its ability to collaborate, share resources, and maximize community benefit, all the while enabling the most public participation.

Commons as a School for Democracy

Bauwens says that with any commons project, urban or otherwise, there are two major potential benefits of having people share and govern over a common resource. The first is that it can reduce the environmental and material footprint of that community. With any physical commons, people can mutually share and provision its use. Instead of having many people buy or own their own car or tools for example, they can share it, leading to less of those goods having to be produced or transported in the first place.

The second potential of the commons is that they can help build a true democracy, or what Bauwens calls a “school for democracy.” When people have to govern something together, they need to make decisions collectively and work together. The commons is where people can practice and exercise their civic muscles by talking and meeting with other members of their community face-to-face.

Hopefully, we will continue to see the people of Ghent build new urban commons projects as fervently as they have done in the last 10 years. With the additional support of their city government as proposed by this report, Ghent could become one of the leading urban commons capitals of the world.

Header image of NEST in Ghent courtesy of Evi Swinnen

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An acupuncture point for urban commons: the Nest at Ghent, Belgium

By Michel Renard and Alain Ruche from EsCo (Espaces et Coopération), Brussels
Ghent, 28 June 2017

Today we had the privilege of being welcomed by Evi Swinnen, one of the leading figures of NEST, an experiment that began this month in Ghent, a small Belgian city already outstanding in several ways. Evi is not a newcomer in dealing with the Commons and P2P practices, as she has been the TIMELAB coordinator in the same city since 2010.

More than a traditional ‘interview’, it was actually a nice walk in this ‘city within the city’, which several decades ago was a large showroom for displaying electric appliances. The municipality then decided to make it a public library, which was moved into a new building and opened in March 2017.

Then the genius came in, even if we do not know exactly who it was. As the old building was going to be dismantled for a new purpose, the idea emerged to use it for public purposes during the 8 months remaining before its refurbishment. In fact, a private competitor was interested in organizing an exhibition, but the municipality decided to seize this opportunity to create a space for an experiment in urban commons. It could not be otherwise in such a splendid and symbolic location, in one of the busiest neighborhood in town.

The municipality of Ghent is at the forefront of the international stage of urban commons, as shown by the recently released report by P2P Foundation founder Michel Bauwens after a three month stay designing a proposal for the transition of the city to the commons.

Access to the 8,000 square meter, 6 story building was not donated by the municipality at no cost. At first, the local authorities asked for 13,000 euros per month, which was simply unaffordable for the cooperative created to manage the 9 month project. The bargaining ended at 7,000 Euros, with May being free of charge, as a great many things had to be brought into the building to provide a minimum setting. The 30 partners that were selected through a call for proposals came both from non-profits as well as several enlightened, small, private companies: an interesting cohabitation indeed!

A ‘flexistructure’ was created at the beginning, comprised of a small group of people who volunteered to be responsible for democratically defining and enforcing the ‘rules of the game’. So, the three conditions for a commons were fulfilled: a resource, a self-organized community, and social practices.

While inviting us to a coffee in the nice coffee shop on the first floor, Evi introduced us to some of the activities generated in the building. A Vietnamese restaurant, where cookbooks can be consulted on the spot and cooking lessons are offered. A huge and comfortable ‘silence room’ designed by people diagnosed with autism, where the visitor can relax surrounded with plants and nice objects, with free entry between 10am and 6pm. Steven, an industrial engineer by education who enjoys woodworking in his spare time, is using his 150 square meter space at NEST to prototype his soon to be launched project providing access to material and tools for metal and woodworking: professionals admitted by day, amateurs at nighttime. ‘Current makerspaces are too small, and are not profitable’, he says. An introduced us to their (she has 2 teammates) wellbeing module, where professional therapists can rent the space, with a splendid view of the city, for as little as 10 euros per hour (!) The range of services covers coaching, mediation, and creative therapies. Access to a spacious and inspired yoga and meditation room is also offered, a good way to build up a base of clients.

On a lower floor, we come across a large production space where designers make their real products (e.g. textiles for furniture) in a co-working atmosphere. Continuing downstairs, we discover a vast space for dancers to train, create and rehearse. Further on, a group of people who want to play music are arranging a module where they will also rent musical instruments and organize musical rehearsals. A locked door keeps us from visiting a cultural/performance space that accommodates one hundred people. There is also a big exhibition space currently displaying original productions from the local art school, KASK. And on the ground floor, an even more spacious room made of donated pieces of old furniture where people can relax, have a drink at an interesting bar, or contact a municipal representatives of employment schemes.

Despite precarious economic conditions, a flow of passion is percolating everywhere. All of the entrepreneurs present say they feel comfortable with the unknown, trusting that this experiment will be useful for their further professional activities. The strong feeling of belonging to a community also plays a great role. When asked about security conditions and supervision at the site, Evi replies that everyone is also caring for his/her neighbour’s space. The rent distribution among the partners (8000 euros collected per month) follows a very interesting pattern: each partner states in the group how much he/she is ready to pay, and the group commonly decides to whom the concerned module will be rented, putting the passion and openness towards new ‘users’ and the engagement towards the NEST global project as the first criterion.

Time is flying. NEST has hardly started, and already there are only a few months left. Evi tells us, though, that the immediate plan is ambitious: to build games for sale inspired by the commons; an itinerary school where the toolbox discovered through experimentation will be shared and can nurture local tools elsewhere depending on the context. Evi speaks about sharing NEST experiment with other cities nearby (Roeselare, Leuven), and not far away (in Belgium or neighbouring Netherlands). To our question, ‘What about sharing this abroad?’, Evi spontaneously answers: ‘Whenever possible, even if the local population is hardly interested in what happens elsewhere’. The point is not bringing knowledge to other places and partners, but rather to bring some experience and expertise from the NEST ground.

The intention is also to further associate the TIMELAB model for artists (and researchers) in residence, currently covering ten people. Interesting prospects exist for working with artists.

Everything is not perfect. While the municipality has expressed a strong commitment to the commons during the recent 3 month stay, one can feel the fear that the authorities, now aware of the real interest of NEST, could hijack some outcomes to their benefit via the classical mechanism of enclosure. The relations with the university have been somehow strained, in particular with researchers, who have difficulty in accepting the practice of open knowledge and sharing. The university has the knowledge and skill to measure the impact, so it could contribute to the auto-evaluation process of the NEST experiment, which requires close monitoring of data and results as a process.

The NEST experiment in Ghent confirms the relevance of digital commons for the urban commons. It illustrates that the key sequence is from practice to theory, not the other way around. It shows how creative spaces can be found between actors with views which are often claimed to be contradictory (non-profit versus private sector, commons versus authorities). NEST shows how carefully identified and managed acupuncture points can yield systemic outcomes and support the emerging collaborative paradigm.

Photo by estefaniabarchietto

The post A visit to a urban commons in Ghent: the NEST experiment appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Vasilis Niaros: Can you give us a short background of the project?

Michel Bauwens: Ghent is a mid-sized city of about 300,000 inhabitants, with a huge student population, and a prestigious history. It was once the biggest city in northwestern Europe (12th-13th century). It has had a progressive red-green-blue city coalition for more than a decade and has already been active in supporting many citizen initiatives. But as the city became more and more aware of the importance of the commons in these new models, it asked us as the P2P Foundation (myself and coordinator Yurek Onzia for our p2p/commons related expertise) to map the commons in Ghent, and to see what is expected of city authorities in this context. Thus, we have three months for intense conversations with the local players, and to produce a Commons Transition Plan.

VN: In which phase are you at the moment? What have you done so far?

MB: We are pretty much done with the investigative and ‘mapping phase’. We did a lot of online research, about 80 conversations with project initiators, an in-depth questionnaire; and all of this has been put in a open and shared wiki, which is organized by major ‘provisioning’ systems, i.e. food, mobility, housing, etc. In parallel, we have organized, with the assistance of Timelab and Evi Swinnen, weekly meetings in order to stimulate more interconnection between players in particular fields. Timelab is one of the maker cultural centers/makerspaces and has been an essential ally and supporter for this project.

A lot is happening in Ghent. The Flanders region has known a tenfold increase in commons-connected citizen initiatives in the last ten years, but as in many other places, there is still too much fragmentation. We are using the commons narrative to catalyze more convergence across projects, so that they can have a systemic effect on the city ecosystem and even influence policy making. Some areas we are specially focusing on are the economic realities of the commons projects (what are their concrete resources), their regulatory difficulties, and the possibilities of turning them into real economic and social projects that can stimulate the local economy. Our basic hypothesis is that the transition towards these commons models is also vital to morph into sustainable societies.

VN: Which are the main challenges that you have faced by now?

MB: The collaboration and reception we received from both the city and the citizen initiatives have been tremendous. More than 50% have returned our extended questionnaire, and we’ve had good attendance at our collective meetings. Amongst our preliminary findings are:

1. Ghent has a dynamic city administration that is effectively engaged in the transition, for the long term, but there are still too many sectorally fragmented approaches;
2. Ghent has very dynamic and organized citizens that are concretely initiating and advancing transition projects, but they are also quite fragmented, although some sectors are more advanced than others, such as food and energy;
3. amongst the weaknesses is that Ghent lacks an emergent industry, and that university institutions are not visibly connected with citizen initiatives;
4. in general, there is a lot of action, but not yet much meta-reflection and inter-connection and alignment between projects.

We made a lot of progress with our wiki, lots of material to work with and analyze, and we will soon be ready with our writing and proposition phase.

VN: Can you give us an idea of some of the directions that you are taking in terms of proposed solutions?

MB: The key issue for me is how we can move from the current situation of fragmentation towards the beginning of an alternative eco-system that is sustainable and socially fair. One of my ideas is to build on the structure that has shown relative success in the most advanced sectors, which is the success in creating the beginning of an alternative food system. Ghent has a wide variety of CSA projects, collective purchasing groups, and the like, in which new producers and active prosumers are creating new relationships. It also has a workshop where the key players of this new economy are studying and reflecting together, and can propose changes to the city. It also has a food policy council and project, Ghent en Garde, that is fully committed to the sustainability transition.

I think this could be the basis of a generic structure for the transition in the other provisioning systems as well; I call this ‘sustainability empowerment platforms’. I’m also looking at how the collective purchasing power of the anchor institutions, could leverage this power in terms of sustainable local purchasing by moving to social procurement practices. Ghent has one million school meals in the city schooling system, which could be locally sourced. Timelab has pioneered a ‘call for commons’ approach in which, instead of competing for scarce subsidies, actors create common solutions through a network approach, which could be generalized in other city-based projects, instead of purely competitive bids. On a more fundamental political level, can city institutions and democratic procedures integrate the ‘right to challenge’ by citizen initiatives, and even the ‘right to initiate’ as is already the case in Bologna for example? Is the city and its administrative and political culture ready to become a ‘partner city’ which can empower citizens to co-create common-wealth more systematically and successfully?

VN: What is the role of the municipality in the project?

MB: The municipality commissioned the project. It is the first municipality in the world to look strategically at the commons transition, that’s not trivial. The mayor and the strategic directorate of the city have been supportive and have nominated a very effective coordinator, which has opened doors for us to meet a series of engaged officials in different departments. In parallel, we received equally enthusiastic support from civil society initiatives and organisations, showing us that the commons are alive and correspond to a true aspiration. The difficulty of the project is not to be underestimated however, i.e. how to get more convergence and systematicity amongst commons actors in the various sectors, and how to realize more voice and political clout. How can we tackle the more infrastructural commons requirements, such as space and land, which is subject to tremendous speculative activity and gentrification? How can we fund the commons transition, for example, through circular finance that tackles the cost of negative externalities and supports commons initiatives which drastically improve the material footprint of human economic and social activities?

Photo by ClarkHodissay

The post First Impressions on the Commons Transition in Ghent: An Interview with Michel Bauwens appeared first on P2P Foundation.