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 support of the King Baudouin Foundation and in the context of its Observatory of Associations and Foundations (Observatorium van Verenigingen en Stichtingen), Oikos think tank carried out the first research on these collectives throughout the country: who facilitates them, how important are they and how do they position themselves among other actors in society such as the classic civil society, governments and companies? With a desk study, a survey and in-depth interviews, Oikos mapped citizens’ collectives established in 2015 and 2016.

Increasing number of establishments

In 2015 and 2016, 249 citizen collectives in Belgium were launched spread over the entire country (map available). 127 among them answered the survey and 106 (48 from Flanders, 36 from Wallonia and 22 from Brussels) completed questionnaires were included in the analysis (21 respondents were found not to comply with the definition or were not established during the study period). Of those 106, most are active in areas such as food, agriculture, energy, social inclusion and the sharing economy; more than half classifies their activity under the label ‘environment and sustainability’ (graph available).

This is the first comprehensive investigation for the French-speaking citizen collectives. On the Dutch-speaking side, Oikos, on the other hand, has historical figures from 2004 onwards (graph available), indicating that 2009 was a turning point : the number of establishments has grown strongly ever since and nothing points to a stagnation of this growth.

What is a citizen collective?

Not all activities that citizens organize together are citizen collectives. A neighborhood barbecue or a temporary action group against logging is not. Then what is? Some elements are necessary to be able to speak of a citizen collective:

• to meet local needs, with the aim of long-term structural results;
• the members take control of the production / execution of the goods or services themselves (although sometimes it is possible to call on paid (service) suppliers);
• citizens are the promoters and determine who belongs to the group, and who can use or manage the resources, goods or services;
  the members have a say in the form, the organization and the action lines for the future;

A few examples: with a social grocery, cooperative library of things, or community supported agriculture where consumers are closely connected to a farmer and are committed to reducing production, or even participating in the harvest.

Pioneers: highly educated working M/F/X in their thirties and forties

Citizen collectives are largely the work of 25- to 45-year-olds, and the real pioneers are usually 36 to 45 years (graph available). Young people and seniors are hardly represented. There is a balance in the participation of women and men, and single people, cohabitants and married couples are fairly equal (graph available).

Among the pioneers in citizen collectives, highly educated people are strongly overrepresented: 86.3% have at least a Bachelor’s degree (graph available– compared to 45.6% of the population aged between 30 and 34 years according to Statbel’s figures). Most pioneers (84.8%) combine their engagement with a job (of whom four out of ten half-time).

53.7% of the respondents are politically engaged. Half of the respondents (48.6%) estimate that the political preference of the pioneers of their citizens’ collective is left on the political spectrum (graph available).

Relationship with government and industry: a healthy distance

Most citizen collectives (58%) are self-sufficient. 78% came about without public participation. But they think a good relationship with the government is important (80%). Approximately 1 in 3 consults with the municipal authorities about the activities and services they offer. The relationship with the (local) government does not always go smoothly: some are satisfied (“the city made our operations possible”), others less (“we mainly got headwinds”).

According to a minority (16.8%) of the citizen collectives, companies see them as competitors. They themselves see their own role in relation to the business sector as additional (in Wallonia), cooperative (in Brussels), or innovative (in the three regions). (graph available).

Little inclusive

The sectors in which they operate show that citizen collectives often strive for a more sustainable society. They inspire other actors from industry, government and civil society. Partly because of their urge for proximity and small scale in their approach, they still play a modest role as an alternative to production and / or consumption,  alongside those (more) dominant actors.

If citizen collectives really strive for a sustainable and inclusive society, then consideration must be given to ways of involving disadvantaged citizens in this citizens’ movement.

Photo by European Parliament

Photo by European Parliament

The post When citizens take matters into their own hands: a closer look at citizen collectives established in 2015 and 2016 appeared first on P2P Foundation.

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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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

The post How New Institutions Can Bolster Ghent’s Commons Initiatives appeared first on P2P Foundation.

This post, written by Dirk Holemans, is part of our series on articles on the Commons sourced from the Green European Journal Editorial Board. These were published as part of Volume 14 “Finding Common Ground”:

Two real-world stories

One: a medieval city called Ghent. The remnants of the age-old St-Baafs abbey are a public museum. Sounds logical; it is where the history of the city started. But the municipal government had to cut its budget and, as there are not many visitors, the site is closed. For a few years, nothing happens. Who cares? Then the people of the neighbourhood decide it is a great shame, a beautiful medieval refectory and garden hidden from public life. They take action because such a thing of beauty should be shared by everyone. They start a citizens’ initiative and organise lectures and concerts in the abbey. It evolves into a very successful organisation. Twenty years later, around 150 volunteers organise more than 200 public events, reaching out to thousands of people. A vibrant new urban common is created.

Two: a big country called Germany. In the 1990s, the state produces electricity mostly from nuclear energy and fossil fuels. Even in light of climate change, the four big German electricity companies think that business as usual is the only way forward. Investing in renewables is laughed at. So citizens come together and start their own energy initiatives, mostly renewable energy cooperatives (REScoops). In cities and villages, the idea turns out to be contagious, and together they start to change the energy system. Nowadays, half of the new renewable energy systems in Germany are owned by citizens and their organisations. Call it a state-wide network of local commons.

You’ll never walk alone

These examples are true, but they only tell half the story.

In Ghent, the neighbours had to ask for the key to the abbey. The civil servant responsible, probably a visionary, not only gave it to them but added: “Nobody can inspire such an abbey as a neighbourhood”. Several departments of the municipal government actively supported the citizens’ initiative by, for example, announcing the activities in the newsletter of the official neighbourhood centre. The responsible alderman had to back their civil servants who, in a gesture of trust, just handed over the keys; after a while, on a permanent basis.

In Germany, the REScoops could only establish themselves in such numbers because of a stimulating legal framework, with stable feed-in tariffs for the renewable energy delivered to the energy network. First introduced in 1990, this law was consolidated with the ambitious Law on Renewable Energy, (and other far-reaching government policies), ten years later. When the financial crisis arrived later, putting your money in renewable energy systems was not only a civil gesture, but also a financially smart move.

These two examples are in line with research done in the Netherlands on citizens’ initiatives. In one way or another, they all have to rely on support from the government, be it for a space they need for their activities, a piece of land for urban agriculture, or some money. As we will argue, this support is not a problem, but rather a vital part of democracy.

There is still a dimension missing in these stories: the economic one. People in Germany who produce their own renewable electricity still sell it on a market, albeit a highly regulated one. And, luckily, when there is no wind or sun they can buy energy that comes from other sources or other countries. Even if the ‘Neighbours of the Abbey’ is run by volunteers, they also have to pay their bills. So they run a café during their activities, which, from a Belgian perspective, is the most obvious thing to do financially.

Together with the Liberals and the Socialists, ecologists acknowledge that a combination of market, state and autonomy components is optimal.

Complex thinking

Let’s move from the examples to the general societal debate. If, for instance, we look at opinions about how we should organise housing, they tend to lie on a spectrum between two opposing views. On the Left, there is the view that the government is the best option to organise it in a fair way. On the other side, the Right argues that only the market can allocate houses in an optimal manner. On a higher level, a lot of commentators interpreted the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 as the victory of the Right side of the spectrum. Concretely, in countries such as the UK, this led to the dismantling of public social housing, and the transferral of care homes from the public to the private sector.

What matters is that discussions on this, as well as other areas of society, are trapped in a Left-Right framework, within which the radical Left, without any critical analysis, invariably pushes the government forward as a solution and the Right, equally unquestioningly, only sees merit in the market approach by private companies. It is as if the citizen – the bearer of democracy – may only watch from the side-lines and is unable to propose solutions to societal needs. Remaining on the question of housing for elderly people, arguments for citizens’ initiatives, the Abbeyfield Houses for example, are rarely heard in the mainstream debate. This initiative was born in 1956 in Britain in response to a growing social problem: an increasing number of elderly people in the poor neighbourhoods of London were no longer able to live independently in a dignified manner. Today, the British Abbeyfield Society manages 700 homes with 7,000 seniors, aided by 10,000 volunteers1. Abbeyfield is a concept of collective living and a volunteer movement which has already taken root in many countries.

This is not to imply that citizens’ initiatives are the panacea for all challenges; but they can be an important part of the future if we are willing to widen our gaze. These examples clearly demonstrate that we have three basic options to address these challenges and to organise society. This broadened view of society can be visualised in the following triangle. The spectrum discussed above is actually only the line at the base of the triangle.

Each corner indicates an extreme society: a fully market-oriented society; a 100 per cent state-run society; or one exclusively managed by autonomous citizens. How a given society formulates a response to a social need – such as the nursing homes – can be situated within this triangle.

With this broadened view we come to the core of political ecology, as has been pointed out by the philosopher Philippe Van Parijs. For this presentation shows the narrowness of the dominant discourse in our society (oscillating between more state or more market), as it only takes place on the horizontal side of the triangle. Once one conceptualises the three corner points, with autonomy above as the vertical dimension, it becomes immediately clear that when the liberal and socialist logics praise the importance of the market or of the state, they not only advocate less state or less market, respectively, but plead also for a smaller autonomous sphere. But there exists a third perspective that emphasises autonomous activities and, thus, less of both state and market involvement. The horizontal ‘Left-Right’ axis is typical of modern industrial society; transitioning from this line up to the top of the triangle is a feature of the current post-industrial society that promotes other forms of participation in social life from the perspective of autonomy, rather than that of money and work. This is exactly the field of the commons.

The strength of social innovation

The autonomy perspective is a key element of political ecology (ecologism). As for the other two ways of thinking, it is not desirable, from a Green perspective, to drive society into any single corner of the triangle. Together with the Liberals and the Socialists, ecologists acknowledge that a combination of market, state and autonomy components is optimal. At the same time, their point of view distinguishes itself clearly from the liberal and socialist approach. For ecologists, autonomy represents the joyful potential to shape the world together. Autonomy is at odds with a unilateral individualisation: the joyful shaping is always done in cooperation with others. Therefore, ecologists speak about connected autonomy: I can only find fulfilment and build a world to live in through a fruitful connection with others, which also entails the dimension of care, for each other, for the world we live in, and for our living planet. This perspective is related to the notion of stewardship: our freedom to act and change the world implies, at the same time, feeling responsible for it.

With more and more citizens taking initiatives of their own, the challenge for governments is to turn themselves into a partner state, as is already happening in Bologna and Ghent.

As a source of social innovation, the importance of the autonomous sphere cannot be underestimated; a lot of solutions to societal challenges did not come from the government or from business, but from creative citizens. The aforementioned Abbeyfield Housing is a good example, as are social innovations such as car sharing, organic farming initiatives, and food teams2. And who built the first windmills to produce electricity? It was citizens developing a positive alternative to nuclear plants in countries like Denmark and Ireland.

The triangle shows that political ecology cannot be reduced to environmental protection. Ecologists want not only to respect the boundaries of the earth’s ecosystem; they strive at the same time for a larger independent social sphere where people can deploy their capabilities without the interference of market or state. The final goal is a good life for all.

From public-private to public-civil partnerships

As these examples show, most citizens’ initiatives rely in one way or another on cooperation with the state. This is not a problem: it is the future. The neoliberal regime of the last thirty years dictated that the best approach to organising anything in society was one based on markets and competition. This has led to a wide array of public-private partnerships, which, most of the time, leads to a government losing its grip on policy areas and citizens paying too much tax for the services delivered. Again, the triangle clearly shows the alternative, future way to develop: public-civil partnership. With more and more citizens taking initiatives of their own, the challenge for governments is to turn themselves into a partner state, as is already happening in Bologna and Ghent. Here, politicians don’t see their political constituency as a region to manage from above, but as a community of citizens with a lot of experience and creativity. Leaving top-down politics behind, they develop forms of co-creation and co-production. In Ghent, citizens developed, within the frame of a participatory climate policy, the concept of ‘living streets’: they decided by themselves to reclaim their streets, getting rid of all cars for one or two months. And the municipal government took care of all the necessary measures to make it happen in a legal and safe way. With public-civil partnerships, an underestimated area of the triangle of societal possibilities is explored in a positive way.

Stimulating and sustaining the commons requires an active state which develops new institutions that allows citizens to engage in transition projects.

Institutional diversity for resilient societies

With the revival of the commons, it has become clear that there exists a third fundamental way to develop and organise society. Centred on the basic principle of autonomy, it has its own logic, consisting of specific forms of social relations based on reciprocity and cooperation. It is more than probable that new commons initiatives will form a crucial part of the transformation towards a social-ecological society. At the same time, it would be very unwise to strive for a pure ‘commonism’. Just as with communism or neoliberalism, a society based on only one of the three approaches to organisation is unable to cope with the broad array of severe challenges we face nowadays. Having said that, stimulating and sustaining the commons requires an active state which develops new institutions that allows citizens to engage in transition projects in a secure way, so their autonomy and creativity can flourish. In combination with other innovations, a universal basic income could be part of this new socio-ecological security framework for the 21th century.

This is probably the most important argument at the political level in favour of the commons. At the level of who we are and how we relate, it stimulates the basic human ability to cooperate and take care of ourselves and each other. What more can we dream of, than citizens using their freedom to take their future in their own hands?

Their passion is unbeatable.

The Green European Journal, published by the European Green Foundation, has published a very interesting special issue focusing on the urban commons, which we want to specially honour and support by bringing individual attention to several of its contributions. This is our 2nd article in the series. It’s a landmark special issue that warrants reading it in full.

Photo by pni

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