The DLT4EU program is an accelerator that will identify and link Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) initiatives with leading public and private sector organisations. The initiative aims to promote the development of projects that use blockchain and other distributed technologies (DLT) to solve social and environmental challenges for public good.

The accelerator program will pilot DLT applications by connecting the expertise of leading innovators, entrepreneurs and developers with real-world, unmet challenges in the public and social sectors to create market-ready social ventures.

The programme will focus on two high impact sectors:

• Circular Economy
• Digital Citizenship

The DLT4EU project is led by a consortium of three organisations specialised in distributed technologies, digital social innovation and environmental sustainability: Ideas for Change, (Barcelona); Metabolic, (Amsterdam); and Digital Catapult, (London).

Find out more at DLT4EU’s website.

• Lead image: network by sjcockell
• Republished from DLT4EU

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The book showcases the wealth of transformative ideas that the international commons movement has to offer. With contributions by Kate Raworth, David Bollier, George Monbiot and many others, Our Commons is a political call to arms to all Europeans to embrace the commons and build a new Europe.

Commons Network’s very own Sophie Bloemen and Thomas de Groot worked on this book for almost two years, doing research and interviews, working with academics, policy makers, authors and activists to paint a colourful picture of the commons as the blueprint for a new future, one that is inclusive, ecologically sustainable, equitable, democratic, collaborative, creative and resilient.

Our Commons features reflections on the enclosure of knowledge and the monopolisation of the digital sphere, stories about renewable energy cooperatives and community foodwaste initiatives and urgent pleas to see the city as a commons and to treat health as a common good. Published by the Institute of Network Cultures, the book is first released online as an e-book, free for all to download and share and as a printable PDF. The book will also be available on a wide variety of print-on-demand platforms.

In the next few months, Commons Network will organise a number of official events around the book. Please get in touch at [email protected] if you are interested in hosting a book-launch with the editors and possibly with some of the contributors of the book. Off- and online media that are interested in publishing texts from the book or interviews with the editors and/or contributors are encouraged to reach out to [email protected].

Download the ePub or the print-PDF here and make sure to share this page with as many people as possible, using the hashtag #OurCommonsBook

For all further questions, press inquiries or event bookings, possible citations or cross-posting, or requests for hard-copy printed books, please do not hesitate to reach out to the editors, Thomas de Groot and Sophie Bloemen.

([email protected])

([email protected])

Reprinted from commonsnetwork, you can see the original post here.

The post New Book Out Now: Political Ideas for a New Europe appeared first on P2P Foundation.

While the debate on democracy in the European decision making has become a priority in many political public discourses, the very legitimacy of the European project is raised by many as a scapegoat for social policy failures due to austerity measures.

In this context, the quest for democracy in the public sphere does not reflect the reality of workers’ everyday workplace environment, where workers’ voice and representation is ever more threatened.

Worker and social cooperatives, by bringing democracy into the workplace, practice and foster a model where workers are protagonists. When we engage for the benefit of local communities, when we pursue the general interest, when we preserve the industrial heritage of our regions, when we inject economic democracy in enterprise decision-making, we actively fight social exclusion, and counter populism and anti-democratic sentiments.

Our economic model is resilient and future-proof, we take up the challenges of the future of work and we fight for social justice in Europe.

The Europe we have in mind gives voice to its citizens, cherishes entrepreneurial diversity and leaves no one behind.

In the end of May 2019, European citizens will elect the new European Parliament, and here is what cooperatives in the industry and services want for the next parliamentary mandate.
Read our Election manifesto !

The post A Cooperative Manifesto for the 2019 Elections appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Mirella Ferraz:  Since 2013, the Network of Wellbeing, where I work, has hosted community potlucks in Totnes, a small town in the south of England. These potlucks, which are open to all, have been helping build friendships among residents since day one. We started the potlucks because we realized that there weren’t many avenues for local community members to participate in events that are accessible, affordable, and family-friendly. The community potlucks take place on the third Friday of each month at the local church hall. The premise is quite simple: just bring some food to share. Around 50-100 people of all ages, including children, attend these events. During holidays and festivals, the potlucks have attracted around 300 people. Often there is entertainment, such as live music, poetry readings, children’s activities, wool spinning, or cooking demonstrations that are led by local volunteers.

“It has been wonderful to see the Community Potlucks go from strength to strength, and help transform the town in the process,” says Larch Maxey, Network of Wellbeing’s community project manager. “When we started, very few people had even heard of a potluck, let alone been to one, now it’s become the default whenever an organization meets, when people have a party, or celebration, it’s a potluck.”

For five years, the Network of Wellbeing took responsibility for organizing the community potlucks, but recently, a group of local residents has taken on this responsibility. Now, the potlucks are run by the community for the community, Wendy Douglas, one of the volunteer coordinators, says. “Potluck suppers are a wonderful community event, open to everyone, and costing no more than the contents of the homemade pot of food for you,” she says. “It’s a great opportunity to meet other locals over a plate of delicious food. No need to be lonely or eat alone when there are events like this to attend. The Totnes Community Potluck has enabled me to meet many like-minded people, and I enjoy my involvement as a volunteer. I hope it will continue well into the future.”

The initiative is also helping tackle social isolation, one of the greatest issues of our times. “I love the simplicity of potlucks — open to everyone and a great way to help bring people together,” Maxey says. “Loneliness is as bad for us as smoking, and potlucks are a great way to connect people and overcome loneliness.”

If you are inspired by the idea of the community potlucks, but are unable to attend the regular events in Totnes, you could launch a similar event in your local community. If this is of interest, then check out the Network of Wellbeing’s Community Potluck Guidelines, which provide you with all of the information and inspiration needed to successfully organize these community-building events.  “We’re also happy to speak with you about our experience of this event, and provide any guidance that may be helpful,” Maxey says. Please get in touch with Maxey at [email protected] for any support you may need.

Have you listened to our new podcast “The Response“? It’s a riveting look into how communities help each other out after deadly natural disasters. Listen here:

Images provided by Network of Wellbeing

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‘Shared Spaces’ features many concrete policy ideas for municipal leaders and lawmakers, as well as strategies and tips for urban commons pioneers. It was written by Jens Kimmel, Sophie Bloemen and Till Gentsch and designed by raumlaborberlin. The authors state:

We believe we need to actively protect and strengthen commons initiatives in European cities and build and promote a commons sector by transforming cities’ institutional and policy frameworks. Commons in the city involve people managing urban resources – such as space – together through which economic and, more importantly, social value is created. It is crucial to protect that value as it sustains the very social fabric of our cities. Urban commons strengthen existing communities and bring people together into new ones, they herald the era of pro-active citizenship and encourage participatory and democratic governance.

This paper is meant as an inspiration and tool for those involved or interested in the commons movement, as an urgent reminder for policymakers, as an invitation for politicians to think more concretely about the commons sector in their cities, and as the starting point for a constructive discussion about improving our cities by protecting and strengthening the commons in the urban environment.

You can read it in full, embedded below, or download the pdf here.

The post Shared Spaces: New Paper on Urban Commons (by Commons Network) appeared first on P2P Foundation.

This article was adapted from our latest book, “Sharing Cities: Activating the Urban Commons.” Download your free pdf copy today.

Myriam Bouré: Up until a few years ago, the residents of Loos-en-Gohelle, a small town in rural northwestern France with over 6,000 residents, consumed imported industrial food products despite significant local production. In addition to the negative health impacts of their diet, this practice also hurt the local economy. In 2013, the town government of Loos-en-Gohelle started a project called VITAL as part of an ambitious program to improve the diets of Loos-en-Gohelle residents.

The project was built on an existing initiative called Anges Gardins, run by a local association that has worked on community gardens and food education for years. It is also part of a long-term, comprehensive transition to a diverse, sustainable local economy from one dependent on coal mining — an industry that vanished when the French government closed the region’s coal mines in 1990, in favor of cheaper imports. Food is viewed as a cross-cutting issue, capable of supporting transition in other sectors.

The policy has a two-pronged strategy to meet the goal. First, to stimulate the demand for local, organic food through education, gardening ambassadors, free produce from open food gardens, and more. The town government led by example, by shifting to 100 percent organic food procurement for schools and 15 percent for retirement homes.

Second, to encourage farmers to convert to organic farming and support food distribution. To help achieve this, the town offered farmers free access to land on the condition that they grow organically and that they convert some of their own existing agricultural land to organic as well, thus raising the share of lands grown organically to 10 percent. Terre d’Opale, another local association, coordinates the farmers to ensure diversity of local production and manage distribution. Distribution is handled weekly through a combination of an online store, delivery of food boxes to local collection points, and procurement through catering businesses.

The program has operated successfully for three years. As the program benefits the entire local food ecosystem, including consumers, farmers, food kitchens, and distributors, it continues to grow and serve more and more of the community.

View full policy here (French).

Learn more:

• Report on the VITAL project (French)

​Header image by Loos-en-Gohelle on Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0)

The post Creating a vibrant local food ecosystem through government-NGO collaboration appeared first on P2P Foundation.

This publication is an output of the Interactive Cities URBACT network that explored how digital, social media and user generated content can improve today´s urban management in European cities, whatever size. This challenge has been tackled in two ways.

This challenge has been tackled in two ways. Firstly, as an opportunity to redefine and deepen the concept of citizenship and civic engagement today, providing a path to spark cohesion, commonalities and shared value as well as increasing sense of place. In other words, making the most of the new channels to revisit the relationship between the individual and the local community in the digital era. Secondly, as a way to improve the quality of public services, in terms of efficiency and transparency, and even widen the current service chart provided by local authorities.

Download ebook from Cooperative City site

How the city of Ghent uses open data to increase the economic development and how the Interactive Cities network foster the participation and improve the exchange of ideas and best practices among partners – an interview with Thomas Lecompte. Interactive Cities’ final Conference in Genoa 11-13 April. 2018 Interactive Cities is an URBACT Action and Planning Network on the use of social media to foster interaction between cities and citizens categories. The network operated during 2015 and 2018 thanks to the support of the URBACT program with ERDF funding and was composed by the cities of Genoa (Lead Partner), Alba Iulia, CLLD Lisbon, EDC Debrecen, Ghent, Murcia, Palermo, Semaest Paris, Tartu and Varna. Find more information at: Interactive Cities

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This post is part of our series of articles on the Urban Commons sourced from the Green European Journal Editorial Board. These were published as part of Volume 16 “Talk of the Town: Exploring the City in Europe”. In this instalment, Saskia Sassen discusses The Global City, global urban dynamics and today’s smart cities.

Green European Journal: You wrote The Global City in 1991, can you explain this concept?

Saskia Sassen: The widespread notion in the 1980s that being in a specific place no longer mattered to economic sectors that could use digital technology spurred me to check out highly digitised economic sectors and led me to focus on the finance sector, the rising economic star after its deregulation, which allowed financial firms to enter all kinds of domains which they had been excluded from, from student debt to home mortgages.

That turned out to be the first step towards conceptualising the global city function. It became an effort to detect a new, somewhat elusive formation deep inside major cities: a sort of vast, complex, and diverse operational platform that installed itself in what were the major economic centres in the 1980s – New York, London, and Tokyo. That function eventually included about 40 major cities as globalisation proceeded and incorporated more and more countries.

My concept in its narrowest version was ‘the global city function,’ a sort of bridge that enabled entering the deep economy of a country.

What also amused me was the notion that there was a combination of elements that might produce this ironic outcome: the fact that the most powerful, rich, and digitised economic actors needed urban land or ‘central places,’ perhaps more than ever before. Large corporate firms engaged in routinised production could locate themselves anywhere. But if they went global they needed access to a whole new mix of complex specialised services almost impossible to produce in-house, as had been the practice.

A second hypothesis that was stronger than I expected was that this new economic logic, partial as it was, would generate high-level jobs and low-wage jobs; it would need far fewer middle-range jobs than traditional corporations. But those low-level jobs, whether in the office or in households, would matter more than one might imagine. I described these low-wage jobs in the advanced economic sectors, notably finance, as the work of maintaining a strategic infrastructure.

How does the global city relate to globalisation?

Standard economics does not capture the mix of dynamics that produced the global city function, nor does it capture the core dynamics of high-finance. Microeconomics and macroeconomics are at their best and most useful – or perhaps only useful function – when they deal with standardised economic sectors.

One key hypothesis I arrived at early on in my research was that intermediation was an increasingly strategic and systemically necessary function for the global economy that took off in the 1980s. This in turn led me to generate the hypothesis about a need for specific types of spaces: spaces for the making of intermediate instruments and capabilities. One such strategic space concerned the instruments needed for outsourcing jobs, something I examined in my first book.

But what began to emerge in the 1980s was on a completely different scale of complexity and diversity of economic sectors: it brought with it the making of a new type of city formation. I called it the ‘global city’ – an space for the production and/or implementation of very diverse and very complex intermediate capabilities.

This did not refer to the whole city. I posited that the global city was a production function inserted in complex existing cities. This was a function that cast a vast shadow over a city’s larger space.

In Europe there are more and more networks of cities and urban movements emerging and claiming a voice. Citizens express the will to ‘take back control’ and start new initiatives, such as energy cooperatives, repair cafés and fab labs. Can we be optimistic?

This is a difficult one for me to answer. It needs to be focused on the specifics of cities and these vary enormously. I definitely would answer yes. But it will take work, and it will mean that residents must know their rights and what they can claim from local and national governments regarding changes in their city and/or their neighbourhood. At present, most citizens perhaps are not aware of the claims they can make – an interesting item in itself. This effort then needs to expand to the right to make claims in domains where there is currently no clear law or statutes, and also to go beyond this… There is work to be done on several fronts to achieve this citizens’ standing vis-à-vis the local government of a city. It is a battle worth fighting and a mode worth developing.

What are the forces and/or actors that are really shaping cities in Europe today?

Two very different forces seem dominant; they are also partly still emergent in that they are different from earlier urban logics in European cities. One is the ascendance of cities as major actors and concentrators of key economic and political trends. The significant cities do not necessarily need to be the biggest – Frankfurt is a powerful city even if much smaller than London or Paris. The rise of a strong economic function that, somewhat unexpectedly, turned out to need urban space has made a major difference, for good and for bad. Cities are once again becoming wealthmaking machines, a function they had lost when the dominant economic sectors were focused on infrastructure, building housing, the explosion of suburbs. The wealth making function has some positive effects (updating infrastructure and transport, generating jobs, and so on) but also serious problems. The vast majority of urban residents and urban economic functions tend to be modest and hence at risk of being destroyed by the new high-end functions.

As I argue in my book Expulsions, a key dynamic in today’s Western economies is a range of expulsions of people, and other types of actors such as small firms, from the economic and social options they once had.

My focus there is precisely on that point of expulsions – an edge that is foundationally different from the geographic border in the interstate system. The focus on the edge comes from one of the core hypotheses running through this book: that the move from Keynesianism to the global era of privatisations, deregulation, and open borders for some, entailed a switch from dynamics that brought people into ‘the system’ to dynamics that push people out.

How do you see the future of cities and the whole discussion around ‘smart’ and ‘resilient’ cities?

The discussion around smart, connected, and resilient cities is political, and it is also – or should be – central to the environmental question, as well as to social justice. One observation that I have researched in my work on global cities is that in our current period cities have become far more significant for geopolitics, the global economy, and social justice, than they were in the period dominated by Keynesian logics. In that earlier period much was under the governance of the state and the post-war rebuilding was under state management to a large extent.

But when governments deregulate and privatise economic sectors once under direct management of the state, these managerial and regulatory functions do not disappear. They are transferred to private firms: they reappear as specialised financial, accounting, legal, advisory services for corporations. And these types of activities tend to be in cities, especially global cities, if they are complex because a firm’s market is global. And this is not always good.

We need counterweights to this emergent power system that is urban-centred. And that means strengthening the status and capacity to make effective claims of the vast majority of a city’s population who have a modest income. None of this necessarily eliminates the ongoing role of the inter-state system and its multiple institutions. But in the long run it has made cities de facto, rather than de jure, key actors in national economies and in cross-border economic spaces, transcultural circuits, environmental struggles, social justice struggles, and so much more.

The rise of a strong economic function that, somewhat unexpectedly, turned out to need urban space has made a major difference, for good and for bad.

It matters in my analysis that besides the growing concentration of power in major cities, there is also the option – especially in larger cities that cannot be fully governed – of contesting power in ways that go beyond what we can claim from national governments. We the residents can re-make parts of the city in simple ways that we cannot do regarding the national state.

The complexity and incompleteness of major cities gives those without power the chance to make a local economy, a local culture, a local politics. They can actually stand up to power – to some extent – and say, “We are not asking you for anything, we are just informing you that this is also our city.”

Are the urban movements in big cities not the feat of cosmopolitan, well-educated and connected elites who feel at home in Beijing, New York, Istanbul, and Berlin and share the same lifestyle – one increasingly distant from that of their actual rural neighbours?

This is certainly part of the story. But I also see a new type of energy focused on neighbourhoods, with initiatives around greening, food plots, and re-localising production where possible. I will never forget that some of my brightest, really brilliant undergraduate students at the University of Chicago – considered the most intellectual university in the US – went into community work: localising production of food, generating local entertainment (notably music and circus), setting up coffee shops to avoid franchises, and much more. All of this is not going to change the major systems in the world, from high-finance to destructive mining. But it should be seen as a first step in mobilising our energies towards more social justice, environmental protection, people-centered activities, and so on. A politics of place that recurs in city after city and can thereby have potentially vast effects on key urban functions – from political to economic.

Can we equate the city with the migrant today? Is the city the result of all those ‘thick’ cultures coming in and spreading into what we’d call today ‘cosmopolitanism’ (although the roots of the word are somewhat different)?

You said it! Yes, I think so, but cities are also the battlefield – it gets messy. I argue this a bit in my work on cities as containing today’s frontier. I think we are witnessing the making of a third type of migrant subject – neither the familiar immigrant nor the refugee.

The historic frontier was at the edges of empire – those spaces that we had not quite gained control over. But, in my reading, major actors, from U.S. and European to Chinese major sectors, have now succeeded in gaining access to most land in the world and can then engage in their extractive practices.

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 6th article in the series. It’s a landmark special issue that warrants reading it in full.

Photo by fritscdejong

The post Whose City is it Anyway? Reflections on Global Urban Dynamics appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Ryan Conway:  The city of Ghent has a fairly long and developed tradition of citizen engagement. Advisory councils and public hearings, which were first introduced in the 1970s, evolved into more comprehensive approaches to community-based planning and led to the creation of a new city department, according to the city of Ghent. By 2003, that department began an “Area Operation” that proactively interacts with neighborhoods in the 25 districts of the city.

This increased focus also produced a new name, the Policy Participation Unit, and includes 20 “neighborhood managers” who engage one or two of the districts and act as brokers between the city and residents to ensure consistent interaction, according to a report titled “Good Practices” published by the European Cultural Foundation in 2016.

The Policy Participation Unit also facilitates a Resident’s Academy, grants for temporary-use projects in underutilized public spaces, neighborhood “Debatcafés” and focus groups, as well as a Neighborhood of the Month program that brings the mayor to each neighborhood for an entire month of interactive discussions.

View full policy here (in Dutch).

Learn more from:

• European Cultural Foundation’s publication on commons and culture

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By creating opportunities for exchange, mutual action and sharing, A4C not only operates as a platform but attempts to create a new commons, a synthesis between arts and political engagement.

A4C intends to explore the  interstitial spaces between power and communities, traditional arts system and society, states and territories. We pursue documentation as artistic practice.

In an historical phase of what Antonio Gramsci named “interregnum” whereas we know what we leave but do not know what we will find, A4C is a space for collective search, experimentation, creation of what post-colonial philosopher Homi Babha named ” a third space”, that transcends traditional definitions of arts and politics. Particular attention will be devoted to building bridges and opportunities for collective work, exchange and dialogue between European and Latin American artists and activists.

Our first steps have moved along the issue of migrations and war, starting with the participation at the Nationless Pavillion at the 2015 Venice Biennale, to the pop-up exhibition “From the shores of Tripoli to the hills of Moctezuma” in Rome-based gallery Ex-Elettrofonica,  to continue with “Dispacci-Dispatches” an exploration in the history of Italian colonial wars in Libya by means of displacements and re-enactment of historical chronicles and documents read in various locations of the Quartiere Africano (African quarter) in Rome, built to celebrate fascist colonies in Africa.

SHOWREEL A4C #ArtsForTheCommons from Rosa Jijon on Vimeo.

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