Sam DeJohn: Recently, Pablo Soto Bravo, Madrid City Council Member, computer programmer and the city’s lead for public engagement, spoke at an event in New York on “Restoring Trust in Government” on the occasion of the United Nations General Assembly. “Why should we trust government,” he asked, adding “the people don’t trust governments…they’re right not to trust the government.” Like many Spaniards, Soto had joined the 15-M movement in 2011 to protest the government’s austerity measures and rising levels of corruption.¹ With trust in government having declined over twenty percentage points since 2007,² Soto used his programming skills to champion the adoption of digital technology to give the public a greater voice in a traditional two-party governing system from which the average person had generally been excluded. But, as we shall explore in this three-part series, Decide Madrid, a pathbreaking civic technology platform co-designed by Soto to force “the administration to open their ears” (El Mundo), is evolving from a protest tool designed to challenge the status quo into a more mature platform for improving governance.

In Part 1, we will explore the platform, which is among the best-of-breed new generation of open source civic technologies, and its myriad features. In Part 2, we will draw on open data from Decide to focus in more depth on how people use the site. In Part 3, we focus on recommendations for improvements to Decide and how to test their impact on the legitimacy and effectiveness of decision-making.

What is Decide?

The Ahora Madrid coalition (which was founded with support from the Podemos political party³) created Decide in 2015 to enable citizens to propose, deliberate and vote on policies for the city and ensure transparency of all government proceedings within the municipality.  An information page on the Decide website further elaborates the program’s focus. “One of the main missions of [the platform] will be to ensure the inclusion of everyone in the participatory processes, so that all voices and wills form a part of them and no one is left out.” The website, which utilizes the free software Consul as many other administrations are now doing, allows Madrileños to influence the City’s planning and policy-making through voting, discourse, and consultations with the goal of empowering citizens, promoting transparency, and fostering open government practices. The site is composed of four distinct features to address these areas of desired impact. Of these components, two processes stand out as having the most potential for direct citizen influence: a proposal section where individuals may propose new laws and subsequently vote on them, and a participatory budget section where citizens decide how a portion of the City’s budget is distributed among different projects. The other two features include a consultation process where citizens are asked to offer, and vote on, opinions about City proceedings and finally a debate process which does not directly lead to action but rather deliberation for the City to assess public opinion. These processes are all designed with the intention “to create an environment that mobilizes existing collective intelligence in favor of a more hospitable and inclusive city.”

Key Features

Propuestas: Citizen Proposals Enable More Direct Democracy

The proposals feature was designed as a way to allow citizens to utilize the full power of direct democracy and shape government actions. According to Pablo Soto Bravo and Miguel Arana Catania, Director of Participation for the City Council of Madrid and Project Director for Decide Madrid, the proposals feature is by far the most important aspect of the platform as it has the greatest potential for impact. It has definitely generated interest as almost 20,000 proposals have been submitted since the launch of Decide in 2015.

This feature enables citizens to create and directly support ideas for new legislation. Registered users⁴ can propose an idea by simply clicking the “Create a Proposal” button and submitting a title and description. Proposals range significantly in terms of length and content, but gravity of the topic does not seem to influence popularity as two of the most supported proposals currently active on the site are “Penalty for those who do not collect the feces of their pets” and “Replacement of public lighting by LED lights.” Once a proposal is submitted, anyone with verified accounts can click a button expressing their support for said proposal.⁵ Each proposal is given twelve months to gather requisite support to advance in the process.

Screenshot from the “proposals” home page on the website

Example of an ongoing proposal

In order to move forward for consideration, a proposal must receive the requisite support, represented by 1% of citizens of Madrid over 16 years of age (~27,000 people currently). The process is designed this way to ensure that every citizen has the opportunity to submit proposals but that the administrators do not have to waste time considering proposals that fail to attract minimal backing.

Proposals that receive the necessary votes advance to the decision phase, which affords time and opportunity for citizens to get educated about the issues and make informed decisions. The site announces whenever a proposal reaches this phase and it is grouped with others that are in the same stage of the process, thus beginning a 45-day period of deliberation and discussion before the final voting phase. The managers of the platform do not provide background information other than what is posted by users, so citizens are responsible for conducting their own research and perusing the site for debates and comments about the proposal. Afterward begins a seven-day period where anyone over 16 years of age and completely verified in the municipality of Madrid can vote to either accept or reject the proposal.

It is important to note that proposals that receive majority support are not automatically implemented, as the Spanish Constitution does not permit binding referenda. Instead, the Madrid City Council commits to a 30-day study of any such proposal, during which they will determine if it is to be implemented. During this examination, the proposal is evaluated based on its legality, feasibility, competence, and economic cost, all of which are highlighted in a subsequent report that is openly published. If the report is positive, then a plan of action will be written and published to carry out the proposal. If the report is negative, the City Council may either propose an alternative action or publish the reasons that prevent the proposal’s execution.

Although it is understandable that the administration wants to ensure that only popular, viable proposals are presented before them, the hurdles that each proposal must clear are proving to be a significant obstacle. While it is difficult to determine the reason, the undeniable fact that only two proposals have even reached the final voting phase suggests a serious flaw in the system and a possible deterrent for future participation. However, on a more hopeful note, the two successful proposals (one calling for a single ticket for all means of public transportation and the other an extensive sustainability plan for the city) reached majority support in February of this year and in May the Council approved them and posted implementation plans.

Presupuestos participativos: Participatory budgeting

This feature was created to allow citizens a substantial say in how their taxes are being spent. Specifically, it permits them to decide where a designated portion of the City’s budget is going to be allocated. In the first step, individuals registered in Madrid can submit expenditure projects which will be posted publicly on the website. Spending projects can be submitted for either the entire city or for an individual district. One key difference between this process and that of proposals is that authors of similar projects are contacted and offered the possibility of submitting joint projects as a way of limiting the volume of projects and ensuring cost-effectiveness.

The next phase consists of a two-week period where qualified voters are authorized ten support votes for city-wide projects and ten for projects in a district of their choosing. After this period, all projects undergo an evaluation by the City Council either confirming or denying that the projects are valid, viable, legal, and includible in the municipal budget. Following the evaluation, both approved and rejected projects are published with their corresponding reports and assessments. The “most supported” projects then move on to the final voting phase, but the administrators are unclear about this term’s definition as they do not specify how many projects are permitted to advance.

In the final voting phase, the total available budget and the final projects along with their estimated cost (produced by the City Council during the evaluation phase) are published. Qualified voters can vote for any number of projects for the whole city and one project from the district of their choosing but the projects they support cannot exceed the total amount of funds available in the budget.

Projects are then listed in descending order of votes received, both for city-wide projects and district projects. They are then selected down the line from highest number of votes to lowest number of votes, making sure each additional proposal can fit within the total available budget. If the estimated cost of a project would cause the budget to be exceeded, that project is skipped and the next viable option is selected. Finally, the selected projects are included in the Initial Project of the General Budget of the City of Madrid (Participatory Budgets).

This feature is making impressive progress consistent with its goals. From 2016 to 2017, the amount allocated to these projects rose from €60 million to €100 million and the total number of participants rose by almost 50% from 45,531 to 67,132 people. With each project’s status and details available in a downloadable file on this page of the site, transparency is not an issue for this component. Pablo Soto Bravo and Miguel Arana Catania have indicated that citizens should start seeing concrete results from the 2016 projects very soon, which should lend credibility to, and faith in, the process.

Screenshot of Downloadable Project Spreadsheet

Debates and Consultations

In addition to the proposed actions which actually go through a voting process, the site contains sections that are intended more for simple deliberation, promoting communication and information-sharing. Debates do not call for any action by the City Council but are instead used to assess the public’s opinion and general consensus on a range of topics.

There is also a consultation process where users can voice their opinions about certain proceedings throughout the city. They can answer questions, make suggestions, and praise or denounce measures or activities that are already happening instead of creating new proposals. For example, the City Council currently plans on remodeling several squares and plazas throughout the city. Thus, there is a section where citizens are able to answer three questions created by the City Council pertaining to the revitalization of each area. City officials can comment and debate as well, allowing them to directly engage users on the site. There is no indication as to how seriously the public’s opinions are taken into consideration, but it is implied that their ideas are valued. At the very least, the highlighted names of politicians appearing on the debate space creates the appearance that they are taking an interest in these concerns.

Membership Levels

Because Decide has the potential to cause such a grand impact on Madrid’s citizens, government, and economic prosperity, there are certain security precautions to encourage participation while protecting the integrity of the process. The platform has a sliding scale of permissions with stronger authentication enabling access to more features of the site to create the incentive for more accountable participation. The site is open to anyone with internet access and users may create an account simply by providing a username and valid email address. While anyone can submit proposals, additional authentication is necessary to access other capabilities. There are three levels of authentication, each with differing rights of access.

• Registered users, who provide a username, email address, and password but do not verify residence, are able to:
  • Participate in discussions
  • Create proposals
  • Create expenditure projects
• Basic verified users must verify residence online by entering their residence data. If it is correct, they will be asked to provide a mobile phone number in order to receive a confirmation code to activate their verified account. People may also elect to do this in person at a Citizen Assistance office. These users are able to:
  • Participate in discussions
  • Create proposals and expenditure projects
  • Vote for proposals and expenditure projects in the support phase
• Completely verified users must fully verify their account in person at a Citizen Assistance Office or via mail. If done by mail they will receive a letter containing a security code and instructions to carry out the verification, which they must send back to a Citizen Assistance Office. These users are able to:
  • Participate in discussions
  • Create proposals and expenditure projects
  • Vote for proposals in the support phase
  • Vote for proposals in the final decision phase

Conclusions

Although the concept of Decide is consistent with the highest ideals of open government, the execution falls short in practice as, with the exception of participatory budgeting, there is no evidence that the site leads to improved decisions. We will discuss these shortcomings in more detail in part two, however, on the surface it is seems that Decide has not yet accomplished its ultimate goals, as its creators acknowledge. Soto and Arana want Madrileños to understand and fully utilize the power of direct democracy. With only two proposals reaching the voting phase of the process, it is clear that neither citizens nor Madrid’s institutions are taking advantage of this novel system and it has yet to achieve a significant impact on governance in Madrid.

The platform’s design is innovative and impressive and has been inspiring many other administrations to adopt similar programs. Indeed it bodes well for Madrid, and the rest of Spain, that various cities throughout the country are being inspired by the same political aspirations to replicate this process, such as decidm.barcelona which uses the same Consul software. However, like many others, Decide still has its flaws. In the next installment, we will address how Decide handles the keys to a successful digital democracy, such as advertising, incentivizing, and stakeholder analysis. We have identified the strengths and weaknesses at its foundation, so the next step is to examine the results it is producing.

¹ 2016 marked Spain’s worst year on Transparency International’s annual Corruption Perceptions Index since its launch in 1995, as they scored just 58 on the 0 (highly corrupt) to 100 (highly clean) scale.

² Trust and Public Policy: How Better Governance Can Help Rebuild Public Trust, OECD, http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/docserver/download/4217051e.pdf?expires=1492821633&id=id&accname=ocid177224&checksum=6C5097C12FAE130455255C94D249CA20 (Mar. 27, 2017)

³ Podemos did not formally run in the most recent local elections. However, it has been the driving force behind local platforms that share the same political agenda.

⁴ See “Membership Levels” below for detailed explanation

⁵ Note: in order to maximize citizen participation and accommodate those without internet access, most actions that take place on the website can also be done in one of Madrid’s 26 Citizen Assistance Offices with the help of trained staff.

This post by Sam DeJohn is reposted from Featured Website, GovLab Blog

Photo by grantuhard

The post Beyond Protest: Examining the Decide Madrid Platform for Public Engagement appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Overview of Thematic Working Groups

Participatory Tools for Democracy

Commons and democracy are intimately linked. This workshop addresses civic participation and ways to foster citizens’ involvement in the production of their cities through engagement with public bodies and direct forms of political action.

Lately, technology and digital tools are integral to these initiatives to enhance democratic processes. This workshop will consider this dynamic and look at the co-production of public policies and projects through digital platforms.

Participants are interested in analyzing changes produced by these new collaborative processes. They have experience in the production of tools and resources such as online maps, collective storytelling, repositories of experiences, and initiatives designed to support political decentralization and co-production, with and without support from political institutions. This work also includes the development of charters, contracts and structures between different urban actors involved in urban commons.around civic causes in this domain, and participate in telecommunications technological projects.

Currencies and financing of commons

This theme promotes currency and finance as fundamental to the commons and solidarity economy. How are alternative currencies and digital tools and platforms at work, and what are the infrastructures and material environments that support communing and collective responsibility in this sphere? The workshop will examine how we can multiply or upscale some of the initiatives, methods, frameworks, and formats that have already been explored locally.

Participants have expressed interest in strengthening networks and collaborative projects, developing tools to develop an economy based on the commons, as well as strategies and methodologies on P2P mechanisms of value assessment and exchange. They have experience in time-banking and various cooperatives, have developed crypto-currencies and mobilized economic resources and human partnerships; contribute to community building, disseminate and create awareness and commitment around civic causes in this domain, and participate in telecommunications technological projects.

Data commons and the collaborative city

This workshop brings together the topics of control of (civic) data and the collaborative economic models that depend on online platforms. There is increasing interest in exploring alternatives that respect data and promote its civic control, taking into account possibilities for different modes of production & collection of this data. In what way can we facilitate data management and control in line with the social common good?

The workshop will take into account how regulations and policies on open source and open data, on the one hand, and those on technology and decentralized infrastructure, on the other, can play a role in facilitating data sovereignty and new forms of local cooperativism.

Moving away from large corporation and capital-led city development, we have to rethink the Smart City model and imagine data commons that socialise the value of data. How do initiatives like guifinet and Fairbnb fit in?  The starting point for the workshop will be recent experiences in Barcelona and Amsterdam.

Embodied productions of commoning: Food, Health, and Leisure

This workshop takes a holistic view of health creation to include also food production and distribution as well as sport and leisure activities. It will address the different determinants of our physical and mental condition, based on social justice, solidarity economy, and respect to biophysical limits of ecosystems. The commons approach underlines the importance of self-organised, locally rooted, inclusive and resilient community networks and civic spaces in order to re-think the practices and the development of public policy-making in this domain.

Participants have experience and are interested in the interrelationship at all points of the journey from “Land to Fork”, including access to land, nutrition, food sovereignty, cultivation, etc.; new forms of distribution, including for recycling; access to medical knowledge and patient-guided health policies and services; democratization of healthcare and self-organization of citizen efforts to reduce bureaucratic hurdles; and reclaiming the field for grassroots sports while challenging norms to inspire new models of recreation.

Law for the Commons

In order to guarantee the protection and development of commoning practices, legal opportunities and tools need to be located and addressed. This workshop deals with the search for these opportunities in relation to pre-existing and potential urban commons projects. This can draw from existing knowledge and institutional analysis in management of traditional commons, as well as contemporary legal practices for local, national and European legislation. It can also investigate instances where these concepts have been applied at the local scale.

These include participants’ experiences in, for example, production of municipal regulations for shared administration, which protects urban commons (squares, gardens, schools, cultural commons, streets, etc.) and compels local governments to collaborate with citizens. Participants propose the generation of platforms to exchange existing knowledge and experiences in legal mechanisms, as well as the production of practical tools to be used at European and local levels in relation with legislation, norms and institutional interaction.

Right to the City (Public Space and Urbanism, Housing, Water & Energy)

This theme brings together different aspects of the configuration of the city: Public Spaces & Urbanism, Housing, Tourism, Water & Energy and Culture. Understanding the Right to the City as a collective and bottom-up creation of a new paradigm can help to provide an alternative framework to re-think cities and human settlements on the basis of social justice, equity, democracy and sustainability. The workshop will discuss processes of commercialization and privatization of public and common goods and resources; how commons can create forms of democratic urban management; and how re-municipalization processes of urban infrastructures can be linked to the commons discourse. It will also consider the policy frameworks for commons that can be implemented, how spaces can be collectively used for the common good and what kind of legal and economic frameworks are needed to stabilize communing practices.

There is a great diversity of experiences and interests within the group. Proposals include trans-local collaboration to develop perspectives on: urban rights, cultural ecosystems for integration within the city, commons-based housing plans, fighting gentrification and damaging tourism, among others. There is emphasis on sharing examples and tools and promoting the connection of practitioners, researches, professionals, and citizens with project initiators and grassroots actors. Participants draw from experiences including the redevelopment of brownfields and vacant properties, the creation of political platforms and public campaigning and engagement, and construction of community gardens and other spaces as learning environments for communing. Given the wide range of interests and backgrounds, for this theme we can also imagine a mix of general discussions and more specific working spaces, to be decided by the participants themselves, either in organizational process before the meeting or in situ.

Solidarity as a commons: Migrants and Refugees

In many countries, migrants and refugees are confronted by very repressive policies, and in some cases violence. In certain places, citizens are responding by getting involved in local activities to distribute food, clothes and other commodities, to provide information about asylum procedures or how to meet basic needs and human rights, to facilitate the inclusion of migrants or refugees in cities and cohabitation between people in neighborhoods, etc. At a time when policies about immigration and refugees in most European countries are inadequate and troubling, these mobilizations are extremely important and sharing experiences is key.

The purpose of this workshop is twofold. First, it aims to share experiences and knowledge about local citizen-developed initiatives to help migrants and refugees across Europe. In addition, the workshop will be an opportunity to discuss solidarity with migrants and refugees as a commons. Themes to discuss include: the effects on policies and policy makers of the production of solidarity by citizens, the modalities of governance among civil society organizations around their initiatives, and the forms of interactions with municipalities around the initiatives of civil society actors.

Participants have experience in local initiatives of solidarity and hospitality with migrants and refugees; are engaged in research and activism on urban commons focusing on migrant rights; or are involved in initiatives like ecovillage movements, commons support for artists at risk, or community social centers that work to develop new forms of participative work and cooperation to build solidarity.

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It may seem odd to think that passionate amateurs, open source hackers, various professionals and ordinary citizens could actually collaborate and produce interesting new ideas. But that is precisely what Medialab-Prado has succeeded in doing in the last eight years. It has invented a new type of public institution for the production, research and dissemination of cultural projects. It is committed to exploring collaborative forms of experimentation and learning that are emerging from digital networks, especially those practices that enact the commons such as free software, hacker ethics, the Internet as an open infrastructure and peer production dynamics. Medialab-Prado serves as a municipal cultural center that promotes commons-based research, experimentation and peer production, especially through its “Commons Lab.”

The model is quite simple: Medialab-Prado acts as a platform where anyone who has an idea can meet other people and form a work team to develop and prototype the idea. Projects developed at the lab vary immensely, as the list above suggests.

The beauty of the Medialab-Prado process is the inclusive invitations to anyone with the knowledge, talent or enthusiasm to develop a new idea. Through different kinds of open calls for proposals and collaborators, teams are often formed to develop projects in production workshops. Each group is an experiment itself in team- and community-building as it blends people with different backgrounds (artistic, scientific, technical), levels of specialization (experts and beginners) and degrees of engagement. Each group, overseen by the promoter of the project, needs to self-organize and arrange the rules and protocols by which the contributions of participants will be incorporated or rejected, and with what types of acknowledgments. This is why Medialab-Prado has been sometimes defined as an incubator of communities – and commons.

At the heart of Medialab-Prado’s “innovation hosting” of projects is its commitment to free software tools and free licensing. This facilitates the local participation of those that want to contribute to the common good. It facilitates online participation as well, and also in the proper documentation of projects, which is crucial in replicating them elsewhere and in tracking the reasons for the success, failure and procedures of commoning experiments.

Since its creation in 2007, the Commons Lab has evolved from a seminar in which members’ unpublished working documents on the commons were discussed, to an open laboratory that invites the participation of any collaborator, including amateurs, academics and professionals, who wish to join a project.

The Commons Lab has been remarkably productive. Its projects include Memory as a Commons,⁸ which explore the collective creation of shared memory during conflicts; guifi.net Madrid,⁹ which imagined and produced a local telecomunications wifi infrastructure that works as a commons; Commons Based Enterprises, which examines recent models of business management that have made contributions to the commons;¹⁰ and Kune, a web tool to encourage collaboration, content sharing and free culture.¹¹

Besides such projects, the Commons Lab has hosted many public debates on commons-related themes involving cities, rural areas, digital realms and the body. It has also made public presentations about projects such as Guerrilla Translation, a transnational curator and translator of timely cultural memes,¹² and Mapping the Commons, a “research open lab on urban commons.”¹³  Guerrilla Translation is a P2P-Commons translation collective and cooperative founded in Spain. It consists of a small but international set of avid readers, content curators and social/environmental issue-focused people who love to translate and love to share. The group seeks to model a cooperative form of global idea-sharing, by enabling a platform and method for opening dialogues. Guerrilla Translation does not rely on volunteers, but on building an innovative cooperative business model which “walks the talk” of much contemporary writing on the new economy and its power to change.¹⁴

Since moving to a new venue in 2013, the Commons Lab has been less active, even as commoning practices and the commons paradigm have played an increasingly important role in other lines of work and projects at Medialab-Prado. In the near future, the Commons Lab is going to reinvent itself as a project and pull together a history of its achievements to date and comprehensive and introductory material for the general public on the commons theory and practice.

Through public policies and institutions that incubate new commons projects, and enable civil society to create value directly, the commons paradigm may allow us to reinvent public institutions. It can engage people more directly, developing their capacities and participation, and providing accessible open infrastructures that require what anthropologist and free software scholar Christopher Kelty calls “recursive publics” – “a public that is constituted by a shared concern for maintaining the means of association through which they come together as a public.”¹⁵

Medialab-Prado, as a public institution that is part of the Arts Area of Madrid City Hall, tries to advance this point of view. It tries to learn from commons-based practices and apply them in the public realm – sometimes succeeding, and sometimes not. But as an organization committed to commons as a model of governance, Medialab-Prado regards its workshops, convenings and events as an indispensable way to continue this important exploration.

Marcos García (Spain) is Director of Medialab-Prado, an initiative of Madrid City Hall devised as a citizen laboratory for the production, research and dissemination of cultural projects.

Photo by Medialab Prado

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How can democracies use technologies to strengthen themselves? Answers are emerging around the world, with the central theme being that technology can make politics more engaging, successful and legitimate by enabling people to become active producers of political outcomes instead of passive consumers. 

Devin Balkind writes about how technology can advance participatory democracy practices while citing policy-led examples in Taiwan and Madrid. Originally published in Education Update Online.

Devin Balkind: Democracy in the United States was established nearly 250 years ago when news travelled at the speed of a horse and real-time collaboration required sharing a physical location. Today, ubiquitous internet access, smartphones, social media, and online collaboration tools have transformed how we work, play and consume, but the basic structure of our politics remains the same.

The result is that during an era of massive innovation, our static politics have disempowered the public and made our representative democracy feel more like a “consumer” one. Parties are brands; politicians are products; and our job as consumer-citizens is to purchase “our” politician with our votes. U.S. media and education systems strengthen the notion of “consumer democracy” by obsessing over the theatrics that motivate people to vote instead of educating people about the issues, policies and processes that impact all our lives. The public is not pleased. Congress and the President’s approval ratings are at record lows, as are voter participation rates.

How can democracies use technologies to strengthen themselves? Answers are emerging around the world, with the central theme being that technology can make politics more engaging, successful and legitimate by enabling people to become active producers of political outcomes instead of passive consumers. 

Two examples of “participatory democracy” are taking place in Taiwan and Madrid. In Taiwan, the “vTaiwan” project encourages the public to participate in a multi-month, multi-phase “consultation process” where citizens give issue-specific feedback offline and online. They use that feedback to create their own legislative and administrative proposals, and the most popular proposal are ratified and implemented by the government. Over the last three years, tens of thousands of people have participated, resulting in more than a dozen new laws and administrative actions. In Madrid, city government built a platform that enables citizens to debate issues and propose legislation. If that legislation meets a popularity threshold, it automatically becomes law.

Surprisingly, there are few if any truly participatory political projects in the United States. While New York City has “participatory budgeting,” its many restrictions and limited scope makes it fundamentally different than the open-ended participatory processes practiced overseas.

New York City’s Public Advocate is supposed to be the voice of all New Yorkers. As such, it’s the perfect position to bring a technology-enabled collective decision-making process to our City. Since it’s democratically elected, the Public Advocate can give “participatory democracy” real legitimacy. And since it has consultative status with the City Council and many city agencies, the Public Advocate can bring the public’s will directly to the people who run our city.

I’m running for Public Advocate to put “participatory democracy” on the ballot in November. With your help, we can put the Public exactly where it should be — directly in charge of the Public Advocate.#

Devin works at the intersection of the nonprofit sector, the open-source movement, and grassroots community organizing to share and initiate best practices. He currently serves as president of the Sahana Software Foundation, a nonprofit organization that produces open source information management system for disaster relief and humanitarian aid. He is running for NYC 2017 Public Advocate.

Photo by transnationalinstitute

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The crisis of the European Union begs for new, unifying and constructive narratives – alternatives to the right-wing populist and nationalist wave getting fiercer every day. A commons approach holds the potential for a unified vision towards an alternative economy, a Europe from the bottom up and an ecological economy and way of life. The idea of jointly stewarding shared resources, community and a generative economy, can find resonance with a diverse range of citizens.

Sophie Bloemen and Nicole Leonard: A relentless focus on markets and growth has blinded us for the loss of social cohesion, rampant inequality and the destruction of the environment. In the perceived need to quantify everything, gross domestic product is used as a measure of social wealth. The commodification of our common resources and even our online behavior can seem limitless. Yet major fault lines are starting to appear in this dominant worldview based on individualism, private ownership and an extractive relationship with nature. A novel outlook based on networks, access and sustainability is emerging, where citizens are actively co creating their environment.

The Commons perspective captures the change in perception regarding needs and priorities. ‘Commons’ refer to shared resources and frameworks for social relationships that are managed by a community. ‘Commons’ also stand for a worldview and ethical perspective favouring stewardship, reciprocity and social and ecological sustainability. This outlook defines well-being and social wealth not just with narrow economic criteria like gross domestic product or companies’ success. Instead it looks to a richer, more qualitative set of criteria that are not easily measured – including moral legitimacy, social consensus and participation, equity, resilience and social cohesion.

Commons are not primarily a political theory but first and foremost a practice emerging from the bottom up. Everywhere people are engaged in alternative practices as part of the struggle for ecological, social and cultural transition within their communities. All over Europe local initiatives are taking care of their direct environment, sharing and stewarding knowledge online, and claiming natural resources as our commons. These include, for instance, community wifi structures providing internet access in remote areas, co-housing initiatives ensuring affordable housing, community land trusts that explore collective forms of property, or urban commons initiatives regenerating the city for its citizens. The digital knowledge commons are a key element of an alternative economy, and online commons projects have been able to attain an impressive scale. Creative commons licenses for cultural works, for example, are now over one billion. In all these areas, the commons approach offers a new vocabulary for collective action and social justice, as well as processes for communities to govern resources themselves.

The Commons to Overcome Political Struggles in Europe

So if commoning communities abound and cultural change is underway, what is stopping the commons from creating an alternative society? Perhaps commoners’ strengths – their localised, bottom-up stewardship of resources and strong community-oriented relationships – are also obstacles. How do we move from a loose network of atomised, emancipatory commoning initiatives to a strong network that can challenge the dominant, bankrupt worldview of individualism and economic growth at any cost?

Until now, European civil society, the NGOs and social justice networks, have not been able to unite around a broad shared agenda. Hundreds of organisations did unite in the fight against TTIP. However, in order to make progress towards another, fairer and ecological economy and society, a movement cannot be solely reactionary – it has to set the agenda and provide positive alternatives.

The emerging radical democratic initiatives that propose alternatives have mostly engaged at a national or local level. Examples are 15M in Spain, Nuit Debout in France or the University occupation in Amsterdam. The Occupy movement was trans-local, but did not succeed in genuinely opening up the conversation in Europe. Municipalism, such as in Barcelona is creating real change on the ground, providing an inspiration for cities not only in Europe but worldwide. Local struggles, forward-looking and emancipatory projects have to be connected in order to truly change the current order. The fact is that a great deal of the laws and developments that shape our societies come from the European level and global markets. There has to be trans-local and transnational solidarity around a shared vision of an alternative society.

The European Commons Assembly arrives to Madrid

The European Commons Assembly is an effort in providing a platform for these connections and trans-local solidarity. The European Commons Assembly that took place in Brussels in November 2016 has been a case in point for the unifying potential of the commons, and a symbol of maturity of the commons movement. A myriad of over 150 commoners, activists and social innovators from different corners of Europe came to Brussels for three days to develop new synergies, express solidarity and to discuss European politics as well as policy proposals. In the European Parliament, Members of Parliament exchanged views with this “Commons Assembly” and the political energy generated by bringing all these people together in this context was exceptional.

The ECA continues today as a political process and diverse platform, open to anyone who shares its values and wants to contribute. ECA explores what strategies to engage in order to nourish, protect, and extend the commons. How to develop the outward channels to affect political change, while taking care to maintain and strengthen its communities? How to build broader coalitions on the ground not bound to the left or the right, how to prevent erecting barriers with academic language and theory?

Since Brussels, the ECA has published a series of videos on commons topics, articles and generally aimed to visibilise the unifying potential of the commons narrative. Members also examined the intersections of the commons and Social Solidarity Economy and municipalist movements, with smaller assemblies held in Athens and Barcelona. Commoners from all over Europe and beyond are joining the online community all the time, and sharing their experiences, and even in the Netherlands and Finland commoners were inspired to create local commons assemblies.

ECA Madrid and the collaboration with Transeuropa 2017 provides the energy to move the process further along. It is becoming clear that the ECA needs to offer an added value beyond ideational affiliation. Assembly members will have to co-create the resources and practices that will strengthen the movement. That is why the idea of “production” figures so prominently in the discourse around this Assembly. The focus of the assembly this time will be on urban commons, taking advantage of ECAs presence in Madrid and Spain to examine strategies, failed and successful, to promote the commons politically and in public policy, including citizens in this process.

In Madrid working groups will focus on specific themes of the commons in the city, to create shareable outputs that bring these local experiences to a broader audience. This creation will nourish the toolbox of the ECA, in turn helping other efforts to support and scale commoning. This opportunity will allow initiatives to learn from and share with each other, attaining a level of technical depth and understanding that is necessary for change, deepening the European political agenda for the commons. At the same time, what is at stake goes beyond the specific themes and issues that color the commons movement.

The ECA aims to engage in conversations with other allies around Europe, and considers the political context and the commons movement as a political force that relates to conventional political power. Rather than letting citizen resentment of the current order and political backlash lead to Europe’s disintegration, the European Commons Assembly builds on these on-the ground experiences to draw hope and energy to power the commons vision and a renewed political force in Europe.

The European Commons Assembly will be in Madrid from the 25th until the 28th of October. The program includes participative workshops on urban commons topics, joint sessions with European Alternatives on the commons in policy, and opportunities to learn about and visit local commoning initiatives in Madrid. There will also be time dedicated to the future of the ECA.

Read and sign the Call: europeancommonsassembly.eu/sign-call/. Join the community: Introduce yourself by email at [email protected] Don’t miss any update! Join our telegram channel: http://t.me/transeuropa2017

Sophie Bloemen is a political activist based in Berlin and co-founder of the Commons Network

Nicole Leonard is the coordinator of the European Commons Assembly (ECA)

Originally published in the TransEuropa 2017 Journal.

Photo by cuellar

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For more information about the program, click here.

In cooperation with the Transeuropa Festival and MediaLab Prado, the assembly features 4 days of workshops, visits to local commons initiatives, debates, talks, art and parties in the heart of Madrid. An eclectic mix of commons activists from all over Europe will get together to discuss the commons and the future of Europe.

The European Commons Assembly starts on Wednesday (the 25th of October) and ends with a closing assembly on Friday (the 27th of October). Saturday (October 28th) will be filled with trips to local commoning sites around Madrid and exciting sessions organized by Transeuropa Festival in the afternoon.

Workshop themes include ‘Participatory Tools for Democracy’, ‘Right to the City’, ‘Law for the Commons’, ‘Data Commons and the Collaborative Economy’, ‘Food’, ‘Health and Leisure’, and ‘Solidarity as a Commons: Migrants and Refugees’.

For more updates, follow us here on Twitter or join the event here on Facebook.

We hope to see you in Madrid!

Photo by Tom.Lechner

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You can still be a part of it: Click here to join.

In cooperation with the Transeuropa Festival and MediaLab Prado, the assembly features 4 days of workshops, visits to local commons initiatives, debates, talks, art and parties in the heart of Madrid. An eclectic mix of commons activists from all over Europe will get together to discuss the commons and the future of Europe.

The European Commons Assembly starts on Wednesday (the 25th of October) and ends with a closing assembly on Friday (the 27th of October). Saturday (October 28th) will be filled with trips to local commoning sites around Madrid and exciting sessions organized by Transeuropa Festival in the afternoon.

Workshop themes include ‘Participatory Tools for Democracy’, ‘Right to the City’, ‘Law for the Commons’, ‘Data Commons and the Collaborative Economy’, ‘Food’, ‘Health and Leisure’, and ‘Solidarity as a Commons: Migrants and Refugees’.

Are you interested in the Commons?
Join us! Click here.

For more information about the program, click here.

For more updates, follow us here on Twitter or join the event here on Facebook.

We hope to see you in Madrid!

Reposted from the Commons Network newsletter.

Photo by Liisa Maria

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The call to participate in the Madrid workshops will be open until August 4th.

• Form

The European Commons Assembly was launched in November 2016 with public events that took place in several spaces in Brussels, Belgium, including the Zinneke social center and European Parliament. This meeting gathered from different parts of Europe more than 150 commoners to promote public policies for the commons at the European level and to develop mutual support networks that enable long-term sustainability..

The call to participate in the Madrid workshops will be open until August 4th. Proposed topics related to the urban commons include:

• Public space
• Migrations and refugees
• Citizen participation in urban politics
• Culture
• Food
• Housing
• Health
• Currency and financing for the commons
• Laws and legal mechanisms to protect the commons
• Technology for citizenship.

You may also propose a topic not already on this list; fill out the form to propose the organization of a specific workshop, and/or to participate in any of the workshops that you find interesting.

Each workshop will be co-organized by both a local and an international community project around the proposed topic. Workshops will be coordinated to offer valuable knowledge and strategies to apply to other, ongoing experiences. To this end, the ECA Madrid coordination team will hold several video conferences to connect the different initiatives and develop the workshop contents prior to the meeting. Workshops will employ facilitation methodology designed to guide the coordination team members in structuring and eventual documentation of the contents generated.

When completing the form, you may indicate if you need the organization to cover travel and / or accommodation if it will not be possible to cover these expenses another way. For more information, contact nicole.leonard [at] sciencespo.fr.

You can find more information on the European Commons Assembly website or fill out the form.

Photo by Ultra-lab

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On the second weekend in June, hundreds of people flocked to Barcelona to discuss the idea of municipalism and radical democracy, broadly under the banner of “Fearless Cities.” This event also served to commemorate two years of progressive leadership throughout many of Spain’s city halls, including Madrid and Barcelona. Activists, mayors, city council members, academics, and NGO workers came together to explore such themes as “feminizing politics,” “sanctuary and refuge,” and “anti-corruption and transparency.” Despite these weighty ideas, the event was joyous and at times jubilant. During an opening conversation that served to welcome participants, Manuela Carmena and Ada Colau, the mayors of Madrid and Barcelona, spoke of friendship and intimacy even during our dark geopolitical moment. Indeed, despite this light tone, Trump was often in evidence.

Since the beginning of their administrations, these citizens’ platforms in Spain have explicitly staked a left-leaning claim against the hard right turn of the government, particularly regarding immigrants and the question of Europe’s ongoing refugee crisis. Early on, both Madrid and Barcelona declared themselves to be cities of refuge; Madrid’s city hall has proudly worn a “Refugees Welcome” banner for the better part of two years. With Trump’s victory, presaged on this side of the Atlantic by the rise of Le Pen and Wilders, Poland’s renewed nationalism, the endless drama of Brexit, and the constant specter of Islamophobia in response to terrorism, those sentiments are important antidotes to a global turn towards fear and hate.

Spain, however, still seems far removed from Lesbos and Lampedusa, and has yet to receive an influx of refugees. At the same time, its population grows ever more diverse, and its major cities are now full of multi-ethnic neighborhoods. Wandering the Raval neighborhood in Barcelona on a Monday, I chanced upon a school getting out for lunch; the young students who streamed out were Filipino, Pakistani, and Chinese with nary a “native” face in sight. This is the newest generation of urban Spaniards. Yet despite the dramatic demographic shifts, neither “Fearless Cities” nor the broader project of Spanish municipalism has taken up the question of immigration and ethnic and racial difference as a serious component of contemporary urban governance. While Barcelona’s charismatic and charming deputy mayor (and friend of the UDL), Gerardo Pisarello, is a Latino immigrant, the ranks of Barcelona en Comu and Ahora Madrid are startlingly devoid of migrant voices. And despite having emerged in part from the multi-ethnic housing movement, these platforms often appear to treat migrants as objects of political action instead of incorporating them as fellow political subjects.

This reality was brought home during a session on initiating municipalism in the United States. As Kali Akuno of Cooperation Jackson described his organization’s efforts to reclaim an urban politics of redistribution, it was clear that historical legacies of enslavement continue to shape the present in a majority black city where whites control the vast majority of wealth. This point was driven home by Jennifer Epps-Addison from the Center for Popular Democracy, who pointed to the salience of race in contemporary urban struggles, yet its absence within a conference meant to confront injustice and oppression within the city. In a later session on the rise of White Nationalism, few non-Americans were in attendance. However as a woman from Brussels reminded the audience, racism and fear of the ethnic other infect everyday discourse and policy directives, configuring the now infamous neighborhood of Molenbeek into a dangerous cancer to be excised from the greater urban polity. In a rousing closing, the Bishop Dwayne Royster, the National Network Political Director for PICO, a faith-based organizing network, instructed the audience: “White supremacy predates America. It’s a European construct.” Indeed, while America’s tangled racial history is in many ways its own, race and racism haunt the continent. As Europe’s aging nations replenish their populations with communities born elsewhere, cities are the crucible for new forms of encounter and exchange. Thus a truly emancipatory municipalism must engage with difference—class, gender, age, and yes, race—in the pursuit of radical democracy.

Photo by Diego Sideburns

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This is an excerpt from the upcoming book Funding the Cooperative City: Community finance and the economy of civic spaces.

In the past decade, with the economic crisis and the transformation of welfare societies, NGOs, community organisations and civic developers – City Makers – established some of the most important services and spaces in formerly vacant buildings, underused areas and neglected neighbourhoods. Consolidating their presence in the regenerated spaces, these initiatives are increasingly looking into the power of the local community, the dispersed crowd and new financial actors to invest in their activities.

Two years ago, the cultural centre La Casa Invisible collected over 20.000 euros for the partial renovation of the building including the installation of fire doors and electric equipments to assure the safety of their revitalized 19th century building in the centre of Málaga. A few months later, East London’s Shuffle Festival, operating in a cemetery park at Mile End, collected 60.000 pounds for the renovation and community use of The Lodge, an abandoned building at the corner of the cemetery. In order to implement their campaigns, both initiatives used the online platforms Goteo and Spacehive that specialise in the financing of specific community projects. The fact that many of the hundreds of projects supported by civic crowdfunding platforms are community spaces, underlines two phenomena: the void left behind by a state that gradually withdrew from certain community services, and the urban impact of community capital created through the aggregation of individual resources.

The question if community capital can really cure the voids left behind by the welfare state has generated fierce debates in the past years. This discussion was partly launched by Brickstarter, the beta platform specialised in architectural crowdfunding, when it introduced to the public the idea of crowdfunded urban infrastructures. Those who opposed Brickstarter, did in fact protest against the Conservative agenda of the “Big Society”, the downsizing of welfare society and the “double taxation” of citizens: “Why should we spend on public services when our taxes should pay for them?”

Nevertheless, in the course of the economic crisis, many European cities witnessed the emergence of a parallel welfare infrastructure: the volunteer-run hospitals and social kitchens in Athens, the occupied schools, gyms and theatres of Rome or the community-run public squares of Madrid are only a few examples of this phenomenon. European municipalities responded to this challenge in a variety of ways. Some cities like Athens began to examine how to adjust their regulations to enable the functioning of community organisations, others created new legal frameworks to share public duties with community organisations in contractual ways, like Bologna with the Regulation of the Commons. In several other cities, administrations began experimenting with crowdfunding public infrastructures, like in Ghent or Rotterdam, where municipalities offer match-funding to support successful campaigns, or with participatory budgeting, like in Paris, Lisbon or Tartu. Yet other public administrations in the UK, the Netherlands or Austria invited the private sphere to invest in social services in the form of Social Impact Bonds, where the work of NGOs or social enterprises is pre-financed by private actors who are paid back with a return on their investment in case the evaluation of the delivered service is positive.

Largo Residencias, Lisbon. Photo (cc) Eutropian

Alternatively, some cities chose to support local economy and create more resilient neighbourhoods with self-sustaining social services through grant systems. The City of Lisbon, for instance, after identifying a number of “priority neighbourhoods” that need specific investments to help social inclusion and ameliorate local employment opportunities, launched the BIP/ZIP program that grants selected civic initiatives with up to 40.000 euros. The granted projects, chosen through an open call, have to prove their economic sustainability and have to spend the full amount in one year. The BIP/ZIP project, operating since 2010, gave birth to a number of self-sustaining civic initiatives, including social kitchens that offer affordable food and employment for locals or cooperative hotels that use their income from tourism to support social and cultural projects. In 2015 the experience of the BIP/ZIP matured in a Community-Led Local Development Network, as identified by the European Union’s Cohesion Policy 2014-2020, which will grant the network access to part of the Structural Funds of the City of Lisbon. The CLLD is a unique framework for the democratic distribution of public funds: it foresees the management of the funding to be shared between administration, private and civic partners, with none of them having the majority of shares and votes.

While, as the previous cases demonstrate, the public sector plays an important role in strengthening civil society in some European cities, many others witnessed the emergence of new welfare services provided by the civic economy completely outside or without any help by the public sector. In some occasions, community contribution appears in the form of philanthropist donation to support the construction, renovation or acquisition of playgrounds, parks, stores, pubs or community spaces. In others, community members act as creditors or investors in an initiative that needs capital, in exchange for interest, shares or the community ownership of local assets, for instance, shops in economically challenged neighbourhoods. Crowdfunding platforms also help coordinating these processes: the French Bulb in Town platform, specialized in community investment, gathered over 1 million euros for the construction of a small hydroelectric plant in Ariège that brings investors a return of 7% per year.

ExRotaprint, Berlin. Photo (cc) Eutropian

Besides aggregating resources from individuals to support particular cases, community infrastructure projects are also helped by ethical investors. When two artists mobilised their fellow tenants to save the listed 10.000 m2 Rotaprint in the Berlin district of Wedding, they invited several organisations working on moving properties off the speculation market and eliminating the debts attached to land, to help them buy the buildings. While the complex was bought and is renovated with the help of an affordable loan by the CoOpera pension fund, the land was bought by the Edith Maryon and Trias Foundations and is rented (with a long-term lease, a “heritable building right”) to ExRotaprint, a non-profit company, making it impossible to resell the shared property. With its sustainable cooperative ownership model, ExRotaprint provides affordable working space for manufacturers as well as social and cultural initiatives whose rents cover the loans and the land’s rental fee.

Creating community ownership over local assets and keeping profits benefit local residents and services is a crucial component of resilient neighbourhoods. Challenging the concept of value and money, many local communities began to experiment with complementary currencies like the Brixton or Bristol Pounds. Specific organisational forms like Community Land Trusts or cooperatives have been instrumental in helping residents create inclusive economic ecosystems and sustainable development models.

Homebaked, Liverpool. Photo (cc) Eutropian

In Liverpool’s Anfield neighbourhood, a community bakery is the symbol of economic empowerment: renovated and run by the Homebaked Community Land Trust established in April 2012, the bakery – initially backed by the Liverpool Biennale – offers employment opportunities for locals, and it is the catalyst of local commerce and the centre of an affordable housing project that is developed in the adjacent parcels. Similarly, a few kilometres east, local residents established another CLT to save the Toxteth neighborhood from demolition. The Granby Four Streets Community Land Trust, with the help of social investors and a young collective of architects (winning the prestigious Turner prize), organised a scheme that includes affordable housing, community-run public facilities and shops.

The economic self-determination of a community has been explored at the scale of an entire neighbourhood by the Afrikaanderwijk Cooperative in Southern Rotterdam. The cooperative is an umbrella organisation that connects workspaces with shopkeepers, local makers, social foundations, and the local food market: they have developed an energy collective in cooperation with an energy supplier that realises substantial savings for businesses in the neighbourhood; a cleaning service that ensures that cleaning work is commissioned locally; and a food delivery service for elderly people in the neighbourhood.

With community organisations and City Makers acquiring significant skills to manage welfare services, urban infrastructures and inclusive urban development processes, it is time for their recognition by established actors in the public and private sectors. The EU’s Urban Agenda, developing guidelines for a more sustainable and inclusive development of European cities, can be a catalyst of this recognition: it can prompt the creation of new instruments and policies to enable such community-led initiatives. While the Cohesion Policy 2014-2020 has developed the CLLD framework, not many Member States chose to use this instrument. The Urban Agenda could therefore envision the adoption of more methods to be experimented by City Administrations, to allow for a more sustainable and inclusive allocation of resources. Whether through matchfunding, grant systems, or simply removing the legal barriers of cooperatives, land trusts and community investment, municipalities could join the civil society in developing a more resilient civic economy with accessible jobs, affordable housing, clean energy, and social integration.

Lead image from homebaked.org, Liverpool UK. All other images from Eutropian.

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