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

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

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

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

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

REScoop — Renewable energy cooperative

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

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

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

CLT Gent — Community land trust

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

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

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

NEST opening day. Photo courtesy of Evi Swinnen

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

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

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

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

Commons as a School for Democracy

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

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

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

Header image of NEST in Ghent courtesy of Evi Swinnen

The post Ghent’s Quick Rise as a Sustainable, Commons-Based Sharing City appeared first on P2P Foundation.

These leaders are creating a world in which access to basic necessities such as food, electricity, and housing are not at the whims of speculative markets. They are launching enterprises based on collaboration and employing business practices that sustain the environment. At the Living the Next Economy Convergence which was held in Oakland, California, we got a glimpse into how these visionaries are building democratic, equitable, and sustainable businesses — and what challenges they face.

Last month’s convergence, which sought to address the systemic, pervasive racism in the U.S. that robs people of their dignity and prevents them from achieving economic prosperity, brought more than 300 leaders representing over 100 organizations together for three days of panel discussions, hands-on workshops, and talks. Event organizers also brought 100 youth and grassroots organizational leaders on scholarships. Among the highlights of the convergence was the first public dialogue between Black Panther activist Ericka Huggins and co-founder of the #BlackLivesMatter movement Alicia Garza.

One of the key tracks of the convergence was alternative business models, so there was a lot of open and revealing discussions about cooperatives and employee stock-owned plans (ESOP). There were participants from both nonprofit organizations and for-profit enterprises who offered insights into creating business and implementing business models that value rights of workers. They also shared some of the complex social, political, and financial roadblocks they face while helping to build this new economy.

The core organizers of the convergence, including Shareable’s Tom Llewellyn

The Potential and Pitfalls of Co-ops

Many of the conference participants touted the benefits of cooperatives, which tend to value labor rights, environmental protection, and product quality. One of the attendees was from the Democracy at Work Institute, a project of the U.S. Federation of Worker Cooperatives (USFWC). The organization looks to address what’s called the “silver tsunami” problem, which is that 70 percent of baby boomers in the U.S. don’t have succession plans for their small businesses. That means we are headed for a mass closure of locally-owned enterprises in the years ahead. To prevent this from happening, the group is organizing meetings in cities across the U.S. to find viable ways to help these businesses convert to worker-owned cooperatives. The organization believes this problem is connected to displacement and gentrification. Since ownership and leadership in a majority of existing small businesses do not reflect the diversity of where they are based, co-op conversions are one way to expand ownership and entrepreneurship to people from marginalized backgrounds.

Founders and representatives from several co-ops, including New Hope Farms, Loconomics, and Project Equity shared stories about how they organize themselves to divide wealth and ownership and promote community resilience. While much was said about the benefits of co-ops, there were also frank discussions about their limitations:

They can be slow and inflexible in ways that top-down companies are not.
They may not fully erase pre-existing forms of oppression, especially if their members are not actively addressing them.

To counter the second issue, the participants said co-ops can pledge themselves to equity and diversity by implementing organizational bylaws that embed such commitments into the DNA of the enterprise. They said written social contracts could go far in establishing community norms, which are so vital to maintaining a healthy collaborative environment at a cooperative.

Tara Marchant, event co-organizer and director of Emerald Cities Oakland with Oakland City Councilmember, Lynette McElhaney.

Mission Driven For-Profit Enterprises

At least two founders of traditional for-profit corporations gave presentations about their businesses. One was Bay Area-based House Kombucha, a family-run fermented beverage company. Their story centered around the challenges of maintaining a triple bottom line — people, planet, and profit — in an economically competitive region.

The Body is Not an Apology is another enterprise incorporated as a for-profit business, but is dedicated to its mission of cultivating self-love and body empowerment. It is a global network that disseminates information about how to love and embrace one’s body, and enables personal and social transformation projects through trainings and webinars. Its founder Sonya Renee Taylor spoke about the constant barrage of shameful and discriminatory stories about our bodies in the media, and how the $60 billion beauty industry exploits these insecurities for profit. She called all of this “body terrorism.” The company’s platform is a way for people to protect themselves from this negativity and learn about how to use radical self-love as a basis for social, political, and economic change.

In both presentations, the entrepreneurs expressed how they have been able to create good companies through a strong commitment to their respective missions. They admitted that hierarchical enterprises can sometimes be a much more nimble and flexible model for social enterprises.

One of the panel discussions

The Environment and Disenfranchised Communities

The relationship between climate change and capitalism is undeniable. An economic system that prioritizes profit leads to reckless extraction of natural resources. At the convergence, many participants pointed to renewable energy as a way to disrupt this economic cycle that’s destroying the planet. Whereas fossil fuels require massive centralized infrastructure to extract, transport, and process its energy, solar and wind power can be decentralized. The representatives from energy enterprises emphasized the potential of clean energy as a means to exercise economic and political empowerment for disenfranchised communities.

Staff from several renewable energy enterprises talked about their models for democratizing access and governance over energy infrastructure. Shiva Patel, the founder of the Energy Solidarity Cooperative (ESC), an Oakland-based multi-stakeholder co-op, discussed how the organization designs and builds solar energy projects and political education programs. The group’s mission is to build community-owned clean energy systems in underserved communities and mobilize non-extractive financing for these projects. ESC works on helping communities move their renewable projects forward, from the initial energy auditing stage through installation and developing financing strategies.

Founder of Native Renewables, Wahleah Johns.

The founder of Native Renewables, an indigenous-led organization working to promote affordable clean energy for Native American communities across the U.S, shared a stunning fact: More than 18,000 homes on the Navajo reservation in Arizona don’t have access to electricity. To address this problem, the organization’s aim is to for tribes to own, manage, and provide renewable energy for themselves. Through partnerships with federal agencies, utilities, foundations, and investors, Native Renewables deploys solar energy projects where it’s needed the most. The group’s mission is to not only provide clean energy to Native Americans and creative sustainable economic models for power, but also strive to champion the sovereignty and the socio-economic and cultural values of tribal nations.

The discussions about community-controlled energy systems also touched upon how to finance the infrastructure. The current financial system prioritizes investment in big oil projects rather than in decentralized community-oriented renewable initiatives. In order to fix this, the general consensus was that there is an urgent need for more creative models of financing and community financing programs, such as investment crowdfunding, to make renewable power projects viable in the coming years.

A New Way Forward is Possible

Douglas Rushkoff, a media theorist and author of “Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus,” often refers to the economy as society’s operating system, in that it determines how the main components of our social systems function and establishes the basic rules about how we all relate to each other. Many already recognize that our current operating system is broken, but many cannot imagine what could be put in its place.

To most people, this is an alarming problem. But the Living the Next Economy Convergence demonstrated that the failures of the current economy creates an opening. It is an opportunity to apply creative and imaginative solutions to create a better system from the ground up. These leaders are showing the way forward with community-based alternatives, one mission-driven enterprise at a time. They are building them based on a new operating system that runs on trust, resilience, and sustainability, and are showing that everyone can shape the future of the next economy.

Please consider making a contribution to support the growth of next economy initiatives in Oakland. Every little bit helps.

The post Lessons on Creating an Equitable and Sustainable Economy appeared first on P2P Foundation.

History provides ample proof. For as long as there has been art, artists have worked together to support each others’ projects and sustain their livelihoods. Early examples include the medieval guilds of Europe, where artisans such as stonemasons and glaziers worked together to meet their common needs. Artist collectives have also been around for centuries. Contemporary versions range in size from just a few members to scores who produce art individually or collaboratively and exhibit their works in shows together.

The tradition of artists banding together is alive and well today. Below are three examples of artist forming worker cooperatives to support themselves and their work at a time of increasing economic precarity.

1. Stocksy United

Photo: Screenshot of Stocksy United’s home page, a collage of sample curated images.

Perhaps the most well-known example is Stocksy United. As an online stock photo image company, they’re also one of the largest artist cooperatives around with over 900 photographer-owners. Nathan Schneider, scholar in residence of media studies at the University of Colorado Boulder and a leading expert on platform cooperatives, notes that Stocksy has created a “formidable cooperative platform by sharing ownership with photographers — enabling the business to put artistic integrity ahead of the usual imperative of short-term growth.”

Stocksy’s forbearer was the for-profit stock photo company, iStock — which even back then was an enterprise that prided itself in being “by creatives, for creatives.” In 2006, the company was sold to Getty Images for $50 million. Under the new ownership, fees to photographers were cut and the culture of artistic camaraderie vanished.

A few years later, the founders of iStock decided to use the money from the sale of iStock to form Stocksy, a stock photo site formed as a worker cooperative owned and governed by its contributing photographers. This would ensure photographers were paid fairly and had a say in the business over the long term.

Their origin story is unique, since it’s rare for a digital media platform to share ownership and governance with its contributors. The funds from the sale of iStock certainly made it easier to launch Stocksy, but the key was the pre-existence of the iStock photographer community that was eager to build and own an enterprise together.

Other artists may not have the same access to capital or community as Stocksy. Two more co-ops, CoLab and Meerkat Media Collective, demonstrate other ways in which creative professionals can come together to form their own thriving, collectively-owned businesses.

2. CoLab

Photo: Members of the the CoLab cooperative in their office.

CoLab is a worker-owned digital agency that designs and develops websites and apps for mission driven organizations and entrepreneurs. It was founded in Ithaca, NY in 2010 by Rylan Peery and Ralph Cutler. Peery had studied co-ops as a Stanford undergraduate, during which he spent over a year and a half visiting cooperative businesses across Latin America. In the late 1990’s, he worked in venture capital and raised money as a tech start-up entrepreneur. Of these two experiences, Peery says that he became “keenly aware of the limitations and challenges of the conventional technology start-up paradigm,” and that he “carried seeds of a possible solution inspired by the sustainable economic development work” from his exposure to cooperative systems during college.

Cutler, who was an old friend of Peery’s, was also working in the design industry. Though the agency he co-led with another partner was doing well, he says that “it lacked depth, vision and a higher mission.” Even though it felt collective in nature, Cutler felt restless. “I couldn’t put my finger on it at the time but I was unfulfilled.”

In 2009, Peery and Cutler began collaborating on some design projects. It became clear that they shared the same vision for the kind of creative agency they wanted to build. So in 2010, with the help of co-op development resources and a supportive community, they converted Peery’s traditional business into a cooperative.

Since then, CoLab has grown to more than 25 workers and worker-owners. They’ve met potential members through meet-ups, conferences, co-working spaces, and the like. Once they found a promising candidate, they’d collaborate on a project to know them and see if it was a match. “From there everything can flow quite organically into co-op membership, but the fundamentals of being open to exploring new connections and relations is the foundation,” Peery explained.

As a cooperative, they make all of their decisions democratically through a three-fold process: working group meetings on specific project issues, board meetings for decisions that require the involvement of all their members, and the Loomio app to make day-to-day decisions. Overall, they strive for a “lean democracy” where all members can participate in governance or are represented by designees. They also offer leadership training for all members to better support a democratic workplace. The team at CoLab plans on a further expansion of their cooperative enterprise by creating a performance arts and studio co-op in Ithaca that merges visual and interactive arts.

3. Meerkat Media

Image: Still from Meerkat Media Collective’s short documentary about the People’s Climate March called Into the Streets.

Across the state from Ithaca is the Meerkat Media Collective in Brooklyn New York. Meerkat started as an informal collective in 2005 between 12 college friends who all had backgrounds in film and activism. The collective started as a means to share resources and support each other through their individual freelance video projects. While each filmmaker succeeded in their respective careers, they wanted to find a way to funnel the money they received from their hired contracts into their own individual passion-projects. They had been working as a collective, but they didn’t have a shared bank account or operating budget.

That’s why Meerkat Media Collective eventually became a more formal collective of artists-in-residence and a worker cooperative film production company. Their projects include documentaries and web videos for publishers, universities, and non-profits. As they strive to produce high-quality films for impact, they also provide their members with a sustainable income and humane work environment.

The co-op arm of Meerkat was launched by half of the original collective’s members in 2010. The six founders incorporated as an LLC where each of them became equal partner-owners of the enterprise. Co-founder Zara Serabian-ArthurIt told me that it was easy for them to transition into a co-op because the founding members had already been making films together in a collaborative way.

Their collaborative way of doing things has evolved to the point that they rotate roles for any given film between director, editor, and shooter. Unless a client specifically requests a certain style, which may be one of the members’ unique strengths, they do this rotation to make sure all of their skills continue to develop and that no one gets pigeonholed into one role or style of filmmaking.

Their residency program is made up of independent artists that actively work on film projects, individually or collaboratively, with the collective’s support, resources, and equipment. Residents also support each other’s projects, receive a monetary stipend, and attend an annual creative retreat. The residency program and co-op have a strong reciprocal relationship. The program is funded by the co-op and residents have access to shared office space and equipment. In turn, the residency offers the co-op access to a new talent.

The Meerkat co-op makes most of their collective decisions through meetings, which happen at least three times a week. They hold a full-day strategic planning meeting once a month, and for small every day issues, they also use the decision-making software Loomio.

Serabian-Arthur thinks that co-ops are a great fit for artists and creative professionals. “As artists trying to imagine a different kind of world, it makes sense that we’d apply that thinking and commitment to our work and process,” she explained. “I also think that artists are especially prone to be open to experimentation, to taking risks and trying something new. Many artists I meet are excited about the idea, but I haven’t met many people adopting a similar model — I think in part because we’re not exposed to many examples of creative cooperatives that we can learn from.”

Restoring the Cooperative Tradition

Schneider notes that the historical tradition of artists using collective organizing goes back centuries. “Probably for as long as there have been artists, there has been a recognition that the design of ownership structures go hand-in-hand with what it takes to be truly creative. In the medieval period, artisans formed guilds to ensure that they could protect their economic security and their creative integrity.” Schneider says that in the time since, artists have formed salons, collectives, gift economies and cooperatives. “Even in the most capitalist of societies, artists have nourished these models for the same reasons.”

Despite this legacy of art collectives, navigating the process of setting up a cooperative enterprise is a new and complicated process. The founders of CoLab and Meerkat Media both mentioned how helpful it was to have some guidance from the outside. Peery and Cutler worked with LIFT to get coaching on the vision of their organization, and said it was one of the reasons they were able to make the leap from traditional business to cooperative.

Support has also come from local government. In 2014, New York’s City Council voted to support the development of worker-owned businesses and directed $1.2 million dollars towards expanding existing worker co-ops and developing new ones. The Worker Cooperative Business Development Initiative funded training plus technical, legal and financial assistance to current and potential co-op members. According to the Democracy at Work Institute, it was the largest U.S. city investment in worker cooperatives to date. In 2015 the Council invested an additional $2.1 million into the initiative and in one and a half years, tripled the number of worker co-ops from 20 to 67. Due to such resounding success, the City Council renewed and expanded funding for the initiative again this year.

Serabian-Arthur of Meerkat Media noted that their co-op directly benefitted from this Initiative, noting that the training and resources that the city has funded, along with the supportive cooperative ecosystem that has emerged alongside the New York City trade association for worker co-op businesses, have been extremely helpful to keep them going.

What’s clear is that it doesn’t take much to plant the seed of democratic workplace ownership among artists, and that having the right support can go a long way. Peery believes that since artists and creatives value collaboration and experimentation more so than other professions, creative professionals might be particularly amenable to the co-op model. “Creatives likely also recognize more so than other professionals the value of collaboration in fostering innovation and excellence. My hope is that creatives can model the value of radical collaboration through cooperative work for other professions.”

Schneider echoes this sentiment, pointing out that artists’ willingness to explore the frontiers of new sustainable, democratic economic models is an advantage for all of us. “As has happened again and again, we are all benefiting from the economic designs that artists have created for themselves by necessity, and by the willingness to treat economics, too, as a medium for creativity.”

Top photo: Members of CoLab

The post Art Co-ops and the Power of Mobilizing Collaboration for Creativity appeared first on P2P Foundation.

That’s why it’s heartening to see OpenMedia, a digital rights organization based in Vancouver, publish its guiding principles. Among other things, the piece outlines why the organization chose crowdsourcing as its primary digital organizing strategy:

Our processes and methods of crowdsourcing are based on our belief that the best ideas come those most impacted by our work, and that the challenges we face are really the result of a democratic deficit in governing institutions. In short, we believe that if citizens rather than lobbyists are in the driver’s seat of government decisions we’ll have better outcomes to the most pressing issues of our time including digital rights.

So what is crowdsourcing? We’ve all heard it in the context of fundraising platforms like Kickstarter and Indiegogo, but it refers to the general process of obtaining services, content, resources, and/or ideas by soliciting contributions from a large group of people. While this concept has been around since the dawn of civilization, the internet has revolutionized it, and empowered all kinds of new participatory projects.

OpenMedia relies on crowdsourced civic engagement to tackle issues of access, privacy, net neutrality, and other key digital issues. It views its community as busy and intelligent, and emphasizes the importance of meeting people where they are at. Since its campaigns are so collaborative, it also makes sure to share ownership and decision-making in the organization with its community as much as possible.

What does this look like in practice? OpenMedia maintains an ongoing dialogue with its community on its website by asking for input on specific issues. It also has open chat channels to stay connected on a continual basis. The organization often embeds comments received by its community in its blog posts and reads them out loud in face-to-face meetings with policymakers.

The group’s report is an honest reflection of its methods. By publishing it, OpenMedia is further acting upon its principles, which is itself an extension of how it wants the internet to operate — open, participatory, and collaborative. In other words, it’s using the strength of the internet to save the internet.

Top photo: OpenMedia / CC BY-NC-SA 2.5 CA

Cross-posted from Shareable

The post How OpenMedia is Crowdsourcing its Activism appeared first on P2P Foundation.

On the customers’ side, there have been major disputes around the safety of these services, which have come to light following stories about unsafe Airbnb properties and reports of large numbers of drivers assaulting riders. In response, many cities have started to regulate these services.

Last month, residents of Austin, Texas, voted to affirm city rules that regulate ridesharing services like taxis, NPR reported. What this means, among other things, is that these companies would need to do background checks and fingerprints on potential drivers. Uber and Lyft had sunk $8 million into their public campaign to defeat the law, and boycotted the city in protest by immediately halting operations. Many users were dismayed to find their go-to mode of transport evaporate overnight. Meanwhile, countless drivers suffered when their new source of regular income was abruptly shut off.

But their anguish may have only been temporary. In the absence of Uber and Lyft, alternative ridesharing services have sprung up in their place, The Atlantic reports. It had been difficult for new players to challenge the duopoly, given their advantage of having many drivers and customers already use their service. However, the two companies’ disappearance created an opening for other enterprises to emerge. In the month since the election, several smaller rideshare startups have attempted to fill the void.

One of them is even challenging the very premise of having corporate middlemen coordinate the rides. Arcade City started as a Facebook group — which is still going strong with over 32,000 members — where drivers self-organize into teams to refer and coordinate passengers. The founders of the group plan to release their mobile app this summer — first to be launched in Austin in July, followed by a global version in August. The service will rely on blockchain technology and is designed to be completely decentralized, so that there would be no organization overseeing the coordination of drivers with riders.

RiseAustin is yet another alternative. It’s centralized like Uber, but rather than being a corporation, it’s a non-profit. RideAustin’s organizers hope that their their nonprofit status will enable them to provide the best terms for both drivers and riders, without the pressures of having to turn a maximum profit for shareholders.

In the midst of these new alternatives, the city itself has been taking proactive steps to boost driver-owned taxi services. Even before the vote on the regulation, the Austin Transportation Department invited people to submit applications to start a co-op taxi franchise, as per a report on KXAN. In May, Curbed Austin reported that the Austin City Council voted unanimously to approve one of them, giving a franchise agreement with ATX Coop Taxi. The city even lifted the existing cap on the number of permits the cooperative could have for their drivers from 150 to more than 500.

Some argue that these new regulations were designed to stifle emerging ridesharing services. The fact that these alternatives have cropped up despite the regulations undermines these claims.

Austin demonstrates how the sudden loss of an unregulated would-be monopoly (or an Uber, Lyft duopoly in this case) can create an opportunity for people to re-imagine how these services can be better designed and governed to serve the public. It’s also a case study in how cities can encourage city-scale enterprises to be democratically-owned and operated by locals for locals, ensuring that the public interest comes before shareholders’ interests.

Photo credit: rutlo via Remodel Blog / CC BY

Cross-posted from Shareable.

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