Before 2010, Paris’s water service was provided by four entities:  two private companies, Suez and Veolia; SAGEP, a public/private company using public drinking water infrastructure, and a public laboratory in charge of water safety. This situation diluted responsibility and hiked the price of water for users. That is why the Paris municipality decided to fully remunicipalise and reintegrate water services, at the end of the current contracts EDP captures, produces and distributes 170 million cubic meters of drinking water a year for 3 million users.

EDP began operating Paris’s water systems in January 2010 with a fully integrated water management, from source to tap. From the first year, the structural savings of about 30 million euros per year made it possible to lower the price of water by 8%. Today, this price is still lower than it was before 2010. EDP also ensure a concrete right to water through free public fountains in public spaces, cooperation with associations supporting homeless people and refugees, and partnerships with social landlords.

EDP has adopted environmental management practices in all the natural spaces it manages and supports many farmers in setting up sustainable farming practices, that are useful for water quality.

“What EDP tells us is that a public company can be a pioneer in ecological transition, internal democracy (anti-discrimination, gender equality) for workers, with very high levels of transparency and accountability. This is not merely a case of remunicipalisation but an example of how a new generation of public companies can work.”

– Evaluator Satoko Kishimoto

Transformative Cities’ Atlas of Utopias is being serialized on the P2P Foundation Blog. Go to TransformativeCities.org for updates.

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This is a story about people who build their own machines. It’s a story about people who, due to necessity and/or conscious choice, do not buy commercial equipment to work their lands or animals, but who invent, create and adapt machines to their specific needs: for harvesting legumes, for hammering poles, for hitching tools onto tractors.

The machines are just one part of our story, and this article will talk about encounters between people, tools and knowledge and it will take us to various places: Paris and Renage in France, Pyrgos and Kalentzi in Greece, and Tallinn in Estonia.

Let us begin our journey in Greece. In Pyrgos (southern Crete), there is a small group of people called Melitakes (the Cretan word for ants) interested in seed sovereignty and agroecology. It is a group that cares about organic farming and that tries to form a small cooperative. One of the things the group does is to plant legumes in between olive-trees or grapes. While olive trees are abundant in Greece, the land in between individual trees is usually not cultivated due to the distance necessary to avoid shading and foster the growth of the trees. So the idea was quite simple: use the unused land. However, the members of the group soon faced a specific problem: it’s hard to harvest legumes by hand and there are no available tools to do this arduous job in a narrow line between olive trees. On the market, there are only big tractor accessories, suitable for such a job, and only for large crops. That is why the group sought the help of a friend in a nearby village, a machinist, to help them out. He liked the idea. He saw it as a challenge and started to develop a tool (see picture 1). At that time, there were no concrete ideas or talks of ‘open sourcing’ the tool and of ‘do-it-yourself’ (DIY) practices. The situation was rather a pragmatic one: ‘there is a need for a machine that does not exist in commerce, we need a person to build it… and that’s what we did, supporting that person as much as we could, during the process’.

DIY legumes harvesting machine by Nikos Stefanakis and the Melitakes group. Source: Alekos Pantazis.

Several weeks later, the two authors of this article met in Paris: Alekos, who knew about his compatriots who built the legume-harvesting machine met Morgan, who knew about l’Atelier Paysan, a French cooperative specialized in the auto-construction of agricultural equipment, based in Renage. Alekos explained his plans: carrying out his PhD at Tallinn University of Technology on convivial technologies, getting to know l’Atelier Paysan, and ‘implementing’ some ideas in Greece through creating a makerspace for building agricultural tools within the framework of an EU funded programme called Phygital. Morgan explained the trajectory of his research on/with l’Atelier Paysan: his involvement in a collaborative project on user innovation since 2015 and his analysis of l’Atelier Paysan through looking at the politics and materialities of open source technologies in agriculture. After their discussion about theoretical approaches, methods, concepts and fieldwork, it was time for Alekos to meet l’Atelier Paysan ‘on the ground’ by participating in a 5-day workshop to build two tools for organic grape crops.

Alekos gained several kinds of knowledge via the workshop. Practical knowledge on working with metals, cutting, and welding. He also gained theoretical knowledge from l’Atelier Paysan: its organizational structure, the problems faced (and how they are solved), the financial setup and how to run workshops (see picture 2).

Construction of the charimaraîch (a wheelbarrow/wagon adapted for market gardening). Source: l’Atelier Paysan

L’Atelier Paysan is one of the few collectives specialized in such activities (other notable collectives being Farmhack and Open Source Ecology). L’Atelier Paysan has developed a range of practices and tools for ‘liberating’ agricultural tools: a website, workshops, a book, video tutorials, and open-source plans. In their recent article, Chance and Meyer (2017) have analyzed l’Atelier Paysan by retracing their history and form of organization, studying how they enact the principles of open source in agriculture, and by describing their tools within their economic and political context.

When Alekos got back in Greece, he visited the Melitakes group again. He explained how l’Atelier Paysan works – its practices, philosophies, and ethics – and the various tools that have been designed and built. While thinking about the future development of Melitakes’ tool and its possible diffusion through some of the standards developed by l’Atelier Paysan, the collective faced a new problem: none of them was a mechanical engineer. None of them thus could draw the design of the components of the legume harvesting tool in situ. Yet this was a crucial step for digitizing the design and making it accessible online. So they sought the help of architects for how to best illustrate each part of the machine. Subsequently, they dismantled the tool, took photos of each component (more than 300 photos in total) in the correct angle (90 degrees) and with a tape measure visible on each photo. They also used big pieces of paper to trace some complicated parts (see picture 3). And they started looking for persons who, based on the pictures and imprints, would be able to (digitally) draw the mechanical design of the tool.

The plan, at the moment of writing this article, is to draw the plans of the tool, open source them by publishing them on the Internet under a Creative Commons type of license and then organize workshops to teach people to build it. So while the full story about the legume-harvesting tool has yet to be written, some features can already be told: a practical problem has been translated into a technical tool; this tool has been disassembled and photographed in order to make it ‘drawable’ and thus available via Internet. The hope, for the future, is that many more people, in many more places, will be able to build this tool, further improve it and share the improved design with the global community. But alongside the tool, something else will travel and be reinforced: the principles of agroecology and the practices of open source.

Imprinting of some complicated parts from the DIY legumes harvesting machine by Nikos Stefanakis and the Melitakes group. Source: Alekos Pantazis.

Our second story begins in a village called Kalentzi in Northern Tzoumerka region, Greece. The local community of farmers (called Tzoumakers) had another practical problem: finding an appropriate tool for hammering fencing-poles into the ground. Several tools have been used for this task for ages. But not without its difficulties and dangers: there are farmers who climb ladders and hammer the poles, and others who climb on barrels to do the job. But the combined efforts of hammering the poles into the ground and, at the same time, maintaining one’s balance on the ladder/barrel proves difficult – plus, you need two people to do the job. That is why several local farmers and makers got together, tried to find a solution and set up a plan to build a tool that can do the job without the need for acrobatic moves by making it possible for one person to hammer the poles while standing firmly on the ground (see picture 4).

Testing the newly constructed tool for hammering fencing-poles from the Tzoumakers group. Source: Alekos Pantazis.

The next phase, after the current prototyping of the tool, will be the design of a booklet that will include a detailed presentation, an explanation of the usefulness of the tool, a list of all the equipment and material needed, instructions for building the tool (and the risks thereof), drawings and pictures.

It is time, now, to move back to France and give more details about l’Atelier Paysan. The first tool construction workshops took place in 2009 by a group of innovative organic farmers that was eventually formalized and structured into the cooperative l’Atelier Paysan in 2014. At that time, l’Atelier Paysan had already begun situating its practices theoretically, by mobilizing various vocabularies and concepts (agroecology, open source, social/circular economy, common good, appropriate technologies, etc.) as well as various authors and academics (André Gorz, Jean-Pierre Darré, etc.). Active collaboration with several academics in the social sciences was sought from 2015 onwards.

By that time, l’Atelier Paysan had already perfected its general methodology: doing its TRIPs (Tournées de Recensement d’Innovations Paysannes / Tours to Make an Inventory of Peasant Innovations); developing tools via testing, prototyping, upgrading and realizing workshops; and ‘liberating’ the collectively-validated tools via publishing detailed plans and tutorials on the Internet. One of its most prominent tools is the quick hitch triangle, which replaces the usual three-point linkage between a tractor and the tool to be fixed behind it. For the quick hitch triangle, l’Atelier Paysan has produced a 10-minute video, taken many pictures, issued a 47-page booklet, drawn several plans – all of which are freely available on its webpage (see picture 5).

Design, making and testing the quick hitch triangle from the l’Atelier Paysan. Source: l’Atelier Paysan.

It is important to stress a key feature: it is not l’Atelier Paysan that develops new tools from scratch ‘in house’; rather, they actively look out for individual farmers’ innovations. Only thereafter, through collective construction work, after testing the tool in the field and various processes of representation (plans, pictures, videos), are the tools released. Put differently, while user innovations are already there, ‘in the field’, the role of l’Atelier Paysan is to collect, formalize and disseminate these innovations.

In Greece, the situation is somewhat similar: local peasants already have several ideas in mind for tools that they would like to materialize. The idea is now to continue building tools with the local community, a practice that is usually experienced as positive and empowering. Ideas – like seeds – need fertile ground. Yet, a model like the one from l’Atelier Paysan, cannot simply be copy-pasted to another country and another context unmodified: a thorough understanding of both realities is needed. For example, in Greece, there are no public funding streams available for such endeavors, and the specific plants, soils, and morphologies of the country also call for specific, locally adapted tools. Apart from the political and natural peculiarities, socio-cultural characteristics also differ. For example, farmers’ skills are not the same in Greece than in France, and the collective memory and experience of building cooperatives in Greece is different. The conditions under which people can cooperate have their local ‘flavours’ rooted in habits, perceptions and social imaginaries. Therefore, l’Atelier Paysan’s model can act as an inspirational starting point but needs to be adjusted through continuous local experimentation.

The final leg of our trip brings us back to our respective academic homes (in Paris and Tallinn), to our keyboards to write this article, and to the theorizations that we are currently working on. Our stories have been about the work – and sometimes difficulties – that go into transporting ideas, machines, practices, and knowledge from one site to another. This is not a simple move, it is not just a matter of copy-pasting an idea, a practice or a technology from one place to another. Ideas, practices, and technologies are not immutable objects, but they are, in a sense, ‘quasi-objects’. In order to move ideas and technologies, they need to be transformed, disassembled and reassembled, translated, represented, adjusted. It is only via a variety of interlinked actions – imagining, testing, photographing, drawing, theorizing, sharing, rebuilding – that objects can travel and multiply. For these technological devices to be open, ‘convivial’ and low-tech, they need to be opened up in several ways. Our argument is that this opening up is both a technical practice and a social endeavor. Our stories are thus not only about the practices of open sourcing agricultural tools, but also about the (geo)politics, ethics, aesthetics and collective dimensions thereof.

(Note: the authors of the article would like to thank Luis Felipe Murillo, Evan Fisher, Chris Giotitsas and Vasilis Ntouros for their suggestions and comments. Alekos Pantazis acknowledges financial support from IUT (19-13) and B52 grants of the Estonian Ministry of Education and Research, COST Action CA16121 project and the Phygital project which is funded via the Transnational Cooperation Programme Interreg V-B Balkan – Mediterranean 2014-2020)

Lead Image: L’Atelier Paysan

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The Fab City Global Initiative is organising the Fab City Summit in collaboration with the City Hall of Paris and the Fab City Grand Paris Association, and it will take place between Wednesday 11 July and Friday 13 July this year. The extensive program takes place at the Parc de la Villette in Paris. An invitation-only event for City Officials and Representatives from the Fab City network will open the conference on the 11th, presented by Anne Hidalgo (Mayor of the City of Paris) in their capacity as European Capital of Innovation Awardees 2017, and Carlos Moedas, European Commissioner for Research, Science and Innovation.

The Fab City Lab will be followed by two days of high-profile international speakers at the Fab City conference. This ticketed event includes keynote and conversations with speakers such as Dave Hakkens (Dutch industrial designer and founder of circular economy community Precious Plastic, Neil Gershenfeld (MIT Centre for Bits and Atoms); Saskia Sassen (Professor of Sociology at Columbia University who coined the Global City). A special week-long campus will follow, open to the public from Saturday 14 July and will provide an exciting way for everyone to experience life in a Fab City, with family-friendly hands-on activities, bike tours and fun.

The Paris summit will welcome new cities to the Fab City network, from as far as New Zealand and Brazil. City leaders have identified the network as an invaluable tool for sharing best-practice and concrete experiences in how cities can transition to a future which empowers citizens and ensures productivity and sustainability.

Fab City: A global collaboration project between innovation ecosystems, governments and industry that is enabling the transition to more sustainable and productive cities during the next 36 years. Started in Barcelona in 2014, Fab City stands for human values in the age of technology, and fosters actions and experiments that allow to build new urban futures based on the relocalisation of the production of food, energy and products, and global collaboration. Fab City has been initiated by the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia, MIT Center for Bits and Atoms, the City Council of Barcelona and the Fab Foundation; it operates within the over 1300 strong Fabrication Laboratories (Fab Labs) global network, using it as a distributed infrastructure for innovation and knowledge source to enable the technology needed for cities to produce everything they consume by 2054. As of 2017, 18 cities are part of the global Fab City network: Barcelona, Boston, Somerville, Cambridge, Ekurhuleni, Kerala, Georgia, Shenzhen, Amsterdam, Toulouse, Occitanie Region, Paris, Bhutan, Sacramento, Santiago De Chile, Detroit, Brest, Curitiba.

Join https://summit.fabcity.paris/tickets/

Media Contact: [email protected]

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When I left the metro station in Vanves, south of Paris, I discovered a pretty, modern and flowery city. Just a few steps from the station, I found the porch I had been told to look for, and crossed beneath it to find the participative habitat where I would spend a week. It was a large building, nestled between the wall of the cemetery and the surrounding houses, wrapped around a tree-lined garden. Suzanne, a young retired woman, welcomed me and gave me a tour of the property.

La Fonderie is a project begun in 1984. This building was first a factory, bought by a developer forced to buy it as part of a lot, but who didn’t know what to do with it. He was delighted when the families (first 3, soon 10) offered to buy it so they could do some work and make their participatory housing project a reality.

From the beginning, the habitat was intended to save energy and be environmentally friendly, but the craftsmen capable of building a wooden frame building (more than just soundproofing) were not legion at that time. The group agreed to a compromise: the building would be made of concrete with a wooden frame, and a very nice wooden façade would be added. It was no easy task, as the building was completely twisted and the carpenter in charge of its cladding almost threw in the towel several times! All of the residents had to persuade and encourage  him to finish.

After two years of work, the building finally emerged: 9 apartments from 70m² to 120m² in various shapes; a common room; two shared guest rooms; a workshop and a shared cellar; as well as a garden equipped with a compost. The only thing young couples completely overlooked at the time was the issue of aging. There are stairs everywhere. Nothing was planned to make life easier for people with reduced mobility, so it’s a question of adding an elevator in the column provided by the architect, but it wouldn’t solve the problem for apartments that are almost all duplex or triplex.

The truth is that when the project was started, the inhabitants were not planning to be doing this 30 years later! This is a particularly exemplary experience because, after all this time, the same families (with one exception) remained in the area. Of course, the fifteen or so children who grew up there have now moved away, but the original couples are there and continue to operate the common parts of the place – for example, welcoming people like me, or opening the meeting room.

What is the secret of such longevity? First, a fairly strong convergence of values eg., ecology, anti-liberalism (or, anti-neoliberalism) and practices. Most of the inhabitants of La Fonderie are also involved in local associations like the local newspaper, environmental film festival, cyclists’ association, etc. They took part in the creation of the first AMAP (community-supported agriculture) in Vanves, opening their collective compost to the inhabitants of the district. In short, they are people who are comfortable with community life and citizen involvement.

The second secret is that community life is governed by clear rules, based on unanimity. At first, there was a monthly meeting (sometimes more) to discuss all subjects. In time, the unwritten rules of common life  were integrated by everyone. Today, a single annual meeting is enough to solve a number of unusual questions. Things also happen informally: in the corridors, the garden, or during the many shared meals. There’s also a whiteboard outside for “on-duty” messages.

Conflicts? Of course there were some. But they all got settled, the most effective method being… time. Today, most of the inhabitants of the place are retired, and are not always present in the building. The question of community sustainability arises. What will happen to the place? Will it be sold gradually to the highest bidder in a context where the PLU jumped 30%? Suzanne is confident that “We won’t all leave at the same time,” she explains. “It’s  also possible that we can gradually integrate new inhabitants seduced by our way of life, acclimatize them and pass on our traditions.”

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Here’s a preview of the program of three days that will be like no other.

Donald Trump’s announcement this June 1st that the United States will be withdrawing from the Paris Accord has caused indignation around the world. On their side of the Atlantic, the fightback was launched by a handful of mayors of big cities, gathered together in an organization called Mayors National Climate Action Agenda. Whatever the mistakes of the White House, they declared, they will work to ensure that within city limits, the fight against global warming will remain a priority. It is city halls, therefore, that will be fulfilling a treaty concluded between nations.

An inconsistent situation some may say. Or could this be a sign of a decisive change to come? Big cities, which already hold substantial demographic, cultural and economic powers, might not be condemned to remain the second order of political actors that they are today. Conversely, in a context of democratic crisis, blurred frontiers, and crumbling Nation-States, our future could well be formed of networked cities that have risen up to the challenge.

THREE DAYS LIKE NO OTHER

As crazy as it may seem, the idea that networks of cities will shape our future is at the heart of the 5th edition of OuiShare Fest Paris. Taking place at the renovated Magasins Généraux in Pantin, this year the event will go far beyond your usual talks, workshops, participative formats and immersive experiences.

Novelties on the menu:

• the Tribunal of Future Generations: can we let robots keep destroying jobs? Should we write the right to laziness in the Constitution? This decision will lay in the hands of the members of the jury, chosen by lottery for this mock trial run by the Magazine Usbek & Rica (Wed, July 5th).
• Masterclasses: in the mornings of the 6th and 7th of July experts from 13 countries will hold 4-hour masterclasses.  Participants can sign up to take a storytelling course with the American publishing consultant Ariane Conrad, learn the A to Z of sharing cities with our Dutch colleagues from ShareNL, or even learn to manage a company without bosses with our New Zealander friends from the Enspiral network. And in the background? Each day is dedicated to a particular dimension of globalized cities
• 3 festive evening events (in comparison to one!)for more opportunities to connect.

DAY 1: REGAINING COLLECTIVE POWER FROM THE BOTTOM-UP

Today, it appears ever more difficult to build consensus at the national level; political identities are fragmenting; politicians are going through a grave crisis of legitimacy. It is at this point that the city can emerge as the stage for a renewal of collective action. From this perspective, it is noteworthy that from New York to Madrid, social movements symbolic of the last few years, have occupied public spaces. Because of its size, among other factors, the city is suitable for experimentation with new forms of participative democracy, fueled by the civic tech revolution.

OuiShare Fest will also welcome two pioneers of citizen technologies: Pia Mancini, co-founder of the platforms DemocracyOS and Open Collective, as well as the Argentine political party Partido de la Red, and Jeremy Heimans, Australian activist and entrepreneur, co-founder of the online petition platform Avaaz and of Purpose, which seeks an in-depth transformation of the very idea of power in connected societies. Alastair Parvin, the creator of the WikiHouse Foundation, which applies the organization methods of the famous online encyclopedia to architecture and design, will be discussing the reinvention of cities by citizens themselves.

And, because it is important to articulate the local and the global, this first day will be concluded with an unusual football match; Pantin vs. the rest of the world!

DAY 2: RETHINKING OUR CITIES AS PLATFORMS

How do we shift from a mass of lonely individuals to an organized and lively ecosystem? Will cities be reborn as platforms for the benefit of their inhabitants? Every local government in the world dreams of replicating Silicon Valley’s success story. But aren’t there other relevant examples to look for, other paths to follow? This topic will be debated between Nicolas Colin (The Family), Jennifer Clamp (Techweek NZ) and Rui Quinta (With Company). Professor and renowned management thinker Anil Gupta (Indian Institute of Management of Ahmedabad) will deliver a talk on what corporate innovators can learn from grassroots movements.

Juan Pablo Ortega (Innotegia, the city of Medellin) and Malik Yakini (Detroit Black Community Food Security Network) will share their stories, which attest to the fact that it is often in cities which went through the worst crises that the drive to innovate is the strongest.

During a “fishbowl” discussion – a OuiShare-favorite hybrid format, somewhere between a business-as-usual conference and a participatory workshop – participants will be invited to reflect on how local authorities can efficiently regulate global collaborative platforms.

DAY 3: BUILDING GLOBAL URBAN NETWORKS

Cities with more power and autonomy should by no mean be mistaken for a temptation to retreat. There is no point arguing with the fact that there is already a chasm between globalized metropolitan and peripheral areas. But how do we prevent it from widening?

To echo Mark Watts’ (Executive Director of the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group) opening talk, day 3 will be all about global urban networks. Founder of the Fab City Global Initiative Tomas Diez will share his vision for a future of locally productive and globally connected self-sufficient cities. Dylan Hendricks (Ten-Year Forecast) will talk about the Internet of cities and the future of borders in the post-Brexit Europe. Another must-attend session: a discussion with the creators of the Darwin Ecosystem and Ateliers La Mouche about the role of alternative spaces in urban revitalization.

And to conclude this Fest in due form, you are warmly invited to a genuine Brazilian Festival on the banks of the Canal de l’Ourcq!

Don’t miss out on this one and explore the full program

Get your ticket at http://paris.ouisharefest.com

The post OuiShare Fest Paris: Cities of the World, Unite! appeared first on P2P Foundation.

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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Frédéric Sultan: On September 23, 2016, a gathering will be held in Paris to exchange thoughts on new forms of local and thematic networking for the commons, and to discuss the Assemblies of the Commons.

After the “Temps de commons” festival held last October in multiple Francophone cities and countries worldwide (250+ events in total), new forms of organization are emerging in Francophone areas and the world in general, inspired by the idea of “Assemblies of the Commons” as promoted by Michel Bauwens and the P2P Foundation. A variety of actors involved in these initiatives have offered to meet for a day of discussion.

This will be an opportunity for actors involved in these processes to share their experiences, to present and document different practices, and to better understand the reality of the phenomenon. An analysis of the practices presented by participants will be put into perspective in the French institutional context. Questions are open to discussion, including the nature of these initiatives; their names; potential connections with already existing initiatives (as yet unnamed Assemblies of the Commons); and their geographic and thematic dimensions, as examples.

We will also have the opportunity to explore what these initiatives provide as strategic perspectives for the commons: how do they contribute to mobilizing commoners and involving inhabitants in the transition?

This event is organized with the support of the P2P Foundation, the Association VECAM and the Charles Leopold Mayer Foundation (FPH).

Event Info

The event will be held at Fondation Charles Léopold Mayer
38 rue Saint Sabin 75011 Paris
Métro Chemin Vert ou Bréguet-Sabin

Please contact Frédéric Sultan for more details:
Frédéric Sultan
Email: fredericsultanATgmail.com,
Phone number: +33 67932547

For French language updates, please follow the P2P Foundation’s French Blog.

Photography by Sylvia Frédriksson

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Even though it is almost impossible to transmit the atmosphere of an event after it has happened, here are some ways you can re-live moments from OuiShare Fest Paris and get in-depth insights into the discussions that took place.

WATCH ALL SESSIONS LIVE ON OUISHARE TV:

You can now watch all the sessions of this year’s edition on our Youtube Channel.

MOMENTS CAPTURED IN PICTURES:

Enjoy the beautiful photos taken by our photographer Stefano Borghi and the wonderful volunteers team.

DEBATES RECORDED IN LIVE DRAWINGS:

Take a look at the live sketches made during the sessions and workshops.

KEY TAKEAWAYS OF EACH DAY ON STORIFY:

• DAY 1 
• DAY 2
• DAY 3

Hope you enjoy browsing all the content and once again a big thank you to all of you!

Hungry for more? Then join our other OuiShare Fests taking place this year:

• OuiShare Fest Barcelona, October 26-27
• Colaboramerica, Rio, 17 -19 November

The post Re-experience OuiShare Fest 2016 appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Originally published in Shareable, Neal Gorenflo shares his impressions of OuiShare Fest 2015

The third annual OuiShare Fest, hosted with the theme “Lost in Transition” in Paris’ charming Cabaret Sauvage, concluded last Friday. This unique gathering of sharing economy leaders from around the world found itself in at least two ways with their latest edition.

First, the theme brought the elephant in everybody’s room to the fore – the gaping contradiction between the utopian possibilities and the hyper-capitalist realities of the sharing economy. The key dilemma that OuiShare Fest underscored is that while leading platforms like Airbnb and Uber help users create value on an unprecedented scale, they do not share ownership and governance with users and could in fact exacerbate already severe inequalities. OuiShare Fest’s programming, which is largely crowdsourced, reflected a widely held belief that platforms should share ownership and governance with those most responsible for their success — users.

Instead of withering from this heat of this contradiction, the organizers held it. A remarkable number of sessions focused or touched on this contradiction (Ann Marie of Goteo blogged this contradiction in detail). While there were sessions that featured sharp criticism of the sharing economy, most sessions explored solutions to the contradiction, like using the blockchain to share ownership and governance with millions of users.

In fact, Nick Grossman’s keynote, “Venture Capital vs. Community Capital,” was OuiShare Fest in a nutshell. He elegantly articulated the contradiction and put forward the blockchain as a key solution. As Nathan Schneider pointed out last December in his Shareable feature story, “Owning is the New Sharing,” criticism of the sharing economy has catalyzed a counter-movement to create democratic sharing economy platforms. With Nick’s help, the blockchain had its coming out party at OuiShare Fest as the people-power solution to the sharing economy’s contradictions. Everybody was talking about the blockchain from keynotes to side conversations.

Whether or not the blockchain will live up to these expectations is another question. I have my doubts as it doesn’t build durable social relations necessary for communities to go on a new, long-term commons-based developmental path. Blockchain platforms are thin, and so are the social ties. There are no shortcuts, technological or otherwise, to social change. Social change is social, and social takes time. But there’s hope, as Swarm shared its recently released Distributed Collaborative Organization at the fest, a format that combines blockchain and human management of enterprises.

The second way OuiShare Fest found itself is that it seems all grown up in its third year. Things ran more smoothly, it was amply staffed with volunteers, it had all the trimmings of a professionally run conference, yet its organization reflected OuiShare’s values. With OuiShare Fest, OuiShare the organization talks the collaboration talk and walks the collaboration walk, a rare accomplishment. The fest is run in a largely decentralized fashion.

That said, I did come away with the impression that OuiShare Fest’s format and audience may be mismatched. As CrowdCompanies’ founder Jeremiah Owyang commented on Facebook, OuiShare Fest is a community of insiders, meaning it convenes the actors within the sharing economy, not the general public. To mature further, OuiShare Fest may need to create a better balance between keynotes and collaboration. FAB10, the gathering of FabLab leaders, might be a model to emulate. It’s really two events — a symposium for insiders and a festival for the public.

This model would make more sense for us at Shareable. As someone who reads about the sharing economy nearly every day, I didn’t learn much from the formal programming. It would have been great for newbies, however. OuiShare Fest would be more useful to us as an opportunity to convene stakeholders in the Sharing Cities Network. While I was delighted to give an update to a packed house on sharing cities with Nils Roemen of Sharing City Nijmegen and Harmen van Sprung of Sharing City Amersterdam, the three of us would have preferred to use this rare time together to push our work forward. I heard similar things from other attendees.

Thankfully, none of this diluted the best part of OuiShare Fest, the community spirit that brings out the best in attendees. Simone Cicero of Sharitories described the OuiShare Fest as “TED hugs Burning Man.” Like Burning Man, the fest gives attendees the opportunity to try on a new way to be in the world and relate to others.

As such, I had many encounters that exemplified the spirit of sharing, generosity, and love at OuiShare Fest. For example, on day one, Julie Da Vara and Valentine Philipponneau of JeLoueMonCampingCar, a camper van sharing platform, gave me a box of canales, Bordeaux-style cupcakes that are sinfully delicious. Johanna Steuth of Wirfel gave me a compliment card with the inscription, “For your passion for commons, communities and creating places for sharing. I like to see you there!” Ronald van den Hoff, Marielle Sijgers, and Vincent Ariens of Seats2Meet treated a bunch of us including Jen Billock of Couchsurfing and Christian Iaione of LabGov to dinner at a classic Parisian café across from the opera house. My friends Laurel and Quitterie of BioHacking Safari invited me to a lovely dinner of modern Sicilian food at DJoon. Chelsea Rustrum of It’s a Shareable Life and I livened up things at Mangopay’s party by dragging everyone onto the dance floor. Entrepreneur Daniel Goldman treated me, Tom Llewellyn, Chelsea, Benita Matofska, and her team at People Who Share to late night karaoke. And at the conference-ending OuiShare Love party, David We and I went below the surface in a conversation that revealed a similar need to connect authentically with others. It was the perfect way to end the fest – feeling totally accepted for who I am and we are, warts and all, ready to take OuiShare love out into the world.

The post OuiShare Fest Finds Itself While Lost in Transition appeared first on P2P Foundation.

FairCoin and a fair economic system from Radi.ms on Vimeo.

Thursday, 11 December 2014, 20h
La Paillaisse
226 rue Saint Denis (interior)
75002 Paris

The aim of FairCoop is to help make the transition to a new world by
reducing as much as possible economic and social inequalities among
humans, while contributing to a new global wealth, accessible to all
humankind in the form of commons.

With this presentation and discussion, we want to extend the knowledge
and debate on FairCoop in Paris, and make a first step to launch the Île
de France node.

With the participation of:
– Pablo Prieto, a member of the promoter group of FairCoop and the
Catalan Integral Cooperative.
– Primavera de Filippi, member of fairCoop’s Commons Council, and
researcher on cryptocurrency and commons.
More information: https://fair.coop/

——–

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