public space – P2P Foundation

Italy, democracy and COVID-19

Commons Transition — Thu, 23 Apr 2020 08:00:00 +0000

The crisis triggered by COVID-19 is challenging the very meaning of coexistence and cohabitation and redesigning the boundaries of public space in an absolutely unprecedented way, with unpredictable results.

Written by Francesco Martone and originally published by the Transnational Institute.

Measures to contain free movement and prohibitions on assembly have led to the temporary limitation, if not suspension, of some fundamental rights, such as the right to mobility, to meet, to demonstrate, to family life.

Over four billion people are now suffering under varying degrees of restriction of civil rights and freedoms. Nevertheless, this crisis is occurring in a global context where democracy and the civic space were already under attack, and this element needs to be duly factored in when analyzing the human rights implication of the crisis and possible remedial actions.

The CIVICUS monitor report “People power under attack” (December 2019) registered a backsliding of fundamental rights and freedom of association, peaceful assembly, and expression worldwide (40% of the world’s population now live in repressed countries, compared to 19% in 2018). The report concluded that civil society is now under attack in most countries, and just 3% of the world’s population are living in countries where fundamental rights are in general protected and respected.

In this context, COVID-19 is in fact representing a major challenge for human rights and the role of the state. Restrictions, such as social distancing, deemed crucial to preventing the spread of the virus pit the fundamental right to health against other fundamental rights and freedoms – albeit temporarily – and challenge the fundamental concept of indivisibility of rights. It is also bringing to light the extensive weakening of the state’s obligation to ensure key social and economic rights, such as the right to health, by means of a robust public health sector, or to a decent job. Millions of people, mostly the most vulnerable, migrant workers, precarious workers are losing their source of income and will be in dire conditions after the medical emergency is over.

As far as the impacts of COVID-19 on fundamental rights and on the quality of democracy are concerned, two situations can be identified. In states where restrictions and violations were rampant before the COVID-19 emergency is being used to strengthen the grip and increase repression and antidemocratic features. These are states where exception is the rule. In states where democracy still exists, albeit with the limitations described in the CIVICUS report, the COVID-19 emergency risks paving the way for dangerous restrictions that might persist also when the “emergency” is supposedly over. These are states, where the rule might become the exception. These two distinctions are key also to understand what the different challenges for international solidarity and social movements are. In both cases the space of initiative – current and future – would be jeopardized or at least affected. Social distancing is in fact hindering the possibility of organizing in traditional terms, (assembly, demonstrations, meetings, advocacy and solidarity delegations, international civil society monitors). To various degrees, countries in the so-called Global North also, where NGOs or social movements operate or are located, were already starting to suffer from a restriction of civic space (see for instance criminalization of solidarity, or restrictions and violation of privacy for antiterrorism purposes). The difference is that now the restrictions, of freedom of circulation and movement and the right to assembly in particular, are applied to entire populations.

It will therefore be essential that all measures undertaken to deal with the COVID-19 crisis and its consequences, respect fundamental rights and comply with a rights-based approach. News from various countries does not warrant optimism. From Colombia, for instance, where rural and indigenous communities already under attack before the pandemic are now even more under fire from paramilitary forces: in the last ten days at least six leaders have been murdered. Or in Hungary where Viktor Orban’s recent moves have allowed him to have full powers to manage the crisis. Or the Philippines, or Egypt or Turkey. It comes as no surprise then that in various recent statements the UN has called upon states to ensure the respect of fundamental rights, to protect the most vulnerable and to ensure that the COVID-19 emergency is not used to trample on peoples’ rights, and to justify further repression.

A brief analysis of the situation in Italy

Italy was one of the countries where COVID-19 spread with dramatic and tragic intensity. Some regions in the North, (Lombardy, Veneto, Emilia Romagna) are ranking first in terms of contagion, hospitalized patients and death toll. The spread of the pandemic in the country has been accompanied by unprecedented restrictive measures that have triggered an interesting debate on legality, democratic legitimacy, and states of exception and emergency and a growing number of initiatives by social movements, civil society, and ordinary citizens.

First and foremost, we must consider the extent to which the management of the COVID-19 emergency risks opening or deepening existing fault-lines in the democratic basis of the country and its governance structure. For instance, we are witnessing a risky overlap of competences and fragmentation of the polity. On the one hand the government, a coalition between the Democratic Party and the 5Star movement plus other minor parties, on the other the governors of the hardest-hit regions, Lombardy and Veneto (run by the right-wing League), on the other the pervasive presence of the “experts”, the Civil Protection Service (Protezione Civile) and the National Institute for Health (Istituto Superiore di Sanità). The latter are those that are instructing the political decisions: the “political” government is being substituted by some sort of medical governance and crisis/disaster management approach. Hence, any initiative that is being undertaken is hard to challenge politically, since it is motivated by scientific and technical assumptions and by the alleged goal of ensuring the containment of the virus and, by doing so, fulfilling the obligation to respect the constitutional right to public health.

The emergency is somehow “depoliticizing” the public debate. To add to this, the political turf battle between the government and those regions led by representatives of the main opposition party have led to the adoption of a multitude of decrees and ordnances that somehow form a patchwork of regulations and prohibitions, that make it harder to ensure proportionality and accountability and leave broad discretion to public officials. The use of the military in policing “social-distancing” measures is a case in point. It should be stressed that the deployment of the military for public security purposes is not a novelty in the country. Troops have been deployed to ensure protection of sensitive targets against hypothetical terror attacks, but their rules of engagement never included the enforcement of public order as the case could be now. Some “regional governors” in fact urged the deployment of troops in the streets to ensure compliance with “social-distancing” orders.

Secondly, the de-legitimation of Parliament and of the so-called “political caste” has reactivated speculation on the need for a “strong-man” or of the centralization of executive power. This de-legitimation was already severe before the outbreak and needs to be read in conjunction with the fact that, before the COVID-19, two key political deadlines were approaching, notably administrative elections and the referendum for the reduction of the number of members of Parliament. In fact for the first time ever the President of the Council of Ministers, currently Giuseppe Conte, has been issuing so-called Decrees of the President (DPCM), a brand new category of acts , since decrees are usually issued by the government as a whole. These were made executive without parliamentary debate and without their transformation into law, and hence without a sort of public scrutiny as the Constitution mandates.

In fact, the Italian Constitution does not contain any norm related to the state of emergency, while Parliament’s activity has been reduced to a minimum because of the spread of the virus among Members of Parliament and only after a few weeks from the declaration of the state of emergency was there a parliamentary debate on the COVID-19 and related government measures. More worryingly, Italy has no independent human rights institution that would monitor compliance of government’s activities and restrictions of fundamental rights and freedoms to international human rights standards and obligations as mandated by international covenants to which Italy is part, such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political rights.

Third, beyond exposing these gaps and fault-lines, COVID-19 is also bringing to light the systemic imbalances, injustices and lack of full achievement and even denial of key social and economic rights in the country. As many as 2.7 million people are at risk of hunger because they have lost any source of revenue or income due to the lockdown, and at least 20 million people are now living on subsidies and other forms of emergency income introduced by the government. These figures account for a the broad informal economy and precarious or free-lance work. Also, the dramatic rush to step up intensive care units and to increase the number of health care personnel, point to the impact of budget cuts on the public health care system carried out in the past, with all the consequences it carries in terms of ensuring equitable access to public health care for all. The current inhumane conditions for detainees, due to overcrowding, also came to public attention after a series of prison riols triggered by fear of infection.

Lastly, other estimates point to the risk of a substantial shortage of fruit and produce in the markets, since at least one quarter of annual production is guaranteed by 260,000 seasonal migrant workers who now cannot travel due to the restrictions. Many of them have been working in the past in semi-illegal or extreme conditions. or have ended up involved in organized crime. Concerns have already been voiced about the potential of the Mafia to exploit this situation by offering support and access to credit to those who lost their jobs and hence cannot ensure their basic subsistence.

Parallel to the official narrative, that hinged on a mixture of cheap patriotism, restrictive measures, and scientific governance of social processes, other practices developed, that represent an important social and political capital for the future: online assemblies; a flourishing theoretical debate on COVID-19 and its implications at all levels; a growing number of initiatives by social movements; a proposal for an Ecofeminist Green New Deal; campaigns for better conditions in jails and for amnesty; for a so-called “Quarantine minimum income”; a recently published platform of civil society organizations and social movements working on trade, economic justice and against extractivism, and in parallel a growing number of solidarity initiatives are clear signs of another Italy that does not accept resignation or helplessness. An Italy that does not accept the idea that in order to tackle the virus and its implications people have to solely comply with orders aimed at limiting, repressing or imposing “do-nothing” behavior. Support services for the elderly, the most vulnerable, those that live alone in their homes, food banks, psychological support and assistance, purchasing and home delivery of drugs are among the most recurrent self-organized initiatives, that express an attempt to turn the feminist concept and practice of “care” into political practice. Civil society somehow transforms itself into a “commune”, and its members into commoners, that collectively organize to foster the respect and pursuit of common goods and rights, such as the right to food, care, solidarity. The challenge will be that of nurturing that mix of theoretical analysis, mobilizing and mutual aid and support from below after the most immediate “medical” emergency will slowly leaving the space to the economic and social one.

Further challenges will be that of linking up those processes with the global level, with similar and parallel processes elsewhere, adopting a “decolonized” approach that would always consider power imbalances locally and globally. COVID-19 will not bring the automatic transformation of our societies or the collapse of capitalism, or a revolution by proxy. Rather, the way and intensity of activation of social movements’ response “at present” will also be key to determine how these, and new and innovative modalities of conflict, proposal and self-organization can forge our future.

Photo credit Daniel Chavez (TNI)

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Law: The invisible architecture of the commons

Shareable — Wed, 25 Jul 2018 08:00:00 +0000

Saki Bailey: In 2009, political economist Elinor Ostrom won the Nobel Prize in economics for her work demonstrating that “the commons” are not simply unregulated spaces of ruin, but instead places where the law operates invisibly, according to community norms and values in ways that lead to their sustainable use over many generations. What Ostrom’s work revealed is that the “invisibility” of law and legal governance in the commons was the result of a bias in favor of private property as the optimal form of governance of scarce resources.

While Ostrom’s work revealed that legal relations governing resources invisibly structure the commons, what those legal relations in fact reveal is our social and economic relations about resources: Who makes what? How much of what? And who gets what?

In the commons, the answers to these questions are embedded in a social logic according to community norms and values. In market societies, the source of these answers are to be found in the non-social economic logic of capitalism. The catalyst for this non-social economic logic, according to social theorists like Karl Polanyi and others, was the separation of people from their means of subsistence through the enclosure of the commons: throwing people off their land, separating them from the basics of life — food, water, and shelter — and charging rent for access. In the feudal commons, access to the means of subsistence was guaranteed by one’s inclusion and social status in a community and territory. In the transition to market economies, one’s subsistence became a matter of one’s ability to pay rent and/or labor for a wage. This new system unleashed a logic of competition for productive land and work, the accumulation of capital to reinvest into labor and time saving technologies, and the expansion of instrumental relations and commodification into every space and sphere of life.

As Polanyi said: “Instead of economy being embedded in social relations, social relations are embedded in the economic system.” Or to put it simply, instead of profit serving the needs of people, people came to serve the needs of profit. Polanyi’s optimistic outlook was that through property, welfare and finance regulation — through law — the market could be embedded once again to serve human and social purposes.

So, from this perspective, law is a tool for lawyers, judges, legislators, and most importantly citizens, to wield against the market, to combat the inequities that it produces in its unfettered wake-both top down and bottom up. And law can be utilized beyond property, welfare, and finance law to other domains. Law can be used towards decommodifying our means of subsistence by guaranteeing access to fundamental resources that are crucial to human life, both top down, by naming things like healthcare, education, and housing (just to name a few) as a right, to which access should be guaranteed, but also from the bottom up, by changing the structure of property and contract entitlements, for instance to allow for simultaneous use of shared resources, and curb unrestricted transfer rights. Law can also be used to reorganize work away from wage labor and towards workers’ ownership, by enacting through legislation the recognition of new legal entities like the Cooperative Corporation or the B Corporation that place non-market values at their center, or bottom up through the creation of workers cooperatives (a rapidly growing movement throughout the world). Law can also be used to alter the structure of intellectual property rights in ways that encourage sharing, collaboration, and innovation, top down by policymakers refusing to create certain kinds of property rights in these resources, but also bottom up through legal innovation and resistance through individuals adopting the Creative Commons license or “copyleft” policy over other proprietary forms of copyright.

In this new series on Shareable, “Law: The invisible architecture of the commons,” we will showcase new and emerging legal institutions that offer an alternative system of incentives for encouraging cooperation, sharing, and sustainability. These legal institutions demonstrate how citizens, working together with lawyers and policymakers, can successfully design legal institutions for themselves to decommodify our access to fundamental resources, alter the wage labor relationship through new types of legal entities, and create new ways of stimulating ownership, innovation, and collaboration around knowledge goods.

Cross-posted from Shareable

Photo by Sinéad McKeown

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How these 3 citizen-led initiatives saved and restored public land

Shareable — Sat, 14 Jul 2018 08:00:00 +0000

Open spaces are key to the health and vitality of cities. Walkable, safe, green spaces increase the possibilities for people to meet and nurture relationships beyond family, friends, and colleagues. But a discussion about Sharing Cities can’t focus on open spaces alone. Gentrification should be a part of that discussion. If we, promoters of Sharing Cities, do not manage to address the tension of gentrification by finding strategies to secure the livelihoods of the people who produce the urban commons and to disarm profit-maximizing interests, then the tragedy of the urban commons will only be reinforced. The way the sharing economy discourse was co-opted by profit-oriented platforms shows how quickly Sharing Cities could fall over the barrier and become just another way to reproduce existing patterns of domination.

Social capital is shaped and molded by space. This same social capital is crucial in the successful self-organization of the commons, according to the late political economist Elinor Ostrom. Thus, in places where people can mobilize social capital, decades of urban planning practices are being challenged.

Digitalization is also an opportunity: It allows people to collect and make use of data in creative ways on an unprecedented scale. This has a huge potential for the urban commons. City administrators hold large amounts of land data that is so far hard to access or use, but when it becomes open data, it can unleash bottom-up innovations.

Last but not least, we should not forget that practices that foster Sharing Cities may have actually been there for decades. Some of those practices may be seen as old-fashioned, but might prove useful today. —Adrien Labaeye

1. Bottom Road Sanctuary: A Post-Apartheid Community Managed Nature Sanctuary

The area around Zeekoevlei lake, in South Africa, has had extremely high concentrations of threatened native plant species. This is partly because its northern bank was used as a garbage dump for many years. Then, in 2005, the city of Cape Town rezoned the area into parcels of land to be purchased by people who suffered through the Apartheid. The residents who moved in joined forces with nature conservation officials and local environmental organizations to restore the wetland. In practice, this meant residents largely left the space open and undeveloped. Some residents have actively removed invasive species, allowing a particularly threatened plant species, the fynbos, to thrive again in its natural habitat. The Bottom Road Sanctuary now has over 50,000 native plants, attracting many kinds of wildlife. It also has walkways, benches, and barbecuing spaces for nearby residents to share. —Adrien Labaeye

2. Gängeviertel: Repurposed Historical Building for Public Art and Culture

The city of Hamburg decided to tear down a deteriorating historical building complex in a neighborhood once known as “das Gängeviertel.” In August 2009, artists formed a collective to oppose the destruction of the 12 buildings, and advocated that they instead be repurposed as a public space for creativity. The collective succeeded in saving the Gängeviertel, and held a launch celebration. The event brought 3,000 residents of Hamburg into the space for exhibitions, film screenings, concerts, and other cultural events. The collective then transformed into a co-operative in 2010, and presented a concept plan for the complex to the local urban development authority in Hamburg. The city approved the plan and granted the co-op’s use and management of the buildings. In the six years since, several of the buildings have been renovated by the city and tens of thousands of people have visited the cultural complex. In 2012, the German UNESCO Commission celebrated the Gängeviertel initiative as a successful example of urban development that promotes cultural and social participation through the preservation of public spaces and democratic city policies. —Adrien Labaeye

3. Chisinau Civic Center: Vacant Lot Reclaimed as a Public Park for Community Gatherings

A neglected plot of triangular land once lay in the city of Chisinau in Moldova. Cars regularly drove over it. Some used it to dump their garbage and construction rubble. Now, the site is a lively public space, known as the Chisinau Civic Center. The transformation was initiated by the local nongovernmental organization the Oberliht Association, and was created together with local officials as well as artists, architects, scientists, students, and community members. In the very beginning, they held a public picnic at the park as a way to invite nearby residents to get involved in the park’s restoration. The organizers then built a wooden platform in the center of the park with support of the nearby residents. This eventually led to the Civic Center becoming a play area for children, as well as a place for community gatherings, film screenings, games, exhibits, and performances. —Cat Johnson

These three short case studies are adapted from our latest book, “Sharing Cities: Activating the Urban Commons.”

Cross-posted from Shareable

Photo by humblenick

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How Can We Redesign Cities as Shared Spaces?

Shareable — Wed, 22 Feb 2017 09:00:00 +0000

Cat Johnson: At a time when corporate sponsorship and ownership of city spaces, buildings, and events continues to grow at lightning pace, it’s more important than ever to rethink our cities as shared entities that belong to all of us.

In his recent speech at the Smart City Expo World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, researcher, activist, and author David Bollier argued that urban enclosures, which he says is the “privatization of shared wealth,” create jam-packed cities by commodifying shared resources.

Bollier presented a new vision for cities — one driven by bottom-up engagement, citizen participation, and innovative ways of thinking about shared spaces and resources.

Bollier argued that to reclaim our cities as commons we need to treat our vital urban resources as shareable common wealth. Doing so creates more long-term value as people have the opportunity to be empowered and to do things themselves. He pointed to several examples supporting the urban commons, including:

Creative Commons Licensing, which enables people to share and freely use creative works
FabLabs and Makerspaces, which are new social forms for creating valuable stuff through a commons-based collaboration
Platform Cooperatives, which create shared platforms “as an antidote to the so-called death stars” of the sharing economy
Alternative Currencies as a way to retain some of the value created regionally as opposed to having it siphoned away
Non-digital commons projects, including land trusts, urban agriculture and community gardens, and participatory budgeting projects which empower citizens to work with city leaders to create budget priorities

Bollier concluded by emphasizing that cities can be incubators for developing new solutions to systemic problems and that transnational partnerships between cities around the world will be an important element to further the movement of cities as a commons.

Video description: “A new type of citizen economy is emerging – the City as a Commons. This is not a tech platform or economic strategy as such, but a bold re-imagining of the city as a living social organism that invites everyone to co-create, open-source style. Through FabLabs, data sharing, platform co-operatives and many participatory systems, innovative urban commons are transforming city governance, commerce, design, social services, and everyday life.”

By Cat Johnson; cross-posted from Shareable

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Team Human 11: Steve Lambert on Public Displays of Collaboration

Douglas Rushkoff — Sun, 04 Dec 2016 11:00:00 +0000

http://teamhuman.fm/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/TH_11-Steven-Lambert.01_01.mp3
Playing for Team Human is art activist Steve Lambert. Steve reclaims public spaces with his work, igniting the radical imagination and critical thinking of his audience collaborators. With his recent piece, “Capitalism Works For Me!(True/False),” Lambert brought an interactive scoreboard out to the public, and in doing so, sparked an honest, candid, and personal discussion about how the economy is working for people.

Lambert is a founder and director of the Center for Artistic Activism where he hosts resources and workshops to help aspiring activists innovate new means of social transformation.

Visit Steve’s website visitsteve.com to learn more about his many interactive art projects.

More links to creative and playful means of engagement can also be found at the Team Human resources page under the heading “Protest and Resistance”

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Trama: Netweaving and Collaboration in Rio de Janeiro

Shareable — Sat, 23 Jul 2016 08:22:00 +0000

Written by Cândida Rato and cross-posted from Shareable.

In late 2014 a design project at PUC-Rio university led five students to the street in Rio de Janeiro to restore an idle square by opening it for people collaboration and creativity. They received a high grade for the event and it was the starting point of Trama, an open collective that acts as a catalyst for collaborative initiatives in the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Trama is building itself around a belief in the power of collaborative initiatives that mobilize people, places and actions to create more impact. They do this by organizing outdoor events to revitalize idle spaces using creative arts and with a collaboratively created online platform to facilitate shared initiatives. Trama is a platform, but it could also be an open meeting, an urban intervention, a creative initiative, an interactive dynamic.

The team has grown to a dozen people in less than two years, bringing together friends with different areas of expertise who gather for walks, swims, meals and to plan how to foster a more participative and integrated city where any person can be an active agent.

Shareable connected with Rebecca Barreto and two of the co-founders, Gabriela Ornellas and Felipe Faillace Salazar, to learn more about this determined collective of young people engaged in strengthening the voice of independent, collaborative and creative initiatives for transforming their city for better.

When asked how Trama is changing their lives, Rebecca says, it´s about “connecting with like-minded people,” while, for Gabriela and Felipe, it was a way to experience a new “sharing reality.” All agree it changed the way they see the world; what was once a utopian idea has become very tangible because they, along with others around the world, are making it happen.

The work they are doing is both influenced by and a response to the socio-political situation in Rio de Janeiro and the country of Brazil as a whole. The general population experiences a constant challenge to receive basic services, including education, health and safety, while facing a presidential impeachment on the grounds of alleged corruption, the growing evidence of a parliamentary coup, and an extended financial crisis.

Open Meetings Pulsos da Trama, credit: Gabriela Ornellas

Shareable: What led five design students to create Trama?

Gabriela: For their final project at the university, the co-founders needed to create an event in an idle square of the city. We had top grade for this work and maintained the project since it was an important creative gathering for the city. That was the first Trama event.

Rebecca: Trama’s founders noticed that several independent and creative initiatives happen all the time throughout the city in different spaces, not articulated or integrated. Also, that there are a lot of idle spaces in the city. So why not bring the people who run these initiatives together? [We can] occupy and use these idle spaces in order to get stronger and gather more people and money to create a larger impact.

You say 2016 is “the year Trama went out to the streets.” What actions have you been doing and what is in store for the second half of 2016?

In a year and half, Trama accomplished some big achievements, such as collaborative occupations in idle squares and at the oldest public park in Brazil, with more than 15 collectives and 5000 people participating with music, art, theatre, capoeira and more. We developed interactive city interventions, pop-up coworking in a public museum, and hosted open meetings to get to know and mobilize people for collaborative projects in the city and to bring in new contributors to our collective.

O Passeio é Público, credit: Gabriela Ornellas

Rebecca: We believe we´re going to get in contact with more people by having more outside projects and street events and we are looking forward to building our platform. We´re putting individuals, collectives, NGOs and others together for idle space revitalization to make a better city. Right now there are a lot of foreigners from Europe and USA around because of big events like the Olympics and due to the cheaper currency, so we aim to get into the streets to touch more people. We also plan to have the MVP (Minimum Viable Product) of our open source platform ready in the near future. To do this we are organizing a hackathon in late June (Hackatrama) in a partnered coworking space, Templo, following the MapJam we organized in April (MapJamRio). We are looking for a shared world, so we though, “Let’s ask people if they want to join us to build a platform that can cause a good impact in the world.” We were surprised that 80 people registered for Hackatrama in only two weeks, from developers, designers, architects to a dancer. Note: This event takes place on the 25th of June in Templo Coworking.

Felipe: Our platform will be open source, totally available for those willing to build it together and use its codes.

Gabriela: It’s a very intense year with a major focus on enhancing our presence online with the platform to reach more people.

How is Trama involved in the city of Rio de Janeiro and how is your work affected by the present socio-political context of Brazil?

Rebecca: Trama has two focuses: the team facilitating collaborative initiatives in the city and the platform built in a collaborative way that will be its digital arm. This can be taken to other places hoping for people to use it for the best.

Gabriela: It’s about connecting parts together—everything can be a part: individuals, NGOs, urban collectives, a person, a group, companies—anyone who wants to meet people with similar goals to be achieved collaboratively can be connected in our platform.

Rebecca: We put all these people with similar purposes together. We are paying attention to what’s happening in our country, speaking with each other and showing on our Facebook page. We´re not taking part in any specific political parties. Brazil doesn´t have money for education, teachers, infrastructure, etc., so we are supporting people who want to create initiatives like occupations of closed public schools being led by kids, teenagers and people willing to give free lessons. We bring people together so they can talk and think together in order to have more social impact in their actions instead of doing it alone—creating a stronger network along this scene. They take Trama´s name with it.

Nó Cultural, at Aterro do Flamengo, credit: Gabriela Ornellas

Trama’s core team grew from five to 12 in the first year. Who is behind Trama and how are you working as a collaborative while financially sustaining yourselves?

Rebecca: After asking a friend and co-founder about the project and discovering it was open to others who were willing to join, I was really excited to apply my skills and available time to support its growth. My main motivation to join came from seeing that the sharing economy is real, that it´s possible to build a different society and better economy by gathering with other people and creating it together—first working locally before spreading out into the world.

Felipe: The way we organize is spontaneous. It´s very difficult to merge all the different visions, ideas, emotions and we have many ways to deal with this. When we receive a project we ask three questions: Do we have time for it? Are we giving up on something because of it? Who on the team wants to work with it? People are working on projects because of their own interests in developing it. In Trama you jump into something because you want to, not because you need to. People share what’s going on and even ask for help and ideas in the weekly meetings. There´s an “owner” of each project who can ask for help or collaborators.

Rebecca: It´s very easy now. Initially we decided to have work groups, but it was too similar to a corporate structure. We are transitioning, learning and testing collaborative tools like sociocracy.

Rebecca: One of our main challenges is how to make Trama a sustainable project for the team. How are we going to pay our bills while doing something good for the world, without having to put a need for money ahead of our ideas? We´re thinking of using the platform network and offering workshops to involve more people in the sharing economy experience. Engaging participants to commit and keep with a project is also a challenge.

Felipe: We work on Trama from our hearts but as life goes on we want to be independent. We need to work on something that has meaning for us but at the same time that gives us stability. So the main challenge is working on a sustainable and profitable project. We want to keep doing things from our heart and get paid for that. We grow in a network along with other organizations and startups that face the same challenge and we believe working together is the way to overcome it.

Beyond 2016, what does the future hold for Trama?

Felipe: My vision is that this project will grow exponentially and include others that support our idea to bring this collaborative, cooperative, sharing city way to the world. I believe in Trama as a platform and tool for people to use to revive their own lives, communities, neighborhoods, and cities. [They can] use this growing creative economy, with art and culture, to materialize the world they envision. This comes from my own experience in this project and has become a bigger challenge since I started getting to know a world that had previously been a mystery before.

Top Photo: Day of Good Deeds. Credit: Gabriela Ornellas

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Project Of The Day: City Repair Project

Nathan Slater — Wed, 09 Mar 2016 23:47:09 +0000

Mark Lakeman

I first learned about place-making from Mark Lakeman at his office in Portland. In addition to running an architecture/design business, (Communitecture) Mark co-founded City Repair Project.

City Repair takes a hands-on approach to placemaking by sponsoring the Village Building Convergence (VBC).

Hands-on placemaking programs like VBC provides three benefits:

A live project brings together organizations. (see #1. North Tabor Mandala project, below)
A live project attracts people. (see #2. Beech Street project, below)
A live project motivates action. (see #3. Right To Dream, Too project, below)

City Repair’s mission page explains their philosophy of placemaking:

City Repair facilitates artistic and ecologically-oriented placemaking through projects that honor the interconnection of human communities and the natural world.

City Repair’s history page cites placemaking program:

Our biggest annual program is the Village Building Convergence. Over the past 15 years we have facilitated 1000s of community members in their placemaking journey.

City Repair’s Intersection Repair page feature many of their live projects.

Here are three examples:

1. North Tabor Mandala

Extracted from http://www.cityrepair.org/north-tabor-mandala

2015 Description:

North Tabor Neighborhood Association in conjunction with South East Uplift was overjoyed to bring an intersection mandala into the heart of the neighborhood. In the spirit of their long term goals to bring life, culture, and vibrancy to the community, they worked with the local Portland Montessori School, whose upper elementary school children produced a design of geometric shapes, angles, and patterns.

2. Beech Street Project

Extracted from https://www.facebook.com/BeechStProject/?fref=nf Beech St. Project

December 2, 2014

Hi Neighbors! In case you missed it our little street made international news. The project and the story are inspiring community builders in Japan!.

January 23, 2016

Japanese group tour PDX Placemaking

Extracted from http://www.cityrepair.org/blog/2016/1/23/japanese-group-tour-pdx-placemaking

On 1/16 and 1/23, workers from a Japanese factory visited The City Repair Project and Propel Studio to learn about our design work to serve communities.

We presented on our work and then toured placemaking sites including the Hawthorne Hostel on SE 31st and Hawthorne and the Dialogue Dome/Cob Oven/Grazing Gardens of Portland State University.

3. Right To Dream, Too

Extracted from http://www.cityrepair.org/calendar/2016/2/4/support-right-2-dream-too-at-city-council

Calendar of EventsSupport Right 2 Dream Too at City Council!

Thursday, February 18, 2016
2:00pm 5:00pm
Portland City Hall1220 SW 5th AvePortland, OR

City Council will be discussing an item titled “SE Harrison Street Vacation and Karl Arruda Zoning Confirmation Letter and Use Agreement for SE 3rd & Harrison” which is to make way for Right 2 Dream Too to inhabit a new space. Please come out to support our villager friends!

Extracted from http://www.portlandoregon.gov/auditor/56674

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Sharing Cities: Why Ownership, Governance and The Commons Matter More Than Ever

Darren Sharp — Mon, 15 Feb 2016 01:00:06 +0000

Ballarat St permanent park providing green space for the people of Yarraville (Melbourne).

Sharing Cities have been generating a lot of attention recently thanks to the Sharing Cities Network and the announcement of Shareable’s upcoming book on commons-based urban solutions for municipal and civic leaders. Interest in Australia and New Zealand is growing too as evidenced by some recent events like the Melbourne Conversations panel on Smart City Leadership that I spoke at for the launch of Melbourne Knowledge Week last year.

In a recent interview with Wallace Chapman for RadioNZ Sunday, I talked about the rise of Sharing Cities,platform cooperativism and the shift from extractive to generative forms of ownership and value creation. This led to a series of invitations from Kiwis across the country keen for me to speak on sharing cities including a warm welcome by the Mayor of Christchurch, New Zealand, a city devastated by the 2011 earthquake and going through a period of experimental urban regeneration (see Gap Filler for inspiration).

The Commons in Christchurch is located on what used to be the site of the Crowne Plaza hotel which was demolished in 2012. The site is now a hub of transitional activity and home to a number of post-quake organisations.

Widespread interest in Sharing Cities makes perfect sense. In 1800 only 3% of the world’s population lived in cities. This figure has climbed to 50% today, and the global urban population is projected to reach around 70% by 2050. We are clearly living through the urban century and human civilization will either make it or break it in cities. The need to develop innovative thinking to address the climate crisis, resource constraints, inequality, and energy descent is greater now than ever.

That’s why Sharing Cities is a refreshing antidote to the top-down, technologically deterministic vision of the future we so often hear about in discussions of Smart Cities and the Internet of Things – a vision dominated by sensor networks, data mining and myriad opportunities for corporate and government surveillance.

Too many cities have been quick to embrace ‘smart technologies’ that attempt to overlay a city-wide digital operating system. Where integrated water, energy and transportation networks track and respond to the movement of people and objects. Who wins and who loses in this scenario?

It’s reminiscent of a scene from the 1969 Philip K. Dick novel Ubik where the protagonist gets into an argument with his “money gulping door” which demands payment every time he needs to enter or exit the building as his terms of service contract makes clear.

Chinese city opens ‘phone lane’ for texting pedestrians via The Guardian,

Sharing Cities on the other hand provide citizen-centric alternatives that focus on increasing the sharing capacity of existing infrastructure like public buildings and free wifi; provide access to idle or underutilised assets for ridesharing, coworking or urban agriculture; and strengthen the social fabric through deliberative decision-making like Citizen’s Juries, Participatory Budgeting and other forms of active citizenship.

Sharing Cities are an interesting hybrid between the public, private and community sectors and rely on a range of public goods and commonly owned resources to operate effectively. These include everything from the internet and road networks to open data and vacant public land. Cities are at the vanguard of the sharing movement as hubs of disruptive innovation, knowledge transfer and creative communities. Sharing Cities are about creating pathways for participation that recognise the City as Commons and give everyone in the community the opportunity to enjoy access to common goods and create new forms of shared value, knowledge, and prosperity.

The Agrocité urban commons project in the suburbs of Paris (via The Guardian).

The time has come for cities everywhere to emulate Sharing City trailblazers like Seoul and Amsterdam who recognise that sharing builds urban resilience, economic interdependence and social cooperation. City governments can help strike a fair balance by putting citizens first, supporting platform cooperatives and protecting the public realm. Cities can design the infrastructure, services and regulations that enable sharing in all its forms and strengthen the urban commons through policies for sharing cities that support food, jobs, housing and transportation initiatives to keep and grow wealth in local communities.

Sharing Cities give everyone who wants to participate in the sharing economy the opportunity to have a fair go. Government and business must work together with citizens to develop policy solutions that make sense for people, cities and sharing platforms. Sharing Cities provide a framework to make this vision for an inclusive sharing economy a reality.

This article originally appeared in Shareable.

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Bologna. The relational ecosystems of the city becomes a commons

Oriana Persico — Fri, 23 Oct 2015 20:27:47 +0000

Human Ecosystems (HE) is an international city based project running from 2013. Its main goal is to explore the mutation of public spaces in cities, designing performative strategies to promote citizen participation and ubiquitous, peer-to-peer innovation processes, in which citizens and other types of urban dwellers are able to use the city’s infoscape: its informational landscape.

The project has already been instanced in various forms in urban settings such as Rome, Sao Paulo, New Haven, Montreal, Toronto, Berlin, Lecce, Bari, Budapest and, nowadays, in Bologna.

Together with the UC – Ubiquitous Commons research effort, the project aims at describing a ubiquitous infoscape in which data becomes an accessible, usable part of the landscape, just as buildings, trees, roads, and in which it is clear and transparent (although complex and fluid) what is public, private, intimate. And in which people, as individuals and members of society, are able to use their data to construct meaningful actions.

The project: how it works

HE is a complex technological system for cities and a new space for artistic, cultural and creative performance.

The systems massively captures data in real-time from entire cities and transforms it into a commons, available and accessible by anyone, and manageable collaboratively. Data is captured from major social networks (such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Foursquare) and other data sources (such as census, land registries, energy, mobile traffic, and the many types of Open Data source which can be present in the city), and processed in near-real time using a variety of techniques (georeferencing, natural language analysis, emotional analysis, network analysis, data integration and fusion techniques, standard statistics techniques).

The result of these processes is a real-time Open Data source (a new immaterial commons) in which citizens become sensors, with their interactions and everyday expressions in the new and controversial space formed by social network.

Together with the data commons, the project is composed of two other main components: the RTCM – Real Time Museum of the City and a wide, inclusive education program, teaching citizens, children, elderly, artists, designers, researchers, public administrators, professionals and more to understand how to use HE and the Relational Ecosystem of the city and how to engage citizens in the process.

Human Ecosystems, workshop at SESC Vila Mariana, S. Paulo

The RTMC is an iconic space in which the Ubiquitous Infoscape and the Relational Ecosystem of the city becomes perceivable and materializes in the public space of the city. Designed as an interactive museum and a lab, people can explore the real time flows of data, information, knowledge, communication, emotion, opinion in the city, understanding its life and how it evolves over time. In the museum, people can learn how to use HE to collaborate, to perform research, to create artworks and designs, to find themselves within the Relational Ecosystem and to ask meaningful questions to the city.

All of the technologies related to HE are released as Open Source, and are actively maintained from an international community of practitioners in technologies, arts, sciences and humanities.

RTCM – Real Time Museum of the City , S, Paulo, SESC Vila Mariana

The Bologna case

From October 2015, Human Ecosystems started in the City of Bologna, creating a major case in the history of the project.

In its previous experiment so far, the role of the City administration was relatively limited, being research centers, universities, public museums and civil society the key partner of the project.

With Bologna things turned out to be different: for the first time, the City administration is the main driver of the process.

Bologna is historically one of the most advanced administration in Italy. It is the place in which the first experiments of electronic government and governace were born, and more recently the famous “social street” movement. It brings us the the “collaborative policies” adopted by the current city administration: an effort to define the “city as a commons”.

Who talks about collaboration in Bologna on social networks? And how? What are the more collaborative neighborhoods? Which topics are more discussed by citizens? What emotions are they expressing? Who are the hubs, the influencers, the bridges between communities and the experts of collaboration? In which languages does collaboration happen in town?

HUB – Human Ecosystems Bologna will support “Collaborare è Bologna”, the policies for collaboration promoted by the City administration.

HUB – Human Ecosystems Bologna: emotional map

Matteo Lepore, Councillor for the Digital Agenda and the Promotion of the City, states that:

“With this project we intend to concretely experience the use of big data. We have launched the new civic network in Bologna and the city wi-fi, extending the coverage 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, with free access, offering high speed connection to schools, theaters and soon to enterprises and homes. We are reaching now the European goals for 2020, with social networks at the center of our innovation policies. We are aware that the digital ecosystem is an infrastructure for development, growth and inclusion. But to make this leap, we have to learn to systematize the data we produce: with HUB, we are going in the right direction, in particular considering the transition of Bologna toward metropolitan area and the public investments to come“.

Sponsored by ANCI – National Association of Italian Municipalities and LabGov – LABoratory for the GOVernance of the Commons, the project will show the relational ecosystem of participation, cooperation and collaboration in the City of Bologna in its digital dimension. From October 7th to December 7th 2015 an interactive exhibit will transform the spaces of the Urban Center Bologna into a temporary version of the RTCM, enabling citizens and visitors to observe the themes, places, emotions and opinions of the “Collaborative Bologna”, as they are addressed and publicly expressed on major social networks by citizens, discovering and creating unexpected connections.

At the end of the exhibit, the collected data will be released as set of Open Data, published by the open data portal of the city.

HUB – Human Ecosystems Bologna: visualizations

This is a major breakthrough: for the first time the relational ecosystem as of a city, as it is expressed publicly on social network by city, becomes formally a commons secured by public institution. A process in which, as society, we can begin to question the controversial public/private/intimate space of social network – as well as the upcoming Internet of Things scenarios.

At the present time, most individuals generate data in ways in which they don’t realize or understand, and which they cannot understand, due to the opacity of collection processes, algorithms, classifications, parameters.And individuals are, currently, the only ones who cannot fully benefit from Big Data: to organize themselves; to create meaningful, shared initiatives; to understand more about themselves and about the world around them.

This overall scenario is what we confront with with our projects. Thanks to the City of Bologna today we are moving a big step forward.

Links

HE – Human Ecosystems
www.human-ecosystems.com

“Collaborare è Bologna”
http://www.comune.bologna.it/collaborarebologna
http://www.urbancenterbologna.it/collaborare-bologna

“Human Ecosystems @Ars Electronica 2015”, on “Fastforward 2” by Motherboard, 1° episode
http://motherboard.vice.com/it/read/fastforward-ars-electronica

Human Ecosystems in S. Paulo (BR), documentary by Universidade Metodista
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEgKX-M4AOI

Human Ecosystems in New Haven (USA), documentary by YWF – Yale World Fellows
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXCeAHgKcHU

Credits

HUB – Human Ecosystems Bologna is a project promoted by:

the City of Bolognawith the support of:

ANCI – Associazione Nazionale Comuni Italiani

LabGov – LABoratory for the GOVernance of the Commons

Concept and Realization:
HE – Human Ecosystems / AOS – Art is Open Source

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