Executive summary

This report introduces a new institutional framework for a transformative socialist politics: the Public-Common Partnership (PCP).

Whilst the era of new public-private partnerships in the UK has apparently come to an end, more than £199 billion of Public Private Partnership (PPP) payments from the public to the private sphere are due into the 2040s. This accumulation of wealth for the few comes at the cost of deteriorating services for the many. The debt itself serves to foreclose political alternatives by tying the hands of future authorities with ceaseless debt repayments and the further entrenchment of market logic.

The popularity of calls for the nationalisation of utilities or services – such as energy, water, and housing – points to a widespread rejection of the marketisation of essential services. Yet straightforward state ownership through nationalisation or municipalisation, often treated as a panacea, is not the only alternative. As well as questioning when and where centralised ownership is appropriate, we need to think about the institutional forms of ownership and governance that are most appropriate to a radical project of social transformation. What are we trying to achieve, and what institutional forms can help take us there?

Drawing on partial examples such as the co-owned energy company in Wolfhagen, Germany, we provide an outline of what we call a Public-Common Partnership (PCP). PCPs offer an alternative institutional design that moves us beyond the overly simplistic binary of market/state. Instead, they involve co-ownership between appropriate state authorities and a Commoners Association, alongside co-combined governance with a third association of project specific relevant parties such as trade unions and relevant experts. Rather than a mono-cultural institutional form applied indiscriminately PCPs should emerge as an overlapping patchwork of institutions that respond to the peculiarities of the asset concerned, the scale at which the PCP will operate (whether it be city-region wide energy production in Greater Manchester or the commercial activity of a North London market), and the individuals and communities that will act together as commoners.

PCPs can help address challenges of political risk and economic cost, enabling more innovative and “risky” initiatives. However their real strength comes from setting in motion a self-expanding circuit of radical democratic self-governance. The aim of this circuit is to bypass the need for private financing and sidestep the mechanisms through which finance capital exercises its discipline and structures the economy. PCPs will function as a “training in democracy” and help foster a new common-sense understanding of how we relate to one another. They are a method for “taking back control” of the infrastructures and resources that underpin our collective well-being – from food markets to water basins – while increasing our collective ability to fight for the wider structural changes in our society and economy that are so urgently needed – from a reduction in the working week to the implementation of a comprehensive Green New Deal.

This report is aimed at policy makers and social movement actors, both of whom are essential to the implementation of PCPs. Whilst a Left Labour government could dramatically increase the potential for the rollout of PCPs, there is already scope for their implementation by progressive municipalities such as Preston and new city-regions such as the North of Tyne. If these projects are to succeed, however, they will also need the mobilisation of social movements, ranging from housing unions such as ACORN or environmental groups such as Frack Free Lancashire. These movements can help define the problems to be addressed, add pressure to change calculations of political cost, and act as seeds in the formation of the Commons Associations that will drive the creation of PCPs.

DOWNLOAD FULL REPORT HERE

The post Public-Common Partnerships: Building New Circuits of Collective Ownership appeared first on P2P Foundation.

• Maywa Montenegro, University of California, Davis
• Alastair Iles, University of California, Berkeley
• Akos Kokai, University of California, Berkeley

The privatization of public knowledge has become endemic to 21st century times. From corporate battles over drug patents to seed wars, knowledge produced in many forms, sites, spaces, and communities is increasingly enclosed – that is, separated from its knowledge-makers and commodified for the accumulation of capital. Science and technology are at once driving and experiencing the effects of many contemporary enclosures. To counter such trends in enclosures, in the past 15 years, knowledge commons have materialized in some S&T fields (Frischmann, Madison, and Strandburg, 2014), as well as in citizen-led movements such as Wikipedia, Creative Commons, open access science databases, and crowd-sourced science and nature platforms. Yet S&T knowledge is also becoming important to building an array of material infrastructure and institutions, in both the industrial- and developing world contexts (e.g. energy commons and fishery commons). Many of these cases revive traditional customs and norms, braiding centuries-old knowledges into something ‘new.’

We welcome papers that explore the multiple dimensions of both knowledge commons and how knowledge is being used to create or support all varieties of commons. Some potential topics include: What are the potential contributions of commons to helping regenerate and democratize the everyday practice of science and technology? How does knowledge-making enable and sustain the formation of commons, and whose knowledge matters? What sorts of knowledge are produced within commons, and how might these play a role in the identity and governance of commons? How might new technologies update and reinvigorate commons practices? How might it disrupt them? What does it mean to be ‘innovative’ in the context of a commons? Can we move from treating knowledge as a resource to ‘thinking like commoners’?

The post 4s Open Panel: Commoning Knowledge: Regeneration Through S&T appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Small-scale actions were followed by mass protests in 2015 and at the beginning of 2016. The watershed moment followed the demolitions of 25 April 2016, when citizens showed up in great numbers to protest, demanding resignations and laying criminal responsibility at the door of officials.

In the months to come, 10 major protests took place, each one bigger than the last. At the height of the protests, there were 20,000 people on the streets of Belgrade – the biggest civic protests since those that toppled Slobodan Milošević in 2000.

From the beginning, the initiative included direct actions and mass protests, using legal challenges to the development, as well as intense media campaigns. The development which contravenes Serbian legislation is still underway, but the protest have nevertheless injected a new sense of hope onto the streets of Belgrade. It has showed the strength of its citizens willing and ready to take back the control of their city, their lives and their future.

Today was a great protest organised by “Ne davimo Beograd”, commemorating a year after violent demolition, done by “phantoms” during election night in 2016.

Would you like to learn more about this initiative? Please contact us.

Or visit nedavimobeograd.wordpress.com

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

The post Belgrade, Serbia: Ne da(vo)mo Beograd Takes on Luxury Development appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Join Stacco Troncoso and Ann Marie Utratel to play Commonspoly- the resource-access game where we win by working as a community. The event will take place at 18:30 on Monday September 17th, at SUPERMARKT Berlin – (Mehringplatz 9, 10969 Berlin). Sign up though the comment section here or through this Facebook event (yes, we hate Facebook too, but we had to do this short notice)

About Commonspoly

Hi there, we hope you had a safe journey, welcome to Commonspoly’s utopia!

Commonspoly is a free licensed board game that was created to reflect on the possibilities and limits of the commons as a critical discourse towards relevant changes in society, but to do it playfully. This game is an ideal device to introduce commons theories to groups in a pedagogical and enjoyable way. But it’s also great for boring, rainy afternoons!

And another thing, Commonspoly is an attempt to repair a misunderstanding that has lasted for more than a century. Back in 1904 Elizabeth Magie patented The Landlord’s Game: a board game to warn about, and hopefully prevent, the dangerous effects of monopolism. Years later she sold the patent to Parker Brothers, who turned the game into the Monopoly we know today: a game that celebrates huge economic accumulation and the bankruptcy of anyone but you.

Commonspoly turns the basic features of the traditional game upside down in an effort to imagine a possible world based on cooperation instead of competition. But is it possible to play a board game where the players have to find ways to work together, not beat each other? Well, the cycles between financial crises are shortening, global unemployment rates are skyrocketing, ice caps are melting, and we all have that hard-to-explain, creepy feeling… In this game, it’s a race against time and every player’s help is more than welcome! It’s not all bad news – we have some powerful, community-based tools to use in this struggle against the apocalypse. Let’s get down to business: we have urban, environmental, health and knowledge-based common goods to preserve!

We are working on a new version, which is going to be available this summer. Feel free to contact us if you have any questions: [email protected]

The post Play Commonspoly at SUPERMARKT Berlin – Sept 17th appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Theo Bass: European laws have ushered in a new era in how companies and governments manage and promote responsible use of personal data. Yet it is the city that looks set to be one of the major battlegrounds in a shift towards greater individual rights, where expectations of privacy and fair use clash with ubiquitous sensors and data-hungry optimised services.

Amid the clamour for ‘smart’ new urban infrastructure, from connected lampposts and bins to camera-enabled phone boxes, a And how do we ensure that its generation and use does not result in discrimination, exclusion and the erosion of privacy for citizens?

While these new sources of data have the potential to deliver significant gains, they also give public institutions – and the technology companies who help install smart city infrastructure – access to vast quantities of highly detailed information about local residents.

A major criticism has been a lack of clear oversight of decisions to collect data in public spaces. US cities have deployed controversial police technologies such as facial recognition without elected officials, let alone the public, being adequately informed beforehand – something which academic Catherine Crump has described as “surveillance policymaking by procurement”.

Meanwhile the digital economy has flourished around urban centres, with new digital platforms creating rich trails of information about our daily habits, journeys and sentiments. Governments often work with app-developers like Waze, Strava and Uber to benefit from these new sources of data. But practical options for doing so in a truly consent-driven way – that is, not simply relying on companies’ long T&Cs – remain few and far between. There’s no simple way to opt-in or -out of the smart city.

Given the increasing tension between increasing ‘smartness’ on the one hand, and expectations of privacy and fair data use on the other, how can city governments respond? In Nesta’s new report, written as part of our involvement with a major EU Horizon 2020 project called DECODE, we looked at a handful of city governments that are pioneering new policies and services to enhance digital rights locally, and give people more control over personal data.

City governments such as Seattle are improving accountability by appointing designated roles for privacy in local government, including both senior leadership positions and departmental ‘Privacy Champions’. The city’s approach is also notable for its strong emphasis on public engagement. Prior to the approval of any new surveillance technology, relevant departments must host public meetings and invite feedback via an online tool on the council’s website.

Elsewhere cities are becoming test-beds for new technologies that minimise unnecessary data collection and boost citizen anonymity. Transport for New South Wales, Australia, collaborated with researchers to release open data about citizens’ use of Sydney’s public transport network using a mathematical technique called differential privacy – a method which makes it difficult to identify individuals by adding random ‘noise’ to a dataset.

Other experiments put more control into the hands of individuals. Amsterdam is testing a platform that allows local residents to be “authenticated but anonymous”. The system, known as Attribute-Based Credentials, lets people collect simple and discrete ‘attributes’ about themselves in an app (like “I am over 18”), which they can use to verify themselves on local government services without revealing any more personal information than absolutely necessary.

Not all the policy measures we came across are about privacy and anti-surveillance. Local governments like Barcelona are fundamentally rethinking their approach to digital information in the city – conceiving of data as a new kind of common good.

In practical terms, the council is creating user-friendly ‘data commons dashboards’ that allow citizens to collect and visualise data, for example about environmental or noise pollution in their neighbourhoods. People can use the online tools to share information about their community directly with the council, and on their own terms: they decide the level of anonymity, for instance.

Local authorities are more nimble, and in a better position to test and develop new technologies directly with local residents, than other levels of government. As the tides in the personal data economy shift, it will be cities that are the real drivers of change, setting new ethical standards from below, and experimenting with new services that give more control over data to the people.

Theo Bass is a researcher in government innovation at the innovation charity Nesta.

Photo by Cerillion

The post Essay of the day: Data by the people, for the people: why it’s time for councils to reclaim the smart city appeared first on P2P Foundation.

In the lead up to the Open Coop 2018 conference, Richard Bartlett and Natalia Lombardo (Loomio, Enspiral, the Hum) will join me in hosting an action-oriented workshop on Commonspoly at Newspeak House, London.

Commonspoly is a hacked version and critique of the game Monopoly, where the goals are to first re-municipalize private goods and then turn them into Commons. Rather than compete against each other, players must overcome ingrained training and ‘rational’, self-interest maximizing behaviours and instead learn how to cooperate to create a commons-oriented locality. It’s also great fun to play and a good challenge.

We’ll be playing with several boards simultaneously, which will make for a lively game. Apart from enjoying a fun and thought-provoking board game, we’ll also be chatting about commoning, radical politics, collaboration and much more in the context of the game.

The workshop is free but places are limited!

Please sign up by simply commenting on this post or writing to contactATp2pfoundation.net.

It will be held on Sunday the 22nd of July at 1:30 PM at:

Newspeak House, 133 Bethnal Green Rd, London E2 7DG, UK.

Also at Newspeak house: Join Richard and Natalia the previous day (Saturday July 21st) for a Masterclass on Decentralized Organizing.

Want to learn more? Watch the video or read the text below, reposted from Commonpoly’s website:

About Commonspoly

Hi there, we hope you had a safe journey, welcome to Commonspoly’s utopia!

Commonspoly is a free licensed board game that was created to reflect on the possibilities and limits of the commons as a critical discourse towards relevant changes in society, but to do it playfully. This game is an ideal device to introduce commons theories to groups in a pedagogical and enjoyable way. But it’s also great for boring, rainy afternoons!

And another thing, Commonspoly is an attempt to repair a misunderstanding that has lasted for more than a century. Back in 1904 Elizabeth Magie patented The Landlord’s Game: a board game to warn about, and hopefully prevent, the dangerous effects of monopolism. Years later she sold the patent to Parker Brothers, who turned the game into the Monopoly we know today: a game that celebrates huge economic accumulation and the bankruptcy of anyone but you.

Commonspoly turns the basic features of the traditional game upside down in an effort to imagine a possible world based on cooperation instead of competition. But is it possible to play a board game where the players have to find ways to work together, not beat each other? Well, the cycles between financial crises are shortening, global unemployment rates are skyrocketing, ice caps are melting, and we all have that hard-to-explain, creepy feeling… In this game, it’s a race against time and every player’s help is more than welcome! It’s not all bad news – we have some powerful, community-based tools to use in this struggle against the apocalypse. Let’s get down to business: we have urban, environmental, health and knowledge-based common goods to preserve!

We are working on a new version, which is going to be available this summer. Feel free to contact us if you have any questions: [email protected]

The post Learn to Play Commonspoly: London, Sunday July 22nd @ Newspeak House appeared first on P2P Foundation.

The workshop is free but places are limited, so please sign up by commenting on this post or writing to contactATp2pfoundation.net. It will be held at:

WorkHubs, 105a Euston Street, London NW1 2EW, Euston,

Starting at 5:00 PM this Thursday, March 3rd.

Want to learn more? Watch the video or read the text below, reposted from Commonpoly’s website:

About Commonspoly

Hi there, we hope you had a safe journey, welcome to Commonspoly’s utopia!

Commonspoly is a free licensed board game that was created to reflect on the possibilities and limits of the commons as a critical discourse towards relevant changes in society, but to do it playfully. This game is an ideal device to introduce commons theories to groups in a pedagogical and enjoyable way. But it’s also great for boring, rainy afternoons!

And another thing, Commonspoly is an attempt to repair a misunderstanding that has lasted for more than a century. Back in 1904 Elizabeth Magie patented The Landlord’s Game: a board game to warn about, and hopefully prevent, the dangerous effects of monopolism. Years later she sold the patent to Parker Brothers, who turned the game into the Monopoly we know today: a game that celebrates huge economic accumulation and the bankruptcy of anyone but you.

Commonspoly turns the basic features of the traditional game upside down in an effort to imagine a possible world based on cooperation instead of competition. But is it possible to play a board game where the players have to find ways to work together, not beat each other? Well, the cycles between financial crises are shortening, global unemployment rates are skyrocketing, ice caps are melting, and we all have that hard-to-explain, creepy feeling… In this game, it’s a race against time and every player’s help is more than welcome! It’s not all bad news – we have some powerful, community-based tools to use in this struggle against the apocalypse. Let’s get down to business: we have urban, environmental, health and knowledge-based common goods to preserve!

We are working on a new version, which is going to be available later this year. Feel free to contact us if you have any questions: [email protected]

The post Learn to Play Commonspoly: London, Thursday May 3 appeared first on P2P Foundation.