The following post by Will Ruddick is republished from Grassroots Economics

Bernard’s vision of diverse monetary eco-systems that support communities and the environment rather than extract from them, as they continue to do now, is the spark that moved me from physics in the US into economics in Kenya and is still the vision that motivates me and countless other community currency developers, researchers and activists. His vision preceded crypto currencies by decades. Back then, the only way we could move toward Bernard’s vision was by trial and error – creating currency after currency using paper bills or centralized databases.

I met Bernard Lietaer for the first time while implementing a small paper-based community currency program in three villages near Mombasa. He understood all the heart-wrenching challenges of fighting poverty and embraced me, knowing that the vision was true and we were doing our best with the sticks and stones we had to use. He spoke of Yin and Yang flows of different currencies for spending and savings and much more. The intricate dance and balance of these currencies working together was so tangible to him that you could feel it flowing through his whole being.

Connecting those early community currencies together into the ecosystem he envisioned wasn’t possible without blockchain. Bernard was convinced that solutions like the Bancor Protocol which allowed currencies to communicate with each other through and across blockchains was the key to scaling and viral growth. With Bernard as President of the Bancor Foundation and his ability to cut through the sensationalism of blockchain to its potential to empower humanity to develop sustainable and healthy monetary ecosystems – there was and is no place I would rather be. When asked to direct the foundation’s efforts on community currencies under his guidance, it was a dream come true. It is a great honor to walk in his footsteps and without him it is a great loss to me personally.

The world has lost a visionary that inspired and united people to fix fundamental flaws in our monetary systems, which are the root causes of poverty and massive human and environmental strife. As we thank him for opening the doors and dedicate our work toward his vision, let us ensure his message continues to flourish and inspire future generations – that we banish the concept of monetary monoculture and embrace the values that are within each of us as the fundamental units of a diverse ecosystem of currencies that connect us all together in love and allow us to heal our planet and ourselves.

Sincerely with Love, Inspiration and Celebration of a life well lived,

Will Ruddick

The post Celebrating Bernard’s Inspiration appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Digital technologies allow for the creation of a new mode of production, a new mode of allocation, and new types of social relations beyond the state-market nexus.

Not since Marx identified the manufacturing plants of Manchester as the blueprint for the new capitalist society has there been a deeper transformation of the fundamentals of our social life. As capitalism faces a series of structural crises, a new social, political and economic dynamic is emerging: peer-to-peer (P2P).

What is P2P? And why is it important in building a commons-centric future? These are the questions we try to answer, by tying together four of its aspects:

1. P2P is a type of social relations in human networks;

2. P2P is also a technological infrastructure that makes the generalization and scaling up of such relations possible;

3. P2P thus enables a new mode of production and exchange;

4. P2P creates the potential for a transition to an economy that can be generative towards people and nature.

We believe that these four aspects will profoundly change human society. P2P ideally describes systems in which any human being can contribute to the creation and maintenance of a shared resource, while benefiting from it. There is an enormous variety of such systems: from the free encyclopedia Wikipedia to free/open-software projects, to open design and hardware communities, to relocalization initiatives and community currencies.

WHAT IS P2P AND HOW IS IT RELATED TO THE COMMONS?

To begin with, P2P computing systems are characterized by consensual connections between “peers.” This means the computers in the network can interact with each other. It is in this context that the literature started to characterize the sharing of audio and video files as P2P file-sharing, and that at least a part of the underlying infrastructure of the Internet, like its data transmission infrastructure, has been called P2P.

Let’s now assume that behind those computers are human users. A conceptual jump can be made to argue that users now have a technological affordance (a tool) that allows them to interact and engage with each other more easily and on a global scale. P2P can be seen as a relational dynamic through which peers can freely collaborate with each other and create value in the form of shared resources.

It is this mutual dependence of the relational dynamic and the underlying technological infrastructure that facilitates it, which creates the linguistic confusion between P2P as a technological infrastructure and P2P as a human relational dynamic. However, a technological infrastructure does not have to be fully P2P in order to facilitate P2P human relationships. For example, compare Facebook or Bitcoin with Wikipedia or free/open-source software projects: they all utilize P2P dynamics, but they do so in different ways and with different political orientations.

P2P is therefore a mode of relating that allows human beings, organized in networks, to collaborate, produce and exchange value. The collaboration is often permissionless, meaning that one may not need the permission of another in order to contribute. The P2P system is thus generally open to all contributors and contributions. The quality and inclusion of the work is usually determined “post-hoc” by a layer of maintainers and editors, as in the case of Wikipedia.

P2P can also be a mode to allocate resources that does not involve any specific reciprocity between individuals, but only between the individuals and the collective resource. For example, you are allowed to develop your own software based on an existing piece of software distributed under the widely used GNU General Public License, only if your final product is available under the same kind of license.

In the realm of information that can be shared and copied at low marginal costs, the P2P networks of interconnected computers used by collaborating people can provide vital shared functionalities for the commons. However, P2P does not only refer to the digital sphere and is not solely related to high technology. P2P can generally be synonymous with “commoning,” in the sense that it describes the capacity to contribute to the creation and maintenance of any shared resource.

There are multiple definitions of the “commons.” We adhere to David Bollier’s characterization of the commons as a shared resource, co-governed by its user community according to the rules and norms of that community. The sphere of the commons may contain either rivalrous goods and resources, which you and I cannot both have at the same time, or non-rival goods and resources, whose use does not deplete it. These types of goods or resources have in turn either been inherited or they are human-made.

For example, a type of commons may include the gifts of nature, such as the water and land, but also shared assets or creative work such as cultural and knowledge artefacts. Our focus here is on the digital commons of knowledge, software and design, because they are the “new commons.” These commons represent the mutualization of productive knowledge that is an integral part of the capacity for any kind of production, including physical goods.

P2P is arguably moving from the periphery of the socio-economic system to its core, thereby also transforming other types of relationships, such as market dynamics, state dynamics and reciprocity dynamics. These dynamics become more efficient and obtain advantages utilizing the commons. P2P relations can effectively scale up, mainly because of the emergence of Internet-enabled P2P technologies. This means small-group dynamics can now be applied at the global level.

ARE P2P TECHNOLOGIES GOOD, BAD OR NEUTRAL?

We do not claim that a certain technology may lead to one inevitable social outcome. Yet we recognize the key role that technologies play in social evolution and the new possibilities they create if certain human groups successfully utilize them. Different social forces invest in this potential and use it to their advantage, struggling to benefit from its use. Technology is therefore best understood as a focus of social struggle, and not as a predetermined “given” that creates just one technologically determined future.

Still, when social groups appropriate a particular technology for their own purposes, then social, political and economic systems can effectively change. An example is the role that the invention of the printing press, associated with other inventions, played in transforming European society.

The fast-growing availability of information and communication technology enables many-to-many communication and allows an increasing number of humans to communicate in ways that were not technically possible before. This in turn makes possible massive self-organization up to a global scale. It also allows for the creation of a new mode of production, a new mode of exchange, and new types of social relations outside of the state-market nexus.

The Internet creates opportunities for social transformation. In the past, with pre-digital technologies, the costs of scaling in terms of communication and coordination made hierarchies and markets necessary as forms of reducing these costs. Hence societies that scaled through their adoption “outcompeted” their tribal rivals. Today, by contrast, it is also possible to scale projects through new coordination mechanisms, which can allow small group dynamics to be applied at the global level. This means that it is now possible to combine “flatter” structures and still operate efficiently on a planetary scale. This has never been the case before.

HOW DOES P2P RELATE TO CAPITALISM?

We are living through a historical moment in which networked and relatively horizontal forms of organization are able to produce complex and sophisticated social outcomes. The latter are often better than the artefacts produced through state-based or market-based mechanisms alone. Just consider how the peer-produced Wikipedia displaced the corporate-organized Encyclopedia Britannica, how peer-produced free/open-source software displaced proprietary software, or how Wikileaks survived the assaults of some of the world’s most powerful states.

The hybrid forms of organization within P2P projects do not primarily rely on either hierarchical decisions or market pricing signals, but on mutual coordination mechanisms, which are remarkably resilient. These emerging mutual coordination mechanisms, however, are also becoming an essential ingredient of capitalism. This is the “immanent” aspect of peer production (or P2P production) that changes the current dominant forms.

But such mechanisms can also become the vehicle of new configurations of production and exchange, which are no longer dominated by capital and state. This is the “transcendent” aspect of peer production, as it creates a new overall system which can subsume the other forms. In the first scenario, capital and state subsume the commons under their direction and domination, leading to a new type of commons-centric capitalism. In the second scenario, the commons, its communities and institutions become dominant and, thus may adapt state and market forms to its best interests.

The new forms of collaborative production that rely on P2P mechanisms do have some hierarchies. Nevertheless, they generally lack a hierarchical command structure for the production process itself. Peer production has introduced the capacity to organize complex global projects through massive mutual coordination. What market pricing is to capitalism and planning is to state-based production, mutual coordination is to peer production.

As a result, the emergence and scaling of these P2P dynamics point to a potential transition in the main modality by which humanity allocates resources: from a market-state system that uses hierarchical decision-making (in firms and in the state) and pricing (amongst companies and consumers), towards a system that uses various mechanisms of mutual coordination. This does not mean that the market and the state will disappear entirely, but that the configuration of different modalities — and the balance between them — will be radically reconfigured.

None of this implies that the P2P transition will lead to a utopia, nor that it will be easy. Indeed, if the history of previous socio-economic transitions is any guide, the transition will most likely be messy. Just as P2P is likely to solve a number of problems in our current society, it will create others in the new one. Nevertheless, this remains a worthwhile social evolution to strive for, and even if P2P relations do not become the dominant social form, they will profoundly influence the future of humanity.

Summarizing the relationship between the relational and technological aspects, the P2P relational dynamic — strengthened by particular forms of technological capacities — may become the dominant way of allocating the necessary resources for human self-reproduction, and thus replace capitalism as the dominant form. This will require a stronger expansion of this P2P modality not just for the production of “immaterial goods,” but also for the production of physical (material) goods.

HOW IS P2P TO BE IMPLEMENTED IN PRACTICE?

While P2P is emerging as a significant form of technological infrastructure for various social forces, the way it is actually implemented (and owned and governed) makes all the difference. Not all P2P is equal in its effects. Various different forms of P2P technological infrastructure can be identified, each of which leads to different forms of social and political organization.

On the one side, for example, we can consider the capitalism of Facebook, Uber or Bitcoin. On the other, we can look at the commons-oriented models of Wikipedia or free/open-source software projects. Adopting this or that specific form of P2P technological infrastructure is the locus of intense social conflict, because the choice between them has enormous consequences on what may or may not be possible.

P2P enables a new (proto-)mode of production, named commons-based peer production, that is characterized by new relations of production. In commons-based peer production, contributors create shared value through open contributory systems, govern the common work through participatory practices, and create shared resources that can, in turn, be used in new iterations. This cycle of open input, participatory process and commons-oriented output is a cycle of accumulation of the commons, which parallels the accumulation of capital.

At this stage, commons-based peer production process should be seen as a prefigurative prototype of what could become a completely new mode of production and a new form of society. It is currently a prototype, since it cannot as yet fully reproduce itself outside of a mutual dependence with capitalism. This emerging modality of peer production is not only productive and innovative “within capitalism,” but also in its capacity to solve some of the structural problems that have been generated by the capitalist mode of production. In other words, it represents a potential transcendence of capitalism. That said, we argue that as long as peer producers or commoners cannot engage in their own self-reproduction outside of capital accumulation, it remains a proto-mode of production, not a full one.

Peer production can be innovative within the context of capitalist competition, because firms that can access the knowledge commons possess a competitive advantage over firms that use proprietary knowledge and can only rely on their own research. For example, by mutualizing the development of software in an open network, firms obtain vast savings in their infrastructural investments. In this context, peer production could be seen as a mutualization of productive knowledge by capitalist coalitions themselves, with IBM’s investments in free/open-source software projects as a case in point.

Yet this capitalist investment is not a negative thing in itself, but rather a condition that increases the societal investment in a P2P-based transition. It is precisely because P2P solves some structural issues of the current system that both productive and managerial classes move towards it. This means that capital flows towards P2P projects, and even though it distorts P2P to make it prolong the dominance of the old economic models, it simultaneously creates new ways of thinking in society that undermine that dominance.

Nevertheless, the new class of commoners cannot rely on capitalist investment and practices. They must use skillful means to render commons-based peer production more autonomous from the dominant political economy. Eventually we may arrive at a position where the balance of power is reversed: the commons and its social forces become the dominant force in society, which allows them to force the state and market forms to adapt to its own requirements. So we should strive to escape the situation in which capitalists co-opt the commons, and head towards a situation in which the commons capture capital, and make it work for its own development.

This proposed strategy of reverse cooptation has been called “transvestment” by telekommunists Dmytri Kleiner and Baruch Gottlieb. Transvestment describes the transfer of value from one modality to another. In our case this would be from capitalism to the commons. Thus transvestment strategies aim to help commoners become financially sustainable and independent. Such strategies are being developed and implemented by commons-oriented entrepreneurial coalitions such as the Enspiral network or Sensorica.

For example, the participants to the Enspiral network create commons-oriented products and services, while generating income from the capitalist market. They contribute a part of their income to the pool of the Enspiral Foundation. The total amount is then invested in new projects through a collaborative funding process. Enspiral also harnesses external funding using certain “hacks,” like capped returns, which gradually allow them to transfer all of their resources to their social mission. Loomio, a free/open-source decision-making platform, is the most prominent product of the network.

As said, the digital commons of knowledge, software and design are abundant resources enriched through usage. It is here that full sharing and the full ability for contributions must be preserved. But in the added value services and products that are built around these commons, we deal with rival resources. Here the commons should be protected from capture by capital. It is in this cooperative sphere of physical and service production where reciprocity rules should be enforced. We propose to combine non-reciprocal sharing in the immaterial sphere, with reciprocal arrangements in the sphere of physical production. Thus, in our vision, commons-based peer production as a full mode of production combines commons and cooperativism.

TOWARDS A COMMONS-CENTRIC SOCIETY?

At that point, if the move from microeconomic P2P communities to a new “macroeconomic” dominant modality of value creation and distribution is successful, a transition phase towards a commons-centric economy and society can occur. This will be the revolution of our times, and a fundamental shift in the rules and norms that decide what value is and how it is produced and distributed in society. In short: a shift to a new post-capitalist value regime.

P2P is considered to be both a social relation and a mode of exchange, as a socio-technological infrastructure and as a mode of production, and all these aspects when combined contribute to the creation of a new post-capitalist model, a new phase in the evolution of the organization of human societies. This will necessitate a discussion about economic and political transitions. At the microeconomic level of commons-based peer production, P2P dynamics are already creating the institutional seedlings prefiguring a new social model.

P2P could lead to a model where civil society becomes productive through the participation of citizens in the collaborative creation of value through commons. In this pluralistic commonwealth, multiple forms of value creation and distribution will co-exist, but most likely around the common attractor that is the commons. We do not argue for a “totalitarianism” of the commons. But to make the commons a core institution that “guides” all other social forms — including the state and the market — towards achieving the greatest common good and the maximum autonomy.

This text is based on a working monograph of the authors under the provisional title Peer-to-Peer: A Manifesto for Commons Transition.

Originally published by ROAR Magazine.

All images (Just White Paper, Geta, Corners, Macro Slider, Two on Blue and Peeling Onion) by aotaro

The post Peer To Peer: A New Opportunity For The Left appeared first on P2P Foundation.

The City as Commons: a Policy Reader, brings together 34 contributions and 31 authors which explore policy options and strategies for creating cities as commons for urban development and transformation. Each contribution explores a different aspect of city commoning and proposes strategies and policy recommendations based on existing projects from around the world. Contributions include:

1. Design and the City Commons, Marco Bevolo
2. Active Transit & City Commons: Putting People Back into the City & the City Back into Place, Anthony James
3. Repurposing Public Spaces in a City as a Commons: the Library, Sandrina Burkhardt
4. Heritage and City Commons, Marta Botta
5. Sharing Cities: An Asset-based Approach to the Urban Commons, Darren Sharp
6. Community Currencies and City Commons, Michael Linton
7. Time Banks and City Commoning, Teppo Eskelinen
8. Construction Waste Transformation and City Commons, Scott Boylston
9. Platform Cooperatives for Democratic Cities, Nathan Schneider
10. Coworking: Challenges and Opportunities for a Prosperous and Fair New Economy, Julian Waters-Lynch
11. Orchards and the City as a Commons, Timothy Dolan
12. Cosmo-localism and Urban Commoning, José Ramos
13. City Commons and Energy Demand, Josh Floyd
14. It’s Time to Create Chambers of Commons, David Ronfeldt
15. Sharing Cities: Governing the City as Commons, Duncan McLaren and Julian Agyeman
16. Devolved Commons Governance for Cities, David Week
17. Anticipatory Governance and the City as a Commons, José Ramos
18. A Civic Union, David Week
19. Tax Reform for a Commons-based City, Karl Fitzgerald
20. Tax Delinquent Private Property and City Commons, Paula Z. Segal
21. Community Land Trusts, Karl Fitzgerald
22. The City as a Regional Commons, Colin Russo
23. Open Data and City Commons, Paula Z. Segal
24. Human Service Directory Data as a Commons, Greg Bloom
25. The Unseen City: Commons Oriented Cities and the Commons Beyond, Sharon Ede
26. Culture as Commons, Arlene Goldbard
27. Ubuntu as a Primer for City Commons, Charles Ikem
28. Cultural Intelligence (CQ) and the City as Commons, Cherie Minniecon
29. Bologna Celebrates One Year of a Bold Experiment in Urban Commoning, Neal Gorenflo
30. Milano, New Practices to Booster Social Innovation, Monica Bernardi
31. The Emergence of Assemblies of the Commons, Maïa Dereva
32. History and Evolution of the Chamber of Commons Idea, David Ronfeldt with Michel Bauwens
33. Big Blue Sky: Re-igniting the Art of Citizenship, Christine McDougall
34. Zaragoza Activa, an Ecosystem of Entrepreneurship, Social Innovation and Creativity, in an Old Sugar Factory, Raúl Oliván

Overview

The ‘City as a Commons’—the idea of urban commoning—is an emerging body of ideas and practices, that have the potential to transform the ways in which we experience and shape our urban environments, and indeed world.

This reader attempts to bring various dimensions of urban commoning into one place, in a format that is easy to digest, communicate and advocate for. The intent of the project is to provide a resource for urban commons advocates, which helps them (you) to articulate and strategize urban commons transformation projects in a variety of areas. It is by no means complete, as the urban commoning movement has only just begun, and the scope of this ‘reader’ is limited to who has contributed. It is merely a step on the journey toward our cities as commons.

It is also part of a process of experimentation. Many of the ideas are new: urban collaborative governance, sharing cities, platform cooperativism, open money, the new political contract between citizens and the state, and so on. Therefore, you the reader are in a special position. Urban commoning is not a finished book, completed and to be followed like a recipe. It is a book with only the first chapter half written. You and urban commons advocates are in a place to propose new innovations and formulations. You the readers should go through each of the proposals with scrutiny and discernment. You may agree with some proposals and disagree with others. If you have suggestions for improvements for any work, let the author(s) know, or write and develop your own versions. (All the authors emails and contact information is in the biography section at the very end of this reader.)

Therefore, in this experiment in pathmaking, you the reader, as advocate, policy maker, social innovator, social entrepreneur, community development worker, writer/scholar, and citizen, play a fundamental role in this journey. It is through you that an urban commons will be created in different cities around the world. It is through you that many of these ideas and proposals will be tested, adopted, discarded or refined. It is through you that urban commoning will transition from embryonic social practices into mature and powerful approaches that can reshape our cities.

What Is A Commons?

A simple definition of the commons is: “that which we mutually depend on for our survival and well-being”. When we consider this, there is much that is the commons. Our atmosphere, access to educational opportunities, public safety, social cohesion, the knowledge resources we need for our survival, the list is endless. But there is more to it than this.

The idea of the commons has experienced a special and profound resurgence over the past few decades. Elinor Ostrom’s work, for which she won a Nobel Prize, was seminal in breaking the mental stranglehold of the dualism that characterized discussions on our commons. This dualism assumed that a shared resource must be managed by the state, or managed by private enterprise, or it was unmanageable. She showed otherwise, how people effectively manage their common resources as communities, outside of the state-market dualism.

Scholar and advocate of the commons, David Bollier, provided this succinct definition for what a commons is:

• A social system for the long-term stewardship of resources that preserves shared values and community identity.

• A self-organized system by which communities manage resources (both depletable and replenishable) with minimal or no reliance on the Market or State.

• The wealth that we inherit or create together and must pass on, undiminished or enhanced, to our children.  Our collective wealth includes the gifts of nature, civic infrastructure, cultural works and traditions, and knowledge.

• A sector of the economy (and life!) that generates value in ways that are often taken for granted – and often jeopardized by the Market-State.^[1]

Peer to Peer (P2P) theorist Michel Bauwens has offered these four categories to explain some of the dimensions of the commons:

There are, I believe, four types of commons to distinguish … The first type is the immaterial commons we inherit, such as language and culture. The second type is the immaterial commons we create. This is where the hugely important knowledge and digital commons come in (since it this digital commons that is currently exploding). The third type is the material commons we inherit, the oceans, the atmosphere, the forests, etc.; and the fourth type is the as yet underappreciated potential for the created material commons, i.e. productively manufactured resources.[2]

Thus, from a commons perspective, we are the oxygen generated by Amazonian rainforests, water that melted from the glaciers of the Himalaya, the ideas produced by thinkers of antiquity, the DNA code passed down to us through thousands of millions of years of evolution, and the open source design revolution reshaping our lives today. Our knowledge of our cosmic self defies the small logic of our individuality. Our individuality is our vehicle for experience and becoming, but it is of the commons.

What binds these all as commons is their characteristic of being critical to our mutual wellbeing and survival, such that they require a collective effort and ethos to protect and extend them. They must, therefore, be collectively governed by the members of society that depend on them for their wellbeing and survival. As we have witnessed, however, through the 20^th century and through previous historical periods, the state does not always have the wellbeing of the community in mind. A state may be co-opted by moneyed interests as oligarchy, or it may become despotic. And we have also seen that private interests via processes of capitalism are also not equipped to protect the commons – capitalism, almost by definition, produces vast social and ecological externalities (problems) as a by-product of the concern with immediate profit. Protecting and extending our commons is synonymous with active, shared and inclusive governance that does not (just) rely on market and state, but which is based on the governance rights and practice of those that depend on such commons.

This activity and practice is what Bollier and Silke Helfrich point to as the deeper dimension of the commons. Commons are not things, they argue, they are “an organic fabric of social structures and processes”. Thus the commons are not an object we can just point to, and say “there it is”, but rather becomes so through enacting it with others and that “thing”. Urban co-governance ideas in this reader can thus be considered potential practices of enacting commons between commoners and the urban environments they seek to transform as such. As much as a recognition of common needs and mutual inter-dependence on some thing (water, safety, participation), it is also the creative enactment of bringing what is a “common good” into being through “the consciousness of thinking, learning and acting as a commoner.”[3]

Commons are thematically diverse, but they also transgress simple categories as the language and worldview from which the commons as an idea arises sees the world systemically, interconnected and interdependent. Commons are relationally active – they are embodied through the social practices of people interwoven into culture and geography. A safe atmosphere as a commons arises only through its recognition as something we mutually depend on for our survival and well-being, and which we enact as such through our practices of collective governance and maintenance. Arturo Escobar talks about this relational dynamic as a “pluriverse… made up of a multiplicity of mutually entangled and co-constituting but distinct worlds.”[4]

Thus from the point of view of the urban commons, we can think of our whole city as relational processes of commoning, where citizens recognize and enact commons through consciousness and action. For each of us who lives in a city, we may see the health of the city as our own health, a city’s resilience as our resilience, the empowerment of its citizens as our empowerment, its social relations as our relations – and bring forth new social practices that care for and nurture these aspects of our relational urban worlds.

The Urban Commons

This reader does not engage extensively with theory, however any engagement with policy does have to grapple with theory at some level. The reason for this is that policy-making sits at the intersection between two crucial elements. On the one hand, the legal (and epistemological) perspectives that frame what is deemed possible or impossible in respect to questions of governance; and on the other hand, the particular practices and strategies that are enacted to ‘make things happen’. Because of this, proposals for urban commoning policies need to be seen as embodying new legal and social perspectives that legitimate them. The current context for policy, in particular in the West, is based on positivist law, a very narrow and technical application of contractual property relations. Based on this, over the past 35 years or so cities around the world have been overwhelmed by neo-liberal and “third way” policy that provides little conceptual space for an urban commons perspective, and hence the policies and the practices that flow from them. Sheila Foster and Christian Iaione provide us with some of the theoretical starting points that begin to build an urban commons framework, writing:

As an initial matter, we contend that any articulation of the urban commons needs to be grounded in a theory of property, or at least a theory about the character of particular urban resources in relationship to other social goods, to other urban inhabitants, and to the state. This is especially necessary given the centrality of property law in resource allocation decisions that affect owners, non-owners and the community as a whole. As David Super has poignantly written, property law has an important role in addressing widespread economic inequality by protecting those goods most essential to the well-being of a broad swath of society, rather than just protecting the goods that are disproportionately held by the wealthy. As long as large segments of the population lack the security that property rights provide, he argues, many social problems will remain quite intractable.[5]

As Foster and Iaione argue, conventional legal theory has not had the conceptual resources needed to understand the dynamics and potentials of enacted commons and commoning, and has assumed that commons are “unregulated open access resource[s]” which people will over-consume and overexploit. By contrast, they argue, a normative (ethics based) understanding of the commons asserts a community’s right to use a city’s resources, because of the value that this produces for the whole community. In their view then, “the city is a commons in the sense that it is a shared resource that belongs to all of its inhabitants.”[6] They write:

… the commons claim is importantly aligned with the idea behind the “right to the city”—the right to be part of the creation of the city, the right to be part of the decision-making processes shaping the lives of city inhabitants, and the power of inhabitants to shape decisions about the collective resource in which we all have a stake.

It is the very relational heart of the commons equation that transforms our understanding of governance and property rights. It is that the quality of public spaces is synonymous with our living quality; or how public safety equates to our safety; or when the price of housing relates to our livelihoods – that we are interwoven into the health of our cities – which is what must transform our relationship from passive observers of the decaying neo-liberal state to active shapers of a city as a commons. The vision which Foster and Iaione give for this they call “urban collaborative governance”. In this vision:

… all actors who have a stake in the commons are part of an autonomous center of decision making as co-partners, or co- collaborators, coordinated and enabled by the public authority.[7]

The state is then a facilitator or enabler for citizen led commoning, synonymous with proposals made by Michel Bauwen and others regarding a “partner state”, in which the state’s central role is to empower its citizens AS A WHOLE. Not empower its property developers to the exclusion of legacy residents. Nor its industry to the exclusion of the air quality of residents. But for the whole. Policy-making for the urban commons, even as it emerges, sits between such theoretical vision and the practices and strategies enacted on the ground.

A leader in the development of urban commons theory and practice is GovLab: an independently run laboratory for the governance of the commons. GovLab was developed to “train a new breed of professionals… experts in the governance of urban commons.”^[8] On 6 & 7 November, 2015 they held a landmark conference called the “City as a Commons: Reconceiving Urban Space, Common Good, and City Governance.”^[9] From the conference, GovLab distilled these learnings on the urban commons:^[10]

1. There are many kinds of urban commons, some existing for many decades (e.g. housing cooperatives) and others just emerging. Social innovation is important for designing some types of urban commons and the conditions for commoning;

2. We must embrace the diversity of commons and commoning yet still be careful about what we call the commons; so more work is needed on analyzing what is an urban commons and what is not;

3. In addition to many resources being held or managed in common, in a collaborative fashion, the city itself must be considered a commons–both as an urban space and as a governing entity. The governance of the urban commons can be a framework to update political and bureaucratic decision-making processes at the city level;

4. The commons is an emerging framework for inclusiveness and equity in cities as the world is urbanizing and cities are the place where different cultures, classes and people come to live together, work together and grow together;

5. The role of technology is important for the commons, but technology is a means and not an end. It must enable and support the urban commons, and the ability of people to come together and collaborate in the interest of the community or communities;

6. Collective action for the urban commons should be enabling existing communities, stakeholders, and city inhabitants as much as creating new urban communities, formal and informal groups, movements, traditional stakeholders and social or collective organizations;

7. Urban commons need an “industrial plan” and new economic and/or social institutions to help transition some cities, and some areas within them, away from an old economic model to one that leverages the power of commoning and collaboration to support sustainable, flourishing as well as more inclusive, just and democratic communities;

8. The urban commons governance principle is not self-government, nor decentralization. It is rather distribution of powers among public, social, economic, knowledge and civic actors and therefore it implies a significant investment in the design of new forms of collaboration and partnerships among these actors;

9. Design principles for the urban commons should be written to reflect the design principles created by Elinor Ostrom, but adapting them to the challenges and characteristics of the more political, confrontational, and overregulated space which cities represent. The study of the commons in the city should be the focus of future research beyond the study of the urban commons. More attention should be put on experimentation, institutional diversity, spreading of social norms within urban contexts;

10. There should be safeguards against opportunistic, exploitative, and short-sighted behaviors, as well as escapist flights and utopian or ideological visions, in developing and sustaining the urban commons. A bottom-up, as well as a circular, approach is crucial for the urban commons and confirms Focault’s argument that power is “not something that is acquired, seized, or shared, something that one holds on to or allows to slip away; power is exercised from innumerable points, in the interplay of non egalitarian and mobile relations”.

Along side this profound convergence are singular breakthroughs in urban commoning that are our leading lights. For example, the urban commoning experiment in Bologna involves a reconceptualization of the relationship between citizen and state, and the role of citizen as social innovator in the re-creation of the city.^[11] Bologna provides an inspiring example of what is possible for our cities.

It is in this context of innovation where this rather humble endeavor sits. While conceived outside of their ambit, this reader was inspired by these examples and hopes to make a contribution to this broader project of change.

Critical Themes In The Reader

When reviewing the thirty-four or more contributions in this reader, some themes clearly emerge.

The urban commons represents a new political contract. As mentioned, this is clearly seen in the development of the Bologna Regulation for the Care and Regeneration of the Urban Commons^[12] as well as Foster and Iaione’s call for “urban collaborative governance”. In a number of examples in this reader, urban commoning strategies require civic-state alliances and coordination, in the vein of Bauwens “partner state” ideas.[13] In particular, new political contracts, such as the one created in Bologna, enfranchise citizens with a right to be social innovators in transforming their cities. Likewise, such political contracts enlist the state as a facilitator charged with empowering citizens in commoning the city. If a city is a commons, then following the wisdom of Elinor Ostrom, it can be governed as one by all the members of a city that depend on its perpetual sustainment. In contrast to the “beyond market and state” notions of the commons, it is clear that for urban commoning, the state’s role cannot be disowned or discarded as a critical factor.

In addition, the urban commons represents a new culture of citizenship. This is a fundamental transformation from citizen as passive beneficiary of technocratic systems, to one who is actively shaping the city around them, taking responsibility for the care and development of their cities. Whereas 20^th century technocracy has infantilized citizenry, expected only to be tax payers, service users and once every 3-4 years voters, the urban commons demands that we step up as active citizens to not only create and shape our cities for the better, but indeed to play a role in actively governing our cities with others.

The urban commons also represents new value exchange systems that sit outside the traditional marketplace and outside municipal service relationships. The sharing economy, local currencies, time-banking, circularization of waste, and other reciprocity based systems are part of a new equation in which value finds new ways of circulating and enriching people’s lives. To be truly commons based, these value exchange systems must circulate the value they create back into the communities that produced them.

It can also be added that the urban commons represents new visibility for what has been invisible in relation to urbanism. From intangibles such as culture and cultural intelligence, to the hidden costs of monopoly rents, to underutilized land, and cities’ use of energy and contributions to our atmospheric commons through carbon emissions. The commons perspective naturally unearths dimensions of city life that are hidden by other perspectives, opening the way for more holistic strategies of responsibility taking and wellbeing making.

Of course, the urban commons represents a new way of seeing the city. It represents an emerging worldview and vision. This will evolve over time and become clearer as we make the path by walking.

Acknowledgements

This reader would not have been created without the friendship and inspiration of Michel Bauwens. While giving talks in Melbourne in late 2015, Michel dropped a match in the dry kindle of my heart, sparking this call for policy briefs that culminated in this reader.

I would also like to acknowledge the Commons Strategy Group, which brought me to Bangkok in 2012 for a commons deep dive and Berlin in 2013 for the Economies of the Commons conference. These experiences helped to seed my thinking and practice and have led to a number of commons projects and directions.

Finally, acknowledgment goes to the authors of the policy briefs that have made this reader such a delight to edit. As an editor, having carefully read through each of your contributions, I have been continually inspired by your ideas, proposals and spirit. I am sure other readers will be just as inspired as I am by your words and visions.

May our urban commons prosper and flourish through our hearts, minds and actions.

José M. Ramos

Melbourne, Australia

11 July 2016

Notes

[1] http://bollier.org/commons-short-and-sweet

[2] http://futurism.com/interview-michel-bauwens-on-peer-to-peer-economics-and-its-role-in-reshaping-our-world/

[3] Bollier, D. and Helfrich, S. (2015) Patterns of Commoning, Mass: The Commons Strategy Group / Off the Commons Books (p2-3)

[4] Escobar, A. Commons in the Pluriverse, in Bollier, D. and Helfrich, S. (2015) Patterns of Commoning, Mass: The Commons Strategy Group / Off the Commons Books, (p355)

[5] Foster, S.R. and Iaione, C. The City as a Commons, Yale Law and Policy Review, V.34, p.286

[6] Foster, S.R. and Iaione, C. The City as a Commons, Yale Law and Policy Review, V.34, p.288

[7] Foster, S.R. and Iaione, C. The City as a Commons, Yale Law and Policy Review, V.34, p.290

[8] http://www.labgov.it/about-labgov/

[9] http://urbancommons.labgov.it

[10] http://www.labgov.it/2015/12/03/ten-points-on-the-city-as-commons/

[11] http://www.shareable.net/blog/bologna-celebrates-one-year-of-a-bold-experiment-in-urban-commoning

[12] http://www.comune.bo.it/media/files/bolognaregulation.pdf

[13] https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Partner_State

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