Abstract

Critical approaches to the smart city concept are used to begin highlighting the promises of makerspaces, that is to say, those emerging urban sites that promote sharing practices; exercise community-based forms of governance; and utilize local manufacturing technologies. A bird’s-eye-view of the history of makerspaces is provided tracing their roots back to the hacker movement. Drawing from secondary sources, their community-building, learning and innovation potential is briefly discussed. Makerspaces, this essay argues, can serve as hubs and vehicles for citizen-driven transformation and, thus, play a key part in a more inclusive, participatory and commons-oriented vision of the smart city.

Excerpts

Introduction

Urbanization is a trend of our times, with the largest share of the human population globally living in cities; a trend that is only increasing. Cities are economic centers that through the consumption of massive resources lead to heavy environmental impact as well as to social contestations and conflicts. This creates the need for new conceptualizations for a city that will be able to deal with the current issues in more imaginative, inclusive and sustainable ways.

In this paper, critical approaches to the smart city concept are used to begin highlighting the promises of emerging urban sites that promote sharing practices and commons-based peer production.

In light of the rise of the collaborative commons, i.e., shared resources, the concept of urban “makerspaces” is discussed. The latter are community-led, open spaces where individuals share resources and meet on a regular basis to collaboratively engage in creative commons-oriented projects, usually utilizing open source software and hardware technologies. Through the intersection of digital technologies and urban life, several initiatives have emerged that attempt to circumvent the dependence on private firms or governments to provide solutions.

What is the community-building, learning and innovation potential of makerspaces towards a more inclusive, commons-oriented smart city?

Community-building potential

Makerspaces can be viewed as community-run hubs that connect citizens not only of the same city but also of other cities worldwide. Approximately 66% of the UK-based makerspaces collaborate with other UK-based or foreign makerspaces on a regular basis, while 46% contribute to commons-oriented, open source projects which normally have a global orientation. Yet, individuals are more engaged and committed to one local makerspace. Further, two of the top reasons people use makerspaces are socializing and learning. Hence, makerspaces can be platforms that cultivate relationships and networks, building social capital, i.e., “social networks and the attendant norms of trust and reciprocity”.

However, claims around the potentialities of makerspaces are still speculative and depend on how individuals associate with such places. While makerspaces have been built in ethnically and geographically diverse environments, there is yet a lack of racial and gender diversity within many of them. For instance, membership is predominantly male in 80% of UK makerspaces and 77% of China’s makers are male. Additionally, 81% of U.S. makers are male with an average income of $106,000. These are indications that participation in the maker movement is heavily dominated by affluent men.

As an attempt to correct this lack of diversity, some feminist and people of color-led makerspaces have emerged, such as Mz Baltazar’s Laboratory in Vienna and Mothership Hackermoms in Berkley (feminist spaces created in 2008 and 2012 respectively) or Liberating Ourselves Locally in Oakland (a “people of color-led” space created in 2012). However, such strategies have been met with controversy, since they are deemed to go against the principle of openness.

Learning potential

The learning potential of making coupled with open learning environments; project-based learning; informal tinkering; and peer collaboration can motivate the social learning and personalized involvement of participants. Makerspaces exhibit the aforementioned characteristics and, thus, show great promise as emerging learning hubs. That is why makerspaces have recently generated much interest in diverse educational circles. For example, several libraries and museums have created spaces with the aim to empower creative activity, resource-sharing, and active engagement with making, materials, processes, and ideas in relation to their collections and exhibits.

It appears that makerspaces offer the capacity for informal community activity as well as a proper learning environment with a focus on productive processes rather than skill-set building. Varying activities may be combined (like programming and hardware building and even manufacturing tools development), following the approach of constructionism.

Nevertheless, inclusivity and participation in such educational activities is not assured. Although more than 50% of UK makerspaces offer support, courses and tool inductions, the majority of makers are well-educated and technologically-confident. Likewise, 97% of makers in the U.S. have attended or graduated from college, while 80% say they have post-graduate education. Thus, to facilitate learning for diverse users, makerspaces should be staffed by qualified educators who are knowledgeable about theories of teaching and learning as well as about user needs and behaviors.

Innovation potential

In makerspaces people innovate and learn together by making things and using the Web to globally connect and share designs, tutorials and code. They offer creative environments where sustainable entrepreneurs, potentially with diverse motives and backgrounds, can meet and interact and thus benefit from synergies and the cross-pollination of ideas. Moreover, in makerspaces designers can come together and collaborate in participatory explorations during the use phase by prototyping, adding small-scale interventions and, therefore, moving from a “design-in-the-studio” to a “design-in-use” strategy.

Several innovative entrepreneurial endeavors and start-ups have emerged through makerspaces. This article refers to some prominent cases with the aim to provide an overview of the most mature examples that cover a wide spectrum of areas, from ICT and local manufacturing technologies to farming, culture and neuroscience.

In all, makerspaces should not be viewed merely as experimentation sites with local manufacturing technologies but as places “where people are experimenting with new ideas about the relationships amongst corporations, designers, and consumers”. The review of makerspaces-related innovation illustrated that they mainly produce user-led, incremental product and process innovations. Some of the aforementioned projects and eco-systems, such as the RepRap- or Arduino-based eco-systems, may represent both the Schumpeterian and social-oriented understanding of innovation. They seem to create win-win situations for both instigators/entrepreneurs and society, and inaugurate commons-oriented business models which arguably go beyond the classical corporate paradigm and its extractive profit-maximizing practices.

Conclusions

Are makerspaces a manifestation of the “new spirit of capitalism” that has successfully incorporated and adapted several of its various critical cultures? Or could we consider makerspaces as sites with non-negligible post-capitalist dynamics? Both possibilities still exist.

If we subscribe to the idea that at least some makerspaces can be seen as CBPP in practice, then, makerspaces may belong to a new form of capitalism but, at the same time, also highlight ways in which this new form might be transcended. If the dominant discourse of the “smart city” project is aligned with a neoliberal, corporate vision for urban development, then the “makerspace” could simultaneously be a source of legitimacy for the project and also serve as an institution for citizen-driven transformation.

An alternative vision for the smart city may be possible through a commons-oriented approach, geared towards the democratization of means of production. The basic tenet of this approach encourages citizens to participate in creating solutions collectively instead of merely adopting proprietary technology. In addition to virtual connections observed in several sharing economy initiatives, makerspaces can be the physical nodes of a collaborative culture. Further, they can serve as a new “design template”, where knowledge/design is developed and shared as a global digital commons while the actual customized manufacturing takes place locally, thus initiating a decisive break from the current production model.

Full title: “Making (in) the Smart City: The Emergence of Makerspaces”.

Originally published at Telematics & Informatics.

Find this and more articles here.

Photo by olabimakerspace

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From March to June 2017 peer-to-peer expert Michel Bauwens conducted a three-month research and participation project in Ghent on the ‘commons city of the future’. The result of that research is this Commons Transition Plan, describing the possibilities and role of the City of Ghent (as a local authority) in reinforcing citizen initiatives. With this, the City wishes to give further shape to a sustainable and ethical economy in Ghent.

Michel Bauwens (58) has already been working for over ten years on the theme of the commons-based economy and society. He is solicited all over the world as a speaker or to give workshops, and is the author of the bestseller ‘Saving the world: With P2P towards a postcapitalist society’. Bauwens led a similar research and transition project in Ecuador. The major French newspaper, Libération, referred to him as the leading theorist on the theme of the economy of cooperation, following the French edition of the book.

The commons is a way to describe shared, material or immaterial property that is stewarded, protected or produced by a community – in an urban context often by citizens’ collectives – and managed according to the rules and standards of that community. It is fundamentally distinct from state bodies – government, city, state – but also from market actors. The commons is independent of, but of course still holds relationships to, the government and the market. Commons as a new form of organisation is exemplified by a variety of initiatives based around production and consumption with the idea of achieving a more sustainable society. This can for example be the set-up of energy cooperatives or shared work spaces for co-working. Examples in Ghent are EnerGent, LikeBirds, Voedselteams, Wijdelen, etc.

All of these initiatives show that ‘urban commons’ is alive and kicking today in the city.

Aim of the research

For the City of Ghent, the central question of this research and participation project was: how can a city respond to this and what are the implications of this for city policy? The goal was to come up with a synthesised Commons Transition Plan that describes the possibilities for optimal public interventions while also offering answers to the question of what Ghent’s many commoners and commons projects expect from the city.

The intention of this assignment is therefore to investigate the possibility of a potentially new political, facilitative and regulatory relationship between the local government of Ghent and its citizens so as to facilitate the further development of the commons.

With this work the researchers have tried to find out what kinds of institutionalisation is fitting to handle the commons well. This means essentially a shift from a top-down approach and old organisational principles such as ‘command and control’, towards a new way of thinking and an approach as a ‘partner city’, in which the city facilitates and supports projects. Of course, sometimes the city must also regulate projects, in the role of a more facilitative government.

Structure of the Commons Transition Plan

In the first part, the report gives a general introduction to the commons which serves to explain why the commons are important in the context of urban development.

In a second part, the researchers look at the global context in which the revival of the commons is taking place, but most of all at the reality of the urban commons in a number of other European cities, which may possibly serve as a benchmark for the city of Ghent.

Part 3 presents the findings in Ghent itself.

Finally, in Part 4, the researchers give their recommendations to the city council.

At the end of this study there are a series of appendices, including an English-language overview of the commons in European cities, written by the Greek urbanist Vasilis Niaros, who was a Timelab resident during the period of our research. The authors of the report, Michel Bauwens and Yurek Onzia, are responsible for parts 1 and 4. Vasilis Niaros wrote the comparative study.

• Read the executive summaryWritten by Executive Michel Bauwens and Yurek Onzia
• Read the complete Commons Transition Plan(under revision) (2.62 MB)

Originally published in Stad.gent.

Photo by Dimitris Graffin

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Item 1: The Political Economy of Peer Production

This is the essay which led to the creation of the P2P Foundation and the elaboration of ‘p2p theory’. This first essay appeared in CTheory and explains the basis of our understanding of the importance of the peer to peer dynamic in our society, and how it both within and outside of capitalism:

• The Political Economy of Peer Production. CTheory, October 2, 2006. Retrieved from http://www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=499  Re-published Post-Autistic Economics Review, issue 37.

(other version at: http://www.paecon.net/PAEReview/issue37/Bauwens37.htm )

Item 2: A primer on P2P and the Commons

Written and arranged in 2016, this longer brochure is aimed at explaining all the basic elements of our approach, with explanatory illustrations and graphics:

• Bauwens, M., Kostakis, V., Troncoso, S. & Utratel, A. M. (2017). Commons Transition and P2P: a primer. Transnational Institute & P2P Foundation.

Item 3: The Practices of P2P

The P2P approach aims to be a ‘low theory’, i.e. it aims to understand and generalize ideas that stem from the real practices of the peer to peer -driven communities. Here we identify ten ‘seed forms’, that we think we be part of our co-constructed post-capitalist future.

• 10 Ways to Accelerate the Peer-to-Peer and Commons Economy

Item 4: What Needs to happen with capital and with the market ?

• From Platform to Open Cooperativism

Two movements mesh cooperative traditions with the digital revolution: Platform Cooperativism, and Open Cooperativism. How do they relate?

• Cooperativism in the digital era, or how to form a global counter-economy

Can we transform the renting economy of Uber and AirBnB into a genuine sharing one? Platform cooperatives must become open and commons-oriented.

Item 5: How do we fund the transition, i.e. using capital for the commons

• Bauwens, Michel and Vasilis Kostakis. 2014. “From the Communism of Capital to Capital for the Commons”

• Bauwens, M., & Niaros, V. (2016). Value in the Commons Economy: Developments in Open and Contributory Accounting. 

This is a bit longer, but contains our fundamental vision of a shift in value regime and on getting ‘value sovereignty for the commons, while using open and contributive accounting to account for all contributions; as well as ‘transvestment’ techniques to transform external financing from capital and state sources, to actual expansion of the commons while creating fair livelihoods for the commoners.

Item 6: P2P Politics and the transformation of the state form

• Blueprint for a Partner State

In this article, we focus on the simultaneous transformation of state, market and civil society , but with special attention to the concept and practices of an enabling state which supports autonomous commons-based initiatives: the Partner-State The Partner State is a concept where public authorities assist in the direct creation of value by civil society, and promote commons-based Peer Production.

(A more elaborate version  in a peer-reviewed journal is here at http://peerproduction.net/issues/issue-7-policies-for-the-commons/peer-reviewed-papers/towards-a-new-reconfiguration-among-the-state-civil-society-and-the-market/ )

• Commons in the Time of Monsters

Can Commons and P2P practices offer viable solutions for our present and future social, political and ecological crises? This is the story of how it’s done in a time when the old is dying but the new is not fully born.

Item 7: The mechanics of the transition

• Beyond Jeremy Rifkin: How Will the Phase Transition to a Commons Economy Actually Occur? 

Other authors who recently turned to the commons such as Jeremy Rifkin, Paul Mason, and George Monbiot, are not always very precise about how the transition can occur. A short attempt to explain after reading Rifkin’s book.

Item 8: What about values and spirituality ?

• The Next Buddha Will Be a Collective: Spiritual Expression in the Peer-to-Peer Era. ReVision: A Journal of Consciousness and Transformation Issue: Volume 29, Number 4 / Spring 2007 Pages: 34 – 45. Draft version retrievable via

The Reality Sandwich version of the above text is shorter and more accessible (long version here ). This short article deals with many of the same themes: If we can have P2P economics why not P2P Spirituality?  

Item 9: Introducing Cosmo-local production

Design global, manufacture local: a new industrial revolution?

An article at The Conversation, by Vasilis Kostakis and Jose Ramos. This article introduces a new mode of production, where the design is developed as a global commons and the manufacturing takes place locally, through shared infrastructures and with local biophysical conditions in mind.

• Kostakis, V., Niaros, V., Dafermos, G., & Bauwens, M. (2015). Design global, manufacture local: Exploring the contours of an emerging productive model. Futures, 73, 126-135. 

This article aims to contribute to the ongoing dialogue on post-capitalist construction by exploring the contours of a commons-oriented productive model. On the basis of this model called “design global-manufacture local”, we argue that recent techno-economic developments around the emergence of commons-based peer production and desktop

Item 10: Living within ecological limits, in our cities and bioregions

• PEER TO PEER AND THE COMMONS: A MATTER, ENERGY AND THERMODYNAMIC PERSPECTIVE. By Xavier Rizos and Celine Piques. 

One of our 3 strategic priorities has been the open source circular economy and our detailed studies of the ecological impacts of cosmo-local production methods.

But this new report does two more things:

1) first of all, it grounds our approach in biophysical economics, the only real economics, as we cannot have an economics that is in permanent overshoot vis a vis our planet’s regenerative capacities

2) second, it establishes the crucial historic and present link between the development of commons-based provisioning systems as the very key strategy to radically diminish the human footprint of our societies

• A Commons Transition Plan for the City of Ghent

Michel Bauwens and Vasilis Niaros were asked to conduct a research project to identify urban commons project, convey the wishes of leading contributors and creators of these projects, and suggest a longer-term institutional design for cooperation between the public sector and the commons.

This is the english Executive Summary of the report, which contains a number of graphics on public-commons partnership approaches.

A fuller treatment on urban commons-based transitions is available in a new report published for the Boll Foundation:

• Changing Societies through Urban Commons Transitions

• Kostakis, V., Latoufis, K., Liarokapis, M., & Bauwens, M. (2017). The Convergence of Digital Commons with Local Manufacturing from a Degrowth Perspective: Two Illustrative Cases.

The emerging discussion about the sustainability potential of distributed production is the starting point for this paper. The focus is on the “design global, manufacture local” model. This model builds on the conjunction of the digital commons of knowledge and design with desktop and benchtop manufacturing technologies (from three-dimensional printers and laser cutters to low-tech tools and crafts). Two case studies are presented to illustrate three interlocked practices of this model for degrowth. It is argued that a “design global, manufacture local” model, as exemplified by these case studies, seems to arise in a significantly different political economy from that of the conventional industrial model of mass production. “Design global, manufacture local” may be seen as a platform to bridge digital and knowledge commons with existing physical infrastructures and degrowth communities, in order to achieve distributed modes of collaborative production.

Lead photo by Tom Hermans on Unsplash

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Monica Bernardi: Commons represents an issue which has been subject of many studies and discussions. LabGov used to deal with the topic of the commons and its co-founders themselves (Prof. Sheila Foster and Prof. Christian Iaione) talk of  “The City as a Commons”.

Today, indeed, we witness a rise of commons-oriented civic initiatives as a result of a growing inadequacy of Market and State. A commons can be intended as a shared resource co-governed or co-owned by its user community according to their rules and norms. In both Bollier, Bauwens and Helfrich’ opinion there is no commons without commoning, namely without active co-production and self-governance.

A commons emerges from the dynamic interaction of three related aspects: a resource, a community that gathers around it, and a protocols for its stewardship. As pointed by Bollier, it is simultaneously:

• a social system for the long-term stewardship of resources that preserves shared values and the community identity;
• a self-organized system by which community managed resources with no reliance on the Market or State; the wealth that we create and pass on to the next generation (based on gift of nature, civic infrastructure, cultural and creative works, traditions and knowledge);
• a sector of the economy that create values in ways that are often taken for granted – and often jeopardized by the Market-State.

The commons becomes a challenge for the city, that should become what Bauwens defines a “partners city”, enabling and empowering commons-oriented civic initiatives. For the market, that should sustain the commons and create livelihoods for the core contributors; and for the civil society organizations, that still have bureaucratic forms of organization and management, not in line with the commons initiatives.

Bauwens has recently released a report based on the study of the City of Ghent, conducted together with Yurek Onzia – project coordinator and editor-in-chief, with the support of an artistic makerspace (Timelab), the P2P Lab scholar Vasilis Niaros and Annelore Raman from the city council. The study was commissioned and financed by the City of Ghent, in the northern Flanders, with the support of the mayor, Daniel Termont, of the head of the mayor’s staff, the head of the strategy department, and the political coalition of the city (Flemish Socialist Party SPA, Flemish Greens – Groen, and Flemish Liberal Party – Open VLD).

The main request of the administration was to document the emergence and growth of the commons in the city and identify strategies and public policies to support commons-based initiatives, involving the citizens. The three-month research took inspiration from other cities (such as Barcelona, Seoul, Bologna) already engaged in the recognition and promotion of commons practices. It culminates in a Commons Transition Plan that describes the role, the possibilities and the options for optimal public interventions in terms of reinforcing citizens initiatives.

During the research, the team:

• Mapped 500 commons-oriented projects per sector of activity (from food to transportation, energy, etc.) using a wiki
• Interviewed 80 leading commoners and project leaders
• Administered a written questionnaire to over 70 participants
• Managed 9 open workshops divided per theme (Food as a commons, transportation as a commons….)
• Developed a Commons Finance Canvas workshop based on the Hinton methodology (economic opportunities, difficulties, models used by the commons projects)

Bauwens described the city of Ghent (300,000 inhabitants) as a city with a distinct presence of commons-oriented initiatives (more than 500), a lively urban tissue sprinkled by smart young, as well as coworking, fablabs and maker spaces, active civil society organizations that support urban commons projects, and an active and engaged city administration. The city indeed is already involved in actions for carbon and traffic reduction, and it has a staff of social facilitators, connectors, street workers engaged in enabling roles at the local level. In addition, there is an important policy to support the temporary use of vacant land/building by community groups.

Nevertheless, the research highlighted some weakness points of the city:

• the initiatives are often fragmented;
• there are some regulatory and administrative obstacles (especially about the mutualized housing);
• fablabs and coworking spaces lack of real production’s activities;
• there is no connection between university and the commons project, neither a propensity to open source and design projects;
• many commons-project are set in post-migration communities and limited to ethnic and religious memberships;
• civil society organizations often perceive the projects as mainly directed towards vulnerable categories and not as general productive resources; the cooperative sector gives a weak support; the major potential commons are vulnerable to private extraction.

Despite these weakness points, the City showed a great commitment in finding ways to improve and expand the urban commons at local level since it is aware of its potentials for the social and economic life:  1. “the commons are an essential part of the ecological transition”;

2. they “are a means for the re-industrialization of the city following the cosmo-local model which combines global technical cooperation in knowledge commons with smart re-localization of production”;
3. they “are based on self-governance of the value producing systems and are therefore one of the few schools of true democracy and participation”

The report is divided in four parts:

1. The context on the emergence of urban commons (largely increased in the Flanders in the last ten years). This part provides information on the challenges for the public authorities, for the market players and for the traditional civil society organisations and on the opportunities related with the spread of the commons (i.e more active participation of citizens as city co-creators, in solving ecological and environmental issues and in creating new forms of meaningful work at local level).
2. An overview of urban commons developments globally and especially in European cities.
3. The analysis of the urban commons in Ghent with its strengths and weaknesses.
4. A set of 23 integrated proposals for the creation of public-commons processes for citywide co-creation.

The part 3 with the map of the urban commons projects highlights some similarities with the commons-driven digital economy, demonstrating some specificities:

1. productive communities are based on open contributions;
2. the urban commons and their platforms may bring to generative market forms;
3. the communities, platforms and possible market forms require, and receive, facilitative support from the various agencies and functionaries of the city, and the civil society organisations.

About the proposals in the part 4, the report presents:

• some public-social or public-partnership based processes and protocols to streamline cooperation between the city and the commoners. Taking as example the Bologna Regulation for the Care and the Regeneration of the Urban Commons, the report suggests that commons initiatives present their projects and ideas to a City Lab in order to sign a “Commons Accord” with the city. With this contract the city sets-up specific support alliances combining the commoners and civil society organisations, the city itself, and the private sector;
• a cross-sector institutional infrastructure for commons policy-making and support divided in transition arenas and based on the model of a pre-existing practice around the food transition.

Among the recommendations and suggestions listed in the report there are:

• The creation of a juridical assistance service consisting of at least one representative of the city and one of the commoners, in order to systematically unblock the potential for commons expansion, by finding solutions for regulatory hurdles.
• The creation of an incubator for a commons-based collaborative economy, which specifically deals with the challenges of generative start-ups.
• The creation of an investment vehicle, the bank of the commons, which could be a city bank based on public-social governance models.
• Augmenting the capacity of temporary land and buildings, towards more permanent solutions to solve the land and housing crisis affecting commoners and citizens.
• Support of platform cooperatives as an alternative to the more extractive forms of the sharing economy.
• Assisting the development of mutualized commons infrastructures (‘protocol cooperativism’), through inter-city cooperation (avoiding the development of 40 Uber alternative in as many cities).
• Make Ghent ‘the place to be’ for commoners by using ‘Ghent, City of the Commons’ as an open brand, to support the coming of visitors for commons-conferences etc.
• As pioneered by the NEST project of temporary use of the old library, use more ‘calls for commons’, instead of competitive contests between individual institutions. Calls for the commons would reward the coalition that creates the best complementary solution between multiple partners and open sources its knowledge commons to support the widest possible participation”.

In addition, the team also propose:

• A specific project to test the capacity of “cosmo-local production” to create meaningful local jobs (organic food for school lunches) and to test the potential role of anchor institutions and social procurement.
• The organisation of a CommonsFest on the 28th of October, with a first Assembly of the Commons.
• A pilot project around circular finance in which “saved negative externalities” which lead to savings in the city budget can directly be invested in the commons projects that have achieved such efficiencies (say re-investing the saved cost of water purification to support the acquisition of land commons for organic farmers).
• The setting up of an experimental production unit based on distributed manufacturing and open design.
• Projects that integrate knowledge institutions such as the university, with the grassroots commons projects.

The report is the executive part of a short book on the Ghent experience that will be soon available. Many useful indications and more precise recommendations can be found in the “COMMONS TRANSITION AND P2P: A PRIMER”. This Commons Primer co-published with the Transnational Institute, explains the Commons and P2P, in terms of interrelations, movements and trends, and how a Commons transition is poised to reinvigorate work, politics, production, and care, both interpersonal and environmental.

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Michel Bauwens and Vasilis Niaros: We have argued in this overview that we are in a conjuncture in which commons-based mutualizing is one of the keys for sustainability, fairness and global-local well-being. In this conclusion, we suggest a global infrastructure, in which cities can play a crucial role.

See the graphic below for the stacked layer that we propose, which is described as follows:

• The first layer is the cosmo-local institutional layer. Imagine global for-benefit associations which support the provisioning of infrastructures for urban and territorial commoning. These are structured as global public-commons partnerships, sustained by leagues of cities which are co-dependent and co-motivated to support these new infrastructures and overcome the fragmentation of effort that benefits the most extractive and centralized ‘netarchical’ firms. Instead, these infrastructural commons organizations co-support MuniRide, MuniBnB, and other applications necessary to commonify urban provisioning systems. These are the global “protocol cooperative” governance organizations.

• The second layer consists of the actual global depositories of the commons applications themselves, a global technical infrastructure for open sourcing provisioning systems. They consists of what is globally common, but allow contextualized local adaptations, which in turn can serve as innovations and examples for other locales. These are the actual ‘protocol cooperatives’, in their concrete manifestation as usable infrastructure.

• The third layer are the actual local (urban, territorial, bioregional) platform cooperatives, i.e. the local commons-based mechanisms that deliver access to services and exchange platforms, for the mutualized used of these provisioning systems. This is the layer where the Amsterdam FairBnb and the MuniRide application of the city of Ghent, organize the services for the local population and their visitors. It is where houses and cars are effectively shared.

• The potential fourth layer is the actual production-based open cooperatives, where distributed manufacturing of goods and services produces the actual material services that can be shared and mutualized on the platform cooperatives.

Photo by dalobeee

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

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

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

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

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

REScoop — Renewable energy cooperative

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

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

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

CLT Gent — Community land trust

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

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

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

NEST opening day. Photo courtesy of Evi Swinnen

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

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

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

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

Commons as a School for Democracy

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

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

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

Header image of NEST in Ghent courtesy of Evi Swinnen

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Abstract

Critical approaches to the smart city concept are used to begin highlighting the promises of makerspaces, that is to say, those emerging urban sites that promote sharing practices; exercise community-based forms of governance; and utilize local manufacturing technologies. A bird’s-eye-view of the history of makerspaces is provided tracing their roots back to the hacker movement. Drawing from secondary sources, their community-building, learning and innovation potential is briefly discussed. Makerspaces, this essay argues, can serve as hubs and vehicles for citizen-driven transformation and, thus, play a key part in a more inclusive, participatory and commons-oriented vision of the smart city.

Excerpts

Introduction

Urbanization is a trend of our times, with the largest share of the human population globally living in cities; a trend that is only increasing. Cities are economic centers that through the consumption of massive resources lead to heavy environmental impact as well as to social contestations and conflicts. This creates the need for new conceptualizations for a city that will be able to deal with the current issues in more imaginative, inclusive and sustainable ways.

In this paper, critical approaches to the smart city concept are used to begin highlighting the promises of emerging urban sites that promote sharing practices and commons-based peer production.

In light of the rise of the collaborative commons, i.e., shared resources, the concept of urban “makerspaces” is discussed. The latter are community-led, open spaces where individuals share resources and meet on a regular basis to collaboratively engage in creative commons-oriented projects, usually utilizing open source software and hardware technologies. Through the intersection of digital technologies and urban life, several initiatives have emerged that attempt to circumvent the dependence on private firms or governments to provide solutions.

What is the community-building, learning and innovation potential of makerspaces towards a more inclusive, commons-oriented smart city?

Community-building potential

Makerspaces can be viewed as community-run hubs that connect citizens not only of the same city but also of other cities worldwide. Approximately 66% of the UK-based makerspaces collaborate with other UK-based or foreign makerspaces on a regular basis, while 46% contribute to commons-oriented, open source projects which normally have a global orientation. Yet, individuals are more engaged and committed to one local makerspace. Further, two of the top reasons people use makerspaces are socializing and learning. Hence, makerspaces can be platforms that cultivate relationships and networks, building social capital, i.e., “social networks and the attendant norms of trust and reciprocity”.

However, claims around the potentialities of makerspaces are still speculative and depend on how individuals associate with such places. While makerspaces have been built in ethnically and geographically diverse environments, there is yet a lack of racial and gender diversity within many of them. For instance, membership is predominantly male in 80% of UK makerspaces and 77% of China’s makers are male. Additionally, 81% of U.S. makers are male with an average income of $106,000. These are indications that participation in the maker movement is heavily dominated by affluent men.

As an attempt to correct this lack of diversity, some feminist and people of color-led makerspaces have emerged, such as Mz Baltazar’s Laboratory in Vienna and Mothership Hackermoms in Berkley (feminist spaces created in 2008 and 2012 respectively) or Liberating Ourselves Locally in Oakland (a “people of color -led” space created in 2012). However, such strategies have been met with controversy, since they are deemed to go against the principle of openness.

Learning potential

The learning potential of making coupled with open learning environments; project-based learning; informal tinkering; and peer collaboration can motivate the social learning and personalized involvement of participants. Makerspaces exhibit the aforementioned characteristics and, thus, show great promise as emerging learning hubs. That is why makerspaces have recently generated much interest in diverse educational circles. For example, several libraries and museums have created spaces with the aim to empower creative activity, resource-sharing, and active engagement with making, materials, processes, and ideas in relation to their collections and exhibits.

It appears that makerspaces offer the capacity for informal community activity as well as a proper learning environment with a focus on productive processes rather than skill-set building. Varying activities may be combined (like programming and hardware building and even manufacturing tools development), following the approach of constructionism.

Nevertheless, inclusivity and participation in such educational activities is not assured. Although more than 50% of UK makerspaces offer support, courses and tool inductions, the majority of makers are well-educated and technologically-confident. Likewise, 97% of makers in the U.S. have attended or graduated from college, while 80% say they have post-graduate education. Thus, to facilitate learning for diverse users, makerspaces should be staffed by qualified educators who are knowledgeable about theories of teaching and learning as well as about user needs and behaviors.

Innovation potential

In makerspaces people innovate and learn together by making things and using the Web to globally connect and share designs, tutorials and code. They offer creative environments where sustainable entrepreneurs, potentially with diverse motives and backgrounds, can meet and interact and thus benefit from synergies and the cross-pollination of ideas. Moreover, in makerspaces designers can come together and collaborate in participatory explorations during the use phase by prototyping, adding small-scale interventions and, therefore, moving from a “design-in-the-studio” to a “design-in-use” strategy.

Several innovative entrepreneurial endeavors and start-ups have emerged through makerspaces. This article refers to some prominent cases with the aim to provide an overview of the most mature examples that cover a wide spectrum of areas, from ICT and local manufacturing technologies to farming, culture and neuroscience.

In all, makerspaces should not be viewed merely as experimentation sites with local manufacturing technologies but as places “where people are experimenting with new ideas about the relationships amongst corporations, designers, and consumers”. The review of makerspaces-related innovation illustrated that they mainly produce user-led, incremental product and process innovations. Some of the aforementioned projects and eco-systems, such as the RepRap- or Arduino-based eco-systems, may represent both the Schumpeterian and social-oriented understanding of innovation. They seem to create win-win situations for both instigators/entrepreneurs and society, and inaugurate commons-oriented business models which arguably go beyond the classical corporate paradigm and its extractive profit-maximizing practices.

Conclusions

Are makerspaces a manifestation of the “new spirit of capitalism” that has successfully incorporated and adapted several of its various critical cultures? Or could we consider makerspaces as sites with non-negligible post-capitalist dynamics? Both possibilities still exist.

If we subscribe to the idea that at least some makerspaces can be seen as CBPP in practice, then, makerspaces may belong to a new form of capitalism but, at the same time, also highlight ways in which this new form might be transcended. If the dominant discourse of the “smart city” project is aligned with a neoliberal, corporate vision for urban development, then the “makerspace” could simultaneously be a source of legitimacy for the project and also serve as an institution for citizen-driven transformation.

An alternative vision for the smart city may be possible through a commons-oriented approach, geared towards the democratization of means of production. The basic tenet of this approach encourages citizens to participate in creating solutions collectively instead of merely adopting proprietary technology. In addition to virtual connections observed in several sharing economy initiatives, makerspaces can be the physical nodes of a collaborative culture. Further, they can serve as a new “design template”, where knowledge/design is developed and shared as a global digital commons while the actual customized manufacturing takes place locally, thus initiating a decisive break from the current production model.

Full title: “Making (in) the Smart City: The Emergence of Makerspaces”

Find this and more articles here.

Photo by miskaknapek

The post Essay of the Day: The Emergence of Makerspaces in the Smart City appeared first on P2P Foundation.

The authors focus on what has been called ‘commons-based peer production’ but also address the more controversial case of ‘platform capitalism’ (such as Uber or AirBnB). These new forms of production and work pose real challenges for the trade union movement and workers. According to some research, there is evidence of a direct connection between precarious work, new unemployment and these emerging forms of production and work.

The aim of the authors of this brief is to highlight also the opportunities that the emergence of peer production offers for the labour movement and workers in the form of a new wave of cooperative organisations that can create ‘non-subordinate labour’. You can read the full report though the embed below, or browse through the sections and comment on it in the Commons Transition Wiki.

The Emergence of Peer Production Challenges and Opportunities for Labour and Unions by P2P Foundation on Scribd

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Featuring real world case studies, such as Enspiral (a New Zealand based entrepreneurial coalition of mission-driven entities), Sensorica (a commons-based “Open Value Network” with partial market interfaces) and Backfeed (a blockchain-based prospective infrastructure for encouraging and rewarding peer production), “Value in the Commons Economy” addresses significant questions regarding the evolution of value.

Bauwens and Niaros explore how new value regimes can represent a shift towards post-capitalist practices. What if the commons represents a new economy that is being born within the old? We invite you to learn more about this powerful societal shift documented in this report.

Click image to read “Value in the Commons Economy” by Michel Bauwens and Vasilis Niaros.

Executive Summary

The value crisis

Our common world is faced with significant questions regarding the evolution of value. We consider the following to be among the most important:

• What is value, generally in the context of the allocation of resources in human societies, but more specifically in our ‘digitalized’, ‘networked’ societies where emerging knowledge commons are playing an increasingly vital role?
• What ‘should’ value be in a world marked by ecological and resource constraints presently operating at a global scale?
• In a world of social, cultural and institutional diversity, can a new ‘value system’ incorporate the multiple values that are not recognized by capitalism, such as the care economy and domestic work?

This report does not offer complete answers to these questions, but it looks at how the new commons-based approaches attempt to deal with them.

There is no consensus about what value is nor from where it is derived, neither cross-historically nor amongst analysts and commentators of contemporary capitalism. What individuals and societies are willing to put their attention and energy toward varies amongst cultures, regions, ideological and social groups within a society, and throughout historical times.

An intense debate persists on whether what determines value is located in the objective sphere (reflecting an amount of labor, energy, capital, resources etc.), such as is claimed by the labor value theory. Another approach is questioning whether it is located in the subjective sphere (the marginalist school, Austrian economics and its influence on mainstream neoclassical economics), whether as a simple correlation of individual desires or as a conscious collective decision and social contract.

There are, of course, major differences between these fundamental approaches. However, according to many authors, there seems to exist an increasing consensus that we are going through a ‘value crisis’ and that a new value regime must be invented. This crisis is characterized by an increased capacity to create common value through commons-based peer production and other practices of the collaborative economy. In these open and contributory systems, many contributors co-create value as a commons which can be used by all those that are connected to networks, but the income is generated by a fraction of the contributors connected to the marketplace.

The current value regime rewards ‘extractive’ production and consumption activities. Indeed, issues like the free labour of digital workers and social media users, the non-recognition of care work, and the ongoing ecological degradation of our planet and its resources are interlinked to the dominance of a system based on extractivism. Therefore, the key underlying shift needed is one from extractive models, practices that enrich some at the expense of the others (communities, resources, nature), to generative value models, practices that enrich the communities, resources etc., to which they are applied. This is what we could call the Value Shift.

Rather than discussing what the new value means for capitalism, the authors of this report ask: What does that new value represent for a shift towards post-capitalist practices? What if the commons represents a new economy that is being born within the old? If one adopts this perspective, two main avenues would be open to us.

The first avenue would be to think about ‘reverse co-optation’ of value, from the ‘old’ system to the new. Can the emerging commons-centric economy, which creates value in and through the commons, use capital from the capitalist or state system, and subsume capital to the new logic?

The second avenue goes one step further within the confines of the already existing commons economy: Can broader streams of value be recognized, and become the basis of a new distribution of value that recognizes the commons and its distinct species of value-creation?

One of the observed reactions is that some productive communities and the entrepreneurial coalitions allied with them are experimenting with generative business models, in which the entrepreneurial entities co-create the commons and create livelihoods for the contributors. An open cooperative that follows the first avenue (reverse cooptation) is Enspiral, through its ‘transvestment’ strategy, i.e. the transfer of value from one modality of value creation to another. This is implemented through the use of external investments with capped returns and the insulation of their purpose-driven activities from capitalist extraction. The second avenue (new value distribution strategies) is followed by Sensorica, which internally creates a value-sovereign distribution through its open value accounting system.

The underlying operating concept here is therefore a quest for ‘value sovereignty’. Communities that are already engaged in the value transition are operating within a dominant capitalist market economy. Thus, they must protect their value sovereignty through membranes that safeguard them from capture by extractive forces, and create reciprocity mechanisms to protect their networks. Finally, they must work at the eco-systemic level, i.e. create connections between value-sovereign meta-networks.

Case Studies

This report explores the open and contributory value practices of three pioneering peer production communities, namely Enspiral, Sensorica and Backfeed. The focus is on their value practices, i.e. how to maintain autonomy, how to create value sovereignty beyond the pressures of the capitalist market, how to generate value flows from the old economy to the new, advances and changes in their accounting practices, etc.

Enspiral is an entrepreneurial coalition of mostly mission-driven entities. These entities provide a wide range of services, including custom development of websites and applications, project management and creative services, all specialized for projects that aim to create social value. Enspiral’s infrastructure is managed by a cooperative Foundation that has a strong open source ethos in the documentation of its practices, along with a participatory design orientation to its structures. More specific, Enspiral calls itself an ‘open cooperative’ because of its commitment to both the production of commons, and an orientation towards the common good.

In the context of our description of a value shift, Enspiral is clearly pioneering a new ‘ethical’ value regime but also finding innovative solutions for what has previously been called ‘transvestment’. The Enspiral culture is coalesced around creating value for the society rather than for shareholders. It is statutorily oriented towards the common good and is pro-actively developing the conditions to serve this purpose. One of its core elements that illustrate this approach on value is ‘capped returns’. The general idea is that the total returns that investors may receive on the equity of a business are capped. For this, the shares issued by a company would be coupled by a matching call option which would require the repurchase of the shares at an agreed upon price. Once all shares have been repurchased by the company, it will be free to re-invest all future profits to its social mission. Through this mechanism, external and potentially extractive capital is ‘subsumed’ and disciplined to become ‘cooperative capital’.

Sensorica is an open collaborative network committed to the design and deployment of sensors and sense-making systems, utilizing open source software and hardware solutions. It is partially a commons-based community and partially a market-oriented entity. On one hand, individuals and organizations mutualize resources to initiate projects, driven primarily by intrinsic motivations. On the other hand, the innovative solutions developed in Sensorica can be exchanged in the market to generate income. In other words, it is experimenting with new ways of interaction between commons and market forms. To directly connect an open contributory system to potential income from the market and other sources, Sensorica has pioneered a complex form of a ‘value accounting system’. This system constitutes a reward mechanism that records and evaluates every member’s input and fairly redistributes revenues in proportion to each contribution to the related projects.

In our interpretation of their value practices, they differ in one essential aspect from the Enspiral model. In Enspiral, there is no direct linkage between the open and free contributions to their common resource base, and the creation of a livelihood through membership in their entrepreneurial entities. There is a ‘wall’ between the commons and the market. In the case of Sensorica, however, they have created independent entrepreneurial entities that have the sole right to commercialize their products and services. The income is directly linked to the priori commons contributions as measured through the open value accounting system.

Unlike our two previous examples, Backfeed is not a really operating peer production community, but its innovative and integrated design features warrants a special discussion. Backfeed is a system based on the use of the blockchain ledger, which imagines itself as a full infrastructure for decentralized production, which comes with sophisticated capabilities to develop incentives and express them through crypto-currencies. By doing this, they address the capacity to more easily create ‘value sovereign’ communities, and make technical tools available for their management of value. If Enspiral has a full wall between the market and the commons, which Sensorica aims to bridge through its open value accounting system, then Backfeed is even more directed towards the market polarity, by an intensive use of ‘incentives’ for the commons-based production.

Whether that is a desirable option is a fundamental question, as commons-based production is said to be based on ‘intrinsic’ motivation, and there is a potential danger that ‘extrinsic’ market-based incentives may ‘crowd out’ commons-based motivations. But with these reservations in mind, Backfeed remains an innovative way to think through the future of commons-based production with much more emphasis on extrinsic incentives and crypto-currency based monetization. Politically, the polarity represented by Enspiral follows a strong commons-based, common good oriented, and community centric approach, while Backfeed’s vision is based much more on the aggregation of individuals, who contractually align with each other, and with more stress on the exchange mechanisms. At this stage of non-implementation, the Backfeed protocol and design should be read as a possible future scenario for value exchange.

Policy Recommendations and Conclusions

The third section of the report explores some policy recommendations related to the aforementioned approaches, and how they could affect society as a whole, and the furtherance of commons-based peer production models. The report summarizes a set of proposals that deal respectively with an ‘economic’ and ‘political’ infrastructure for the new commons-based value regime.

Regarding the economic infrastructure, two aspects of suggested practice and policy are discussed. The first one is related to the protection of the ‘internal value regime’ that is distinct from the external one. This is what we call the practices that insure ‘value sovereignty’. The second aspect concerns the measures against external extractive and rent-seeking activities of profit-maximizing entities towards the commons, but also the positive capacity of reverse cooptation of the means available in the dominant external system.

The policy recommendations related to the political infrastructure aim at building a counter-power at the urban, regional and global level. To this end, a number of proposals is introduced which focus on the creation of the appropriate institutions to support commoners and commons-oriented enterprises on both the local and global level.

Our proposals describe the requirements for a new mode of exchange and production that integrates the requirement of shared knowledge and mutualization of physical infrastructures, fair distribution of value, and compatibility with the ecosystems on which we depend.

To conclude, we believe that a strategy for a multi-modal commons-centric transition offers a positive way out of the current crisis, and a way to respond to the new cultural and political demands of the commons-influenced generations. The commoners are already here and so are the commons, and the prefigurative forms of a new value regime. The time has come for an integrated strategy that both strengthens their economic networks, and the emergence of a new value regime.

“Value in the Commons Economy” was co-published by Heinrich Böll Foundation and the P2P Foundation

Lead image by Aotoro

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But how, then, to account for the many kinds of value that are intangible, social or ecological in nature, and without prices – activities such as child-rearing and eldercare, ecological stewardship, online peer production, and commoning?  There is an urgent need to begin to make these forms of value explicitly visible in our political economy and culture.

Two new reports plunge into this complicated but essential topic.  The first one – discussed below — is called “Value in the Commons Economy:  Developments in Open and Contributory Value Accounting,” The 49-page report by Michel Bauwens and Vasilis Niaros focuses on socially created value on digital networks. It was co-published yesterday by the Heinrich Böll Foundation and P2P Foundation.

Another important report on how to reconceptualize value – an account of a three-day Commons Strategies Group workshop on this topic – will be released in a few days and presented here.

The P2P Foundation report declares that “society is shifting from a system based on value created in a market system (through labor and capital) to one which recognizes broader value streams,” such as the social and creative value generated by online communities.  The rise of these new types of value – i.e., use-value generated by commoners working outside of typical market structures – is forcing us to go beyond the simple equation of price = value.

Michel Bauwens and sociologist Adam Arvidsson call this the “value crisis” of our time.  Commons-based peer production on open platforms is enabling people to create new forms of value, such as open source software, wikis, sharing via social networks, and creative collaborations.  Yet paradoxically, only a small minority of players is able to capture and monetize this value.  Businesses like Facebook, Google and Twitter use their proprietary platforms to strictly control the terms of sharing; collect and sell massive amounts of personal data; and pay nothing to commoners who produced the value in the first place.

This is highly extractive, and not (re)generative.  So what can be done?  How could open platforms be transformed to bolster the commons and serve as a regenerative social force?

The P2P Foundation report is a welcome splash of clarity on a topic that is often obscured by deceptive terms like the “sharing economy” and mystifications about the structural realities of digital cooperation.

The Bauwens/Niaros report starts with a section analyzing the theoretical nature of the “value crisis” we are experiencing, before moving on to three powerful case studies of alternative value-systems pioneered by the Enspiral network, Sensorica and Backfeed.  The report concludes with a series of policy recommendations for changing the economic and political infrastructure.

The Value Crisis

The real roots of the “value crisis” stem from the fact that “contemporary capitalist value-practices are no longer able to determine what value is,” write Bauwens and Niaros.  Stock market valuations are notoriously unable to attribute a reliable (financial) value to a company because so much value resides in social intangibles – the goodwill of consumers, brand reputations, and social sharing.  Stock analysts can try to add up the resale value of factory buildings, equipment and office furniture, but there is no reliable, consensus method for assigning a value to all the social beliefs and activities that make a company valuable.

Such a delicious irony!  Contemporary capitalism loves that it can freely appropriate software code, personal data, user-generated information, videos, etc. – a shareable cultural abundance that the world has never seen before.  Yet investors have great difficulty in monetizing and commodifying this value.  It is hard to make abundant social value artificially scarce and therefore saleable.

So we have the spectacle of commoners having trouble protecting the use-value that they create, which businesses are aggressively trying to channel into extractive market production and consumption.  (“Extractive” because companies want this value for free, and don’t want to reward the social communities.)  And yet even with their great extractive powers (lots of capital, copyright laws, terms of service contracts, etc.), large companies are finding that it is difficult to develop reliable flows of profit.

Toward Value Sovereignty

The focus of the P2P Foundation report is how to move from an extractive digital economy to a regenerative one.  Hence the focus on how three digital communities are trying to protect their “value practices” and create a “value sovereignty” beyond the pressures of capitalist markets.  These communities are trying to achieve a “reverse co-optation” by generating value flows from the old economy to the new, and by developing new value-accounting systems to properly honor social contributions.

One such project is Enspiral, a highly participatory, mission-driven coalition of entrepreneurs and other entities, many of them based in New Zealand.  “Enspiral calls itself an ‘open cooperative’ because of its commitment to both the production of commons and an orientation to the common good,” write Bauwens and Niaros. One of its innovations is the use of “capped returns,” which puts a limit on how much an investor in the Enspiral infrastructure can receive in return.  As the report notes:

….the shares issued by a company would be coupled by a matching call option which would require the repurchase of the shares at an agreed upon price.  Once all shares have been repurchased by the company, it will be free to reinvest all future profits to its social mission. Through this mechanism, external and potentially extractive capital is ‘subsumed’ and disciplined to become ‘cooperative capital.’”

Sensorica is an open collaborative network that is experimenting with new ways to combine commons and market forms.  It has an elaborate “value accounting system” for keeping track of its members’ contributions to market-based projects. This system is then used to allocate revenues in proportion to each member’s role. Is Sensorica a new kind of (market-driven) co-op or a new type of (mission-based) commons?  Maybe a hybrid.

A third case study looks at Backfeed, a production community that relies on the blockchain ledger as an infrastructure for decentralized production.  Backfeed is more of an aggregation of individuals working together to sell to markets, than a commons.  Still, the cooperative organizational structure has the potential for making it capable of acting as a “value sovereign” community. Many others are exploring how the blockchain might enable cooperative control over a community’s resources, whether for sale in the market or for internal use-value.

Policy Recommendations

The P2P Foundation report concludes with a series of policy recommendations that would help protect the kinds of value regimes described in the case studies.  It proposes open cooperatives to create new types of livelihoods and the use of “reciprocity-based licensing” to protect against value capture by capitalist enterprises and foster solidarity among generative coalitions.  The report also calls for open supply chains and common network resource planning to help promote an open source “circular economy”(e.g., “design global, manufacture local”).

Bauwens and Niaros envision new sorts of political collaboration to provide a counter-power to the old economy and advocacy for peer production communities.  Local “chambers of commons” and “commons-oriented entrepreneurial associations” are needed, not to mention new forms of transnational collaboration, they urge.

At a time when the political left has trouble moving beyond Keynesian economic models and the management of neoliberalism’s many crises, Bauwens and Niaros point to some new models of commons-based peer production that could help transform the terms of engagement.

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