How Small Cities can get Big Benefits from Flexible Bikesharing

by Cat Johnson, Shareable: http://www.shareable.net/blog/how-small-cities-can-get-big-benefits-from-flexible-bikesharing

Big cities, such as New York City, are celebrated for their successful bikesharing programs, with thousands of bikes and hundreds of smart docking stations. For smaller cities and towns, however, this is not a practical model.

Big and small cities have the same need for bikesharing: to fill transportation gaps, reduce traffic and parking congestion, promote sustainability, build a bike a pedestrian culture, promote active lifestyles, and support local business. They differ, however, in the following ways: small cities have lower densities, established driving cultures, and a smaller tax base.

In a recent webinar, bikesharing provider Zagster and the Shared Use Mobility Center, a public interest organization working to foster collaboration in shared mobility, spotlighted flexible bikesharing systems, in which the technology necessary to borrow and lock a bike resides in the bikes themselves rather than in expensive, fixed docking stations.

Flexible bikesharing offers an alternative that's more realistic for smaller budgets and ridership. Where traditional bikesharing systems can take millions of dollars and years to implement, flexible bikesharing, which uses lightweight kiosks or even bike racks as hubs, can be quickly and affordably tested and implemented.

The webinar was designed to give those living in cities with less than 50,000 people an overview of flexible bikesharing systems, including the benefits and challenges of launching one. Here are the key takeaways: 

Benefits of Tech-on-bike, Flexible Bikesharing

• There are fewer “ingredients” with flexible bikesharing. All you need is a bike, though kiosks and racks are helpful.
• Flexible bikesharing melds into the streetscape as it has a lower profile footprint
• The hardware is lightweight
• Data gathered from bikes during demos and pilot programs can inform project planning
• Riders can access to the bike system via an app
• Flexible bike sharing is easy and inexpensive to upgrade
• It’s an investment toward more bike infrastructure in cities
• It’s easy to install and move

Equity

Flexible bikesharing enables cities to diversify their fleet of bikes to include accessible bikes for riders that would otherwise be unable to participate in bikesharing. While flexible bikesharing is generally accessed with a smartphone, a smartphone is not necessary. You can use simple SMS/text messaging or even a code given out at a local library or community center. 

Funding

There are various funding models, including nonprofits, businesses, advocacy groups, government organizations, real estate organizations and universities. Fort Collins, Colorado is an interesting case study as its collaborative sponsorship model includes public funding, nonprofits, advocacy organizations, and businesses.

Grant funding sources at the federal level may include Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality (CMAQ), STP Transportation Enhancements, Transportation Investments Generation Economic Recovery (TIGER). Grant funding sources at a local level may include energy and R&D pilot funds, public health grants, parking credits, toll revenues and affordable housing funds. 

Scaling

Flexible bikesharing allows cities to easily and affordably test pilot programs before scaling. Scaling to more neighborhoods and surrounding municipalities is easier and less expensive than with traditional, docking bikesharing systems. Payment can be integrated with existing public transit payment systems, such as transit cards. 

Challenges of Flexible Bikesharing

• Flexible bikesharing is not as visible as traditional bikesharing systems with docking stations.
• It’s still relatively new so there’s limited data about sponsorship and models
• Long-term and/or high-volume durability is unknown
• Flexible bikesharing is less friendly for a tourist who may not be interested in downloading app and learning how the bikesharing system works.
• Small cities have to determine whether they’re targeting their bikesharing system for residents or tourists.

Download the webinar: Making Bike Share Work Outside of the Big City

More bike share resources from Shareable:

• Why Bike Sharing Benefits Everyone (Even If You Already Own a Bike)
• 5 Bikesharing Trends to Watch
• NACTO Report Links Station Density to Bike Share Usage, Equity
• 8 Cargo Bike-sharing Programs in Europe

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Photo: David Marcu (CC-0). 

6 Ways We’re Already Leading an Economic Revolution

by Gar Alperovitz, Yes Magazine: http://www.yesmagazine.org/new-economy/6-ways-were-already-leading-an-economic-revolution-20160907

Many years ago, while researching the history of the U.S. decision to use atomic weapons on the people of Japan, I came to understand something: there was something deep at work in the American political and economic system driving it toward relentless expansion and a dangerous, informal imperialism.

I began thinking about how to fundamentally change America out of concern with what America was doing - and is still doing - to the rest of the world.

Many experiences since - especially working in the U.S. House, Senate, and at upper levels of the State Department trying to resist the war in Vietnam; and thereafter with activists in the antiwar and civil rights movements - taught me something important: it wasn’t enough to stand in opposition to the injustices America inflicted on the world and its own people. It was equally important for these movements to operate with an idea of what they want instead.

Could we imagine a system that undercuts the logic responsible for so much suffering at home and abroad?

It was reflections like these that brought me to first sketch the idea of a “pluralist commonwealth” - an economic and political system different from both corporate capitalism and state socialism grounded in democratic ownership, decentralization, and community that could fulfill two key functions.

On one hand, it offered a general map of where we might want to go - a design for a next system in which a plurality of overlapping institutions reinforce each other to democratize our common wealth. On the other hand (and unlike other more utopian blueprints), I’ve always believed that the Pluralist Commonwealth, grounded in everyday American reality - like the deep cooperative tradition of the Wisconsin where I grew up - was also an effective guide to how we might actually get there.

While progress is never strictly linear, I believe that we are beginning to see an accelerating development of the foundations for a system that looks a lot like the Pluralist Commonwealth, and a growing recognition of how they begin to fit together.

So how do we maintain and deepen the momentum? Here are six areas where it’s particularly strategic to be organizing and building institutional power in the current moment.

1. Public banking: take it to the cities

Public banking, which invests capital for the common good rather than Wall Street’s bottom line, has existed at the state level for nearly 100 years in North Dakota.

Now, activists are taking this model to cities and uncovering exciting possibilities. In Santa Fe, for instance, organizers have worked with Mayor Javier Gonzales to begin serious consideration of a municipal-level public bank. As an official city study released earlier this year showed, instead of the city’s $200 million in cash deposits sitting in large, non-local financial institutions, a municipal public bank could leverage those deposits to reduce borrowing costs for the city - saving millions of dollars of taxpayer money every year that would otherwise go toward costly bond offerings.

Similar efforts in Philadelphia and other cities are also picking up steam as more and more people discover just how much money is wasted on Wall Street to finance the growth and development of city infrastructure. Why make a bond trader rich when you could build better schools and lower taxes instead?

The publicly owned Bank of North Dakota has long strengthened the state economy, expanded access to affordable credit, and contributed its revenues to supporting vital services like education. But the institution is also the product of a unique history, in which progressive populism was able to use the state Legislature to create this innovation. Today, in the face of relatively unresponsive state legislatures, progressives are proving that cities are promising spaces to channel energies for creative action.

By demonstrating the power of finance as a public utility, the public banking movement is building momentum for and giving shape to a democratic system of investment that is much larger. Public banks, credit unions, and community development financial institutions can all grow over time to displace the financialized, profit-seeking banking sector, helping turn the tables to put the public’s money to work for the benefit of everyone.

2. Worker ownership: build the ecosystem for economic democracy

There’s been an explosion of interest in worker cooperatives as a simple solution to begin democratizing ownership of the economy. An ecosystem is emerging that allows people all across the country to accelerate these cooperatives’ development by engaging local governments for support, converting existing businesses, or even investing personal savings into their expansion.

Worker cooperatives, by directly shifting ownership and control of the workplace to workers themselves, are some of the most intuitive and immediately appealing institutions of the Pluralist Commonwealth. Studies show that worker-owned companies don’t just democratize wealth, they can also operate more efficiently and are more likely to stay in business than “normal” firms.

Yet while there are more than 10 million Americans working in companies in which they also own a share, the number of worker cooperatives - where these shares are equal for all workers, and come with an equal vote in the future of the business - is far smaller.

But this isn’t because of some intrinsic problem with worker co-ops. Traditional businesses, in which workers labor for someone else’s profit, have an entire ecosystem of support - from the business schools that train their managers to the banks and public subsidies that finance their creation and expansion.

Worker-cooperative advocates are building a parallel ecosystem of this kind all across the country. Cooperative development projects like the Wellspring Collaborative in Springfield, Massachusetts, and the CERO cooperative in Boston are creating exciting new crowdfunding mechanisms to help communities launch democratic enterprises. Organizations like The Working World and the Shared Capital Cooperative are building national networks to channel financial resources into the cooperative economy, creating diversified opportunities in which both institutions and individuals can invest. 

In cities like New York, Madison, Wisconsin, and Rochester, New York, municipal funding is now being used to support the work of cooperative developers focusing on creating worker-owned businesses in low-income communities. There is no reason why every city and town’s existing infrastructure for helping small businesses cannot be turned toward democratic alternatives, and the more this happens, the easier it becomes to make the case to community stakeholders and policymakers.

A key opportunity here is conversions of existing businesses. As the boomer generation retires, the future for hundreds of thousands of small- and medium-sized businesses is unclear. Without a succession plan, many of these businesses may get absorbed by financialized private equity or simply cease to exist.  If we organize to take advantage of this historical moment, we can convert many of these to worker-owned businesses instead.

3. Procurement politics: “buy local” at a bigger scale

Solid local organizing is shifting the purchasing behavior of place-based nonprofit institutions - or “anchor” institutions - toward sustainability and economic inclusion. This means big steps toward the Pluralist Commonwealth can be achieved with relatively small amounts of activist resources.

Consider the Real Food Challenge: In less than a decade, this network of student activists has secured pledges to shift more than $60 million of food purchases at 73 colleges and universities across the country into more sustainable and just options.

Opportunities exist in every aspect of anchor institution operations. A student-led study at the University of Michigan found that just a 5 percent shift in procurement to local suppliers would increase local economic activity by more than $13 million and create more than 450 jobs.

Non-profit hospitals may be particularly open to such demands with new rules under the Affordable Care Act mandating “community health need assessments” - reports that can illuminate the role that poverty plays in poor public-health outcomes and make clear the responsibility of health care institutions to use their resources to address economic inequality.

And campaigns to alter purchasing can strategically link up with campaigns to shift investment dollars in the same institutions. For instance, the Reinvest in Our Power campaign is mobilizing students to demand not just divestment from carbon in their schools’ endowment portfolios, but active reinvestment in community-controlled financial institutions.

“Buying local” may make us feel better about the consequences of our consumer choices, but when we change the way our public and large nonprofit institutions like universities and hospitals spend their money, we’re shifting hundreds of billions, if not upwards of a trillion, dollars into local economies - and creating a kind of decentralized planning system in the process.

This is the concept behind the Evergreen Cooperatives, which channel the purchasing power of Cleveland’s biggest anchors into a network of green worker cooperatives, creating opportunities for ownership in some of the city’s hardest-hit communities and communities of color.

As we work to shift the dollars spent by public and nonprofit institutions into patterns that support and stabilize thriving local economies, it’s important to remember that we must defend our right to do so politically. Right-wing state legislatures and large-scale international trade agreements like TTIP and the TPP aim to remove barriers to the global movement of capital and undermine local procurement initiatives.

4. Participatory governance: organize for renewed democracy

At the heart of the Pluralist Commonwealth is the idea of renewed democracy. We all know that American democracy is severely broken - but just “getting the money out” of our political system is insufficient.

A compelling alternative is suggested by participatory budgeting, which allows residents of a community to vote directly on how a portion of public money is spent. The mechanism, developed initially in Latin America, has been making substantial progress in the U.S. in recent years and can be built upon, shifting our political culture away from spectacles of personality and toward real engagement with the project of self-government.

Following the lead of city officials in places like Chicago and New York who embraced participatory budgeting to manage discretionary funds, smaller cities like Vallejo, California, and Greensboro, North Carolina, have embarked on citywide participatory budgeting processes. Santa Fe, New Mexico, is pioneering a participatory budgeting process tied to a fund for renewable energy investments.

While the amounts of money in each project to date remain small, participatory budgeting at once normalizes the demand for direct community control over the allocation of resources and provides a site in which the muscles of community self-government can be strengthened and scaled up. In short, it is an organizing process as much as it is budgeting process. And it’s only through such organizing and development that we can build toward higher-order processes of truly participatory planning.

Boston’s trailblazing participatory budgeting process, for instance, recognizes the key role it can play in developing long-term community leadership by prioritizing the city’s youth. Boston has placed $1 million of public money under binding, directly democratic control of Boston residents between the ages of 12 and 25.

And even in cities where municipal officials aren’t ready to embrace direct participation in budgeting, there are plenty of opportunities for creative grassroots organizing to expand participatory budgeting. The Department of Housing and Urban Development has officially endorsed it as a way to implement required community oversight of money allocated locally through Community Development Block Grants. In Toronto, for the past 13 years public housing residents have had direct, binding control over millions of dollars of annual capital improvement funding.

As we seek to reinvent, reinvigorate, and revitalize American democracy, we can begin by empowering the communities far too commonly denied the right to meaningfully participate.

5. Energy democracy: plan it by region

Building democratic ownership at the community level opens up the possibility for planning. In Boulder, Colorado, citizens felt that their city’s power supplier - corporate giant Xcel Energy - was not taking the threat of climate change seriously. Rather than trying to force the company to comply with regulations, the residents of Boulder decided to take their utility back. When this municipalization (currently in progress despite multiple political and legal roadblocks thrown up by the corporate incumbent) is complete, the city will be able to democratically manage its own energy sources.

Boulder proves that planning is by no means necessarily undemocratic or centralized - in fact, one of the reasons I believe changing the underlying ownership patterns of the economy is so important is that it begins to unlock possibilities not just for a more equal distribution of wealth, but for the kinds of decentralized planning we need.

Ultimately, we need to be scaling up beyond the city level to the regional level if we really want to plan effectively for a new energy system.  Those most affected by the old energy system already realize this - and in many cases are at the forefront of efforts to imagine what a just transition looks like at a regional level.

A particularly exciting effort is the one being led in parts of Appalachia by groups like Kentuckians for the Commonwealth and Mountain Association for Community Economic Development. Faced with a recalcitrant state government opposed to implementation of the federal Clean Power Plan, local activists have been engaging stakeholders on the ground to develop a clean power plan of their own, from below, with a particular focus on rebuilding economic opportunity for the workers and communities that have traditionally depended on the coal industry as one of the few sources of jobs in the region.

Even without the ability to directly translate this popular planning process into public policy, such activism, oriented around large-scale alternative visions, can be a powerful organizing tool as we work toward a post-carbon future.

6. Stop imperialism, tame growth 

I have worked nearly my entire life in the United States, inside what has been the most powerful capitalist state in the world. And while bottom-up, grassroots experiments at increasingly larger levels of scale are key, it is important to remember why they matter.

Simply put, without dismantling the engine of growth at the heart of the American economy, we don’t stand a chance of making the world a sustainable and equitable place for the human species to thrive. This ultimately means transforming some very large corporations into public utilities, preferably at the regional level. Such entities would not be subject to the Wall Street maxim of grow or die, nor would they drag the U.S. into support of right-wing dictators willing to allow American corporations to control a good deal of their development. 

Building the Pluralist Commonwealth in America is, to my mind, an act of anti-imperialism. But recognizing this deep connection between building a more local and sustainable economy at home and the well-being of the rest of the world does not absolve us of responsibility to oppose the government’s efforts to reassert America’s grasp on global hegemony. 

The same good conscience that leads us to reconstruct the American economic system over decades should also lead us to oppose the rattling of sabers, the support for the overthrow of inconvenient foreign democracies, and the destruction wrought by American military action overseas.

Gar Alperovitz wrote this article for YES! Magazine. Gar is the former Lionel R. Bauman Professor of Political Economy at the University of Maryland and co-founder of the Democracy Collaborative. His most recent publication is What Then Must We Do? Straight Talk About the Next American Revolution (2013).

Three Cities: Seeking Hope in the Anthropocene

by Rod Oram, Pure Advantage: http://pureadvantage.org/news/2016/08/16/three-cities-seeking-hope-anthropocene/ 

With economies stagnating, politics polarising, societies shattering and ecosystems suffering, I felt an urgent need to go walkabout last September. 

It was my best chance of making some sense of the news from around the world. I travelled to Beijing, London, and Chicago, three cities that have profoundly shaped my life, as much so as Auckland has these past twenty years. 

I came home from my walkabout feeling in some ways more despondent. The damage being done is so rampant, the vital changes needed so radical, the time left so fleeting. Righting our utter unsustainability seems impossible. Yet if we give up we are already lost.

Thankfully, I also came home feeling more optimistic and purposeful, with a deep appreciation for the people I had met and the work they do.

They are recovering a sense of boundless opportunity, optimism, common good and, above all, values and moral purpose. They are keeping alive rationality, engagement, enterprise and freedom. They are creating political systems, social structures and business models that will help us achieve an unprecedented speed, scale and complexity of change.

They are giving us half a chance to work with the ecosystem, not against it. They all work in small communities of interest with deep knowledge and skills, while networking widely. These are strong, learning communities with the essential attributes of common sense (understanding what’s going on), common purpose (responding effectively) and common wealth (sharing the economic, ecological and societal benefits).

In such communities, individuals are valued, helped and encouraged. In return, they participate and change, and help others change. In my new BWB Text, Three Cities: Seeking Hope in the Anthropocene, I discuss three concepts that help show us how we can achieve this.

First, the Doughnut Economy situates the ideal economy between two circles, the outer one labelled ‘environmental ceiling’, the inner one ‘social foundation’. In between lies ‘the safe and just space for humanity’. Created by British economist Kate Raworth, this concept lays out the strong social foundation required for transformational change, and the environmental limits within which we must live.

The second concept is the Circular Economy in which the waste material from making one product becomes the raw material for making another. This guides us towards returning to nature everything we take from it, ensuring we work with the ecosystem, not against it.

The third is China’s long-term vision of Ecological Civilisation which involves wise use of resources, environmental protection and ecological preservation. This informs the values we need to achieve deep sustainability in environmental, social, cultural and economic terms.

While the concepts are new, some elements of them were once embedded in New Zealand society. We used to talk about equality of opportunity. But now we create growing inequalities in health, education and welfare. We used to conserve some of our local ecosystems. But now we systematically degrade all our land, water and air.

Now, though, we have to embark on deep change so we can achieve the biggest goal humankind has ever attempted. It is not to save the planet. It will survive the Anthropocene - even if we don’t. It will adapt as it has to previous geological eras. Over tens of millions of years a vastly different ecosystem will evolve, one shaped by prevailing conditions.

Our goal has to be to save ourselves. To do so we must give this ecosystem that gives us life the best chance it has to recover and to continue to support us. Achieving this enormous goal will take countless steps. The three most critical are minimising climate change, and making sustainable use of land and oceans. Each in turn will take myriad steps. This can be achieved if people are wise and effective, quick and committed.

Minimising climate change dictates we must drastically cut human triggered carbon emissions to net zero by 2040 - meaning, we reuse or capture and store enough existing atmospheric carbon to negate the new carbon we add. That requires radical changes to the way people design the built-environment and economy, the materials used to make them and the energy used to run them. Then we will have half a chance of keeping climate change to less than 2 ̊C.

We have to begin right now with communities, business and government working on ways to reduce our carbon emissions far more, and far more quickly, than the immorally minimalist target our government tabled in the 2015 Paris climate negotiations. Such transformation will create great economic opportunities for all.

Sustainable land requires equally radical change in the way soil and freshwater are used. For farmers, this means developing practices that improve the health of soil and water and increase biodiversity, while eliminating artificial fertilisers and chemicals. Deep science and technology are vital to helping people understand and work with the vast complexity and abundance of nature.

For city-dwellers, achieving sustainable land and water use means minimising urban footprints and bringing more of nature into our built- environments. This includes producing more food in towns, using natural processes to treat storm water, and greening buildings and streetscapes to enhance their biodiversity.

Sustainable oceans are a still greater challenge, not least here in the South Seas. New Zealand is responsible for the fourth-largest oceanic zone in the world. It is more than twenty times our land area. Yet we know little about it. Given the great complexity of the marine ecosystem our fishery management practices are crude and probably not sustainable. Close to shore in places such as the Hauraki Gulf we are rapidly degrading the ecosystem by over-exploiting it and pouring urban detritus into it.

These ambitious goals can be achieved over coming decades if we commit right now to beginning the long adventure. Crucial first steps include the government making a much deeper international carbon reduction pledge than it did in Paris. 

Long-term, stable policies, devised collaboratively with companies and communities, would enable the country to meet that commitment. The policies would need strong cross-party and public support, based on a clear understanding of their benefits, and because of their intergenerational timeframe.

But treaties and policies are top-down. They alone can’t do the job. We must also have bottom-up complementary, voluntary measures to enable companies, communities and individuals to go above and beyond.

All of the above needs to be underpinned by a committee on climate change, like the UK’s, which gives independent, evidence-based advice to the government and parliament on carbon budgets and policies, while measuring progress on it.

New Zealand businesses need to play their part by following the lead of offshore corporates that are measuring and managing their carbon flows. This has become a fundamental business discipline, as much so as measuring and managing money. The London Stock Exchange, for example, requires listed companies to measure, report and manage their carbon footprint.

Likewise, carbon is increasingly a metric for company evaluations by investment fund managers. This helps them judge which companies will benefit most from engaging in the low-carbon transformation, and which are most vulnerable from not engaging. […]

All these projects would deliver substantial economic and environmental benefits. But at best only a few might happen, because society is so divided over how serious the current unsustainability is. And that won’t change until we understand how fundamental a transformation we need in our relationships with each other and with the ecosystem.

If we get them right, though, a galaxy of opportunities for our planet’s remedy and renewal will open up. 

About the author, Rod Oram

Rod Oram has forty years’ experience as an international business journalist. He has worked for various publications in Europe, North America and New Zealand, including the Financial Times and the New Zealand Herald. He is currently a columnist for the Sunday Star-Times; a regular broadcaster on radio and television; and a frequent public speaker on sustainability, business, economics, innovation, creativity and entrepreneurship, in both New Zealand and global contexts.

To Thrive, We Must Be In Touch With Each Other

by Sarah van Gelder, Yes! magazine: http://www.yesmagazine.org/happiness/to-thrive-we-must-be-in-touch-with-each-other-20160817

Imagine that instead of reading these words on a screen, you are sitting across from me over a cup of coffee.

You’re sharing your stories, and I’m sharing mine. As we talk, we notice many things about each other, because our words are just a small part of what we communicate. I watch your eyes, which may be focused or may be darting to a cell phone. The corners of your mouth might turn up slightly, or you might raise your eyebrows when you’re provoked. You might hear my breath change or notice a subtle shift in the pitch of my voice.

As we learn about another person in these many ways, we have a harder time dismissing them, because even when they say something we disagree with, we have these other indications that we are with a living, breathing, flawed yet miraculous being who struggles and falls short, just as we do.

On my road trip last year, I realized when I listened to the conversations I’d recorded how often they took place over coffee or a meal.

I stopped at a harvest festival at a small farm outside Louisville, Kentucky, about halfway through my trip, arriving just as people were lining up for a sumptuous meal of tamales, salads, and beans. Most of the ingredients had been grown just a few feet away from the front yard of the farmhouse, where we sat on hay bales as we ate and talked. A band played on the front porch, and couples got up to dance. Nearby, kids and adults picked up a game of soccer. Newcomers kept on arriving, filling their plates with food.

Nelson Escobar, an immigrant from El Salvador, and Elmer Zavala, originally from Honduras, started the farm. A dozen people of many backgrounds till the land, each raising three crops, each sharing their harvest with the others in the collective so all can have a varied local diet.

The food is great, but for Escobar and Zavala, the sense of community is key. “What I really love about this is the collective,” Zavala said when I asked why he helped start this farm. “I love sharing the harvest. And when we grow it ourselves, we don’t have to worry that our food was grown in conditions that exploit workers. Because we’re humans, doing work together is really satisfying,” Escobar added.

Collectives can have their disputes. Sometimes conflicts tear groups apart. Still, we learn deeply when we tune into how others see the world, and that can help us make sense of the world and of ourselves.

When we try to work together at a large scale, it’s much more difficult: Issues get too abstract, and we fall into oversimplification. We stereotype each other, turning unique human beings into “illegals,” “soccer moms,” “thugs,” “suits.” And ideas become rigid ideologies. Nuance, tolerance, and empathy get lost. Fear of the unfamiliar creates the conditions for a mob mentality, racism, and violence.

Likewise, we’re more likely to feel isolated, powerless, disengaged, and worse - we’re more likely to die early. Isolation is as dangerous to our health as smoking, Judith Shulevitz wrote in The New Republic in 2013. Lonely people are more likely to get Alzheimer’s disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, and cancer.

In order to thrive, we have to be “in touch” with others, to internalize their humanity. Otherwise, we spiral into illness, selfishness, self-aggrandizement, and a “me first” ideology, becoming insatiable consumers and second-rate citizens.

We evolved to live in community, and that seems to be the scale where we can best navigate the complexities of life - the experiences of people not like us, the fragility and resilience of the web of life that surrounds us.

When we live connected to a community, we are more likely to become champions for one another, not just for ourselves. It’s a small step from there to becoming advocates for the larger community, even for the community of all life. From there, the idea of the common good is not so hard to grasp.

Sarah van Gelder wrote this article for YES! Magazine. Sarah is co-founder and editor at large of YES! Magazine. Sarah writes articles and conducts interviews for YES!, and she speaks regularly about solutions journalism, grassroots innovations, and social change movements. She is the editor of several books and is writing another. Follow her on Twitter @sarahvangelder.

The Open Source School Redefines Education in Italy

by Alessia Clusini, Translation by Nicole Stojanovska, Shareable: http://www.shareable.net/blog/the-open-source-school-redefines-education-in-italy

Threading elements of the great educational experiments of Bauhaus and Roycroft Community models together with Pierre Levy’s modern definition of “collective intelligence,” La Scuola Open Source (The Open Source School) embodies the principles of the sharing movement.

Its success hinges on cooperative work, co-design, shared skills, and an open source culture. The school's 13 co-founders believe in the power of people's collaborative qualities. Their unusual constitution is testimony to this.

I believe La Scuola Open Source has the capacity to extend from its origin in Puglia on the southern heel of Italy and inspire the acquisition of knowledge and educational development on a global scale.

Recently, I talked with two of its co-founders - Lucilla Fiorentino and Alessandro Tartaglia - how digital artisans, creators, artists, designers, programmers, pirates, dreamers, and innovators are collaborating to create Italy's most important service for social innovation and community development: education. Fiorentino and Tartaglia answered my questions in tandem. 

What is La Scuola Open Source and what’s the idea behind it?

In the early part of the last century, as a result of the social and economic changes produced by the industrial revolution, an architect named Walter Gropius conceived a school in Germany aimed at creating new professionals to provide an answer to the demand of innovation generated by the changes in time.

That school was Bauhaus - a place that would become a legend. It was born from the union of an art academy, a technical college and a faculty of architecture. Within a few years, combining skills and working on real projects with the help of many internationally renowned experts, a pedagogical experiment of historic proportions was born.

We believe that, today, we live in a somewhat similar condition produced by the acceleration of technology and by the sudden economic slowdown. We’re in a crisis and struggle to see the light at the end of the tunnel. The reason for this, in our opinion, is that the path to be taken is not linear.

Not only should we know how to move forward and how to progress, we must also develop the ability to play on more dimensions with a cognitive agility. We also believe that the digital presence in our lives is changing more and more in our culture. All organizations are becoming cultural organizations and every product today is also product of culture.

This mutation makes the vision of the future a central issue to address and is the reason La Scuola Open Source was born. We believe that in the future there must be new kinds of professionals, new spaces for social gatherings, and new ways of learning and transmitting knowledge. 

How do you apply your “educate to emancipate" motto?

​We believe that greater knowledge implies greater awareness which is exactly what we need to free ourselves and be able to look at things from different points of views. We embarked on this path because we believe in people - in what they can do together and the surplus value that is created when knowledge is shared and exchanged.


Lucilla Fiorentino, La Scuola Open Source co-founder

What is the teaching methodology?

We work co-operatively on real projects. Teachers bring knowledge and drive the process and tutors facilitate the work by organizing it; they put the process into practice. Participants work together with teachers and tutors to realize tangible projects, whether they’re robotic, IT-based, crafted, artistic, or theoretical.

In this way, by attracting teachers from around the county (and, in some cases, also from abroad), we develop skills in our territory and simultaneously bring people together. Over time, this process will allow us to rely on new skills formed in Italy due to the influence it will have on graduates.

The teaching process is connected to this research and one produces resources for the other. Teaching modules can be parameterized depending on the number of teachers, tutors, participants, duration, number of hours, field of interest and the operating mode. 

How do you use Bauhaus and Roycroft Community models?

A model is something that inspires you and something you think of when envisioning all the possibilities. It is a kind of canvas on which to build your own personal history - a scheme for your reasoning, an image buried in your memory that you tend to complete through the process of interpretation. 

How much has the XYLAB experience affected La Scuola Open Source?

I think being able to prototype our idea twice (X in 2013 and XY in 2014) through Laboratori dal Basso (Bottom up Labs, a regional funding program) has been a great fortune. We identified and tried even the most problematic mechanisms with a view to improve the process. We engaged with people who taught us a lot and met new people who opened our eyes to worlds we had previously ignored.

This has all been crucial and allowed us to weave a large network of relationships and strengthen the outside perception of our work over time. At the same time, it's allowed us to focus more and more on our idea, all the way to the proposal document we presented to the Che Fare application (one of Italy’s most prestigious social innovation grants) a year ago and won. 

How can digital artisans, creators, artists, designers, programmers, pirates, dreamers, and innovators complete each other with a common vision?

In the institutional paradigm, many of these figures do not talk and do not relate, as it’s difficult for them to do that. According to our idea, though, they can share a dialogue, exchange pieces of knowledge, cooperate, engage with real challenges, and get their hands dirty together. This creates a fruitful opportunity where it’s possible through contamination to generate new professional figures, new ideas for products or services, and even new adequate technologies for this shifting global scenario.


Alessandro Tartaglia, La Scuola Open Source co-founder

How important is sharing in the Open Source School project?

Sharing is the foundation of contamination and the engine of everything. It is a delicate process, often regulated by empathy between individuals. Some days ago while talking with a friend we came up with the concept, "The project is the recipe, the people are the ingredients, we'll be the oil." 

What are the commons at La Scuola Open Source?

The commons are what we share, together and with each other. In sociology, we’d speak of “collective intelligence.” According to the French philosopher Pierre Levy, the spread of communication techniques for digital media has led to the emergence of new ways of social bonding based on gathering areas of common interests, open processes of cooperation and an exchange of knowledge. We keep saying, “Innovation is always social, otherwise it’s just profiting from people’s ignorance."

Sharing knowledge is the first and most essential common for us. It generates a real process of emancipation and civilization since it enables any person to serve their community. Simultaneously, it allows each individual to freely express and enhance their uniqueness, while giving them the opportunity to appeal to all the intellectual and human qualities of the community itself.

That's what we'll focus on, experimenting and developing the best practices, starting from the co-design of the school itself with the triple workshop XYZ. Of the commons, this is a very important field of research for the future of humanity, and we’ll play our part. 

How could you make the project sustainable and what is the economic/organizational structure?

Each module or teaching activity activated will have its own financial provision system (funding mix) such as fundraising, crowdfunding, access fees, sponsorships, project financing, etc. Research projects will be funded through agreements with companies, public administration and government agencies, as well as through EU-grant applications or any potential sponsorship.

The co-living and utilization of the space will be controlled by a membership system which will allow us to cover the running costs of the space, the consumables and maintenance. Besides this, the school will secure consultancy contracts in the field of social and technological innovation with any kind of interested subject. 

Describe the co-design process of La Scuola Open Source and how to participate in a project.

For 12 days during July, 24 internationally renowned teachers and tutors together with 60 participants (selected from 199 requests from Italy and abroad) took to the Old Town of Bari to work at the triple co-design workshop XYZ from morning to evening.

It was an event that drafted the three building blocks of the school (identity, tools, and processes) in preparation for the launch of its activities this October. A total immersion with a multidisciplinary approach based on cooperation and skills osmosis was the result of the direct creation of the school by its own open community.

As the school's key concept is one of trying to aggregate and prototype new open research, teaching, mentoring, and co-living models (the four axes of the school), this will occur in relation to the patterns emerged during XYZ.

XYZ began with the identity lab - X - which has produced the iconographic stock, the creation of an ad hoc font, a website, and a publishing system. Following this, the tools workshop - Y - targeted management software, hardware (such as Arduino and Raspberry) to manage and monitor a 24/7 access to school, and open data management. Finally, the processes’ lab - Z - focused on teaching modules and policies, research projects frameworks, and the use of space and equipment depending on whether the target is public administration, a company, or an individual category of users. We identified how to integrate with territory, stakeholders and partners. All the outputs are free and available on the slidesharechannel.

The remaining summer month following XYZ will be dedicated to developing and implementing the solutions to result from the workshops.

Still, the essence is that there will never be a final result, but only a continuous flow and a constant work-in-progress that will feed itself with mutations and implementations. We, therefore, envision to host periodical XYZ labs according to an iterative and evolutionary logic.

Alessandro Balena, La Scuola Open Source program director

How important are the making and hacking philosophies for La Scuola value creation?

In a way, from the time we are born, we are all hackers. We start our lives in a world we haven’t created and we learn to modify it over time with our actions. But there is a huge semantic battle around the very word “hacker.” Some would paint hackers as IT pirates who steal sensitive data, but there are those who wish to spread values of openness, freedom, and trust.

For us, the hacker ethic (as opposed to the protestant work ethic) is a key issue. In addition to the “open source” element which in its incremental logic (fork, versioning, etc.) represents the blueprint of a cultural system of new values by being collaborative, adaptive, and recursive, we should use this approach in all fields of knowledge in order to ensure new possibilities for everyone. The methodology and the goals of this project are themselves the subject of a reflection on social innovation which aim to "hack the educational system." 

How can openness and diversity be inextricably linked with the concepts of the Mediterranean and the south of Italy?

Being at the center of the Mediterranean, we are necessarily placed amidst profound issues such as the relationship with others, connection between worlds, contamination, social inclusion, and social innovation. We’d like to keep the Mediterranean ‘biodiversity’: a melting pot of people, cultures, food and nature. It's particularly crucial in a time like this when thousands and thousands of refugees land on our shores - each with their own story, skills, and desire to feel at home.

It is essential to be open, particularly to that which is different from us because there is a potential that would remain unexpressed in the event of closure. We, therefore, deeply believe in sharing and openness and are aware of the social and cultural role we could have. We must be open - open-hearted and open-minded. 

Who is your target? Who will benefit from La Scuola Open Source?

We’ll work with children, seniors, unemployed people, professionals, students, and researchers. For each category, we’ll elaborate teaching modules and research projects. We’ll try to mix multiple categories and different generations in order to foster mutual contamination. The school is primarily aimed at three main categories of users:

• Those who have something to learn - individuals and those connected to the school through a membership relationship.
• Those who require research/innovation - organizations and institutions connected to the school through counseling or research relationships.
• The whole society - that in the long haul will be the end recipient of our activities by openly accessing the outputs generated in the school and be able to take part in our activities as members. 

How was it to involve partners of social innovation such as Ex Fadda and Rural Hub, scientific projects such as Societing and Nefula, as well as sharing economy players like OuiShare and public institutions?

Ours is an artisanal weaving work. In the words of Italo Calvino, "We seek whom or what is not hell amongst the hell we live in every day by trying to defend and give them space." 

How can people be involved and participate to La Scuola Open Source?

By applying to XYZ via the online form, becoming part of our community, and through a membership system which will allow access to a range of activities as soon as la Scuola is ready to commence. Activities will go from basic making and hacking courses to recycle workshops, vertical thematic formats (singularity), lectures, access to technologies and networks, to XYLAB research and co-planning labs as well as humanistic activities related to different disciplines.

More channels:

FB: http://facebook.com/scuolaopensource
TW: http://twitter.com/LascuolaOS
YT: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgyAMMIo39md4_dJ0DWKZRg
Slideshare: http://slideshare.net/lascuolaopensource

Five Cities, 55 Projects: Mapping ‘Good’ Local Economics in the UK

Central Newcastle (metro.co.uk)

by Clare Goff, Editor of New Start magazine, NewStart: http://newstartmag.co.uk/your-blogs/five-cities-55-projects-mapping-good-local-economics-in-the-uk/

New Start, CLES and the New Economics Foundation, with funding from the Friends Provident Foundation, are travelling the UK during 2015 and 2016, visiting its eleven core cities to map what a ‘good’ approach to local economics looks like.

In each place we are seeking out examples of a different approach to local economics and holding an event with local business, government and community leaders to discuss the state of their local economy and how it could work better.

Since May this year we have travelled to Manchester, Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff and Newcastle, bringing together local leaders in each place. Here are ten things we’ve learned:

1. Trickle-down is not working: UK cities may have a good story to tell in terms of economic growth and attracting inward investment but that growth is not reaching far. ‘Doughnuts of deprivation’ persist around many cities, in areas where the economic story has not changed for 30 years. South Wales, for example, has been a Tier 1 Assisted Area since 1934. If local economic policy continues to prioritise economic growth through policies such as inward investment, then poverty and inequality will continue to grow.

2. Economic decision-making is not representative. In the cities we have visited so far, local economic decisions are being made by a small set of people, usually from big business and the public sector. There are few mechanisms to include the views of small business and local communities. Local collaboration has worsened since the closure of Regional Development Agencies and the breakdown of local strategic partnerships. Greater effort is needed to ensure that the needs of all local populations are considered in local economic strategy.

3. There is a mismatch between the needs of local communities and the dominant economic model. During our Cardiff event this mismatch came through clearly. Delegates struggled to align the needs of their communities - sustainable jobs, a greater distribution of wealth, more control over economic decisions - with the economic model they are being asked to fit in with, namely the pursuit of regional growth (GVA).

4. There is no common narrative about what a ‘good’ local economy looks like and how to create one. Local practitioners are frustrated by competing aims that hold back progress. When the focus of economic strategy is on maximising regional growth at all costs, it is difficult to fight for a broader approach, one that benefits the common good. As one delegate in Birmingham said: ‘We have to switch perception from maximizing GVA to thinking about who benefits.’ RESO in Montreal is an example of a collaborative local partnership that brings together the public, private and social sectors around a vision of ‘good local economic development’.

5. Social and economic aims are rarely aligned. Local economic policies are often not directly connected into efforts to reduce poverty or inequality. Plans to boost economic growth - be it through a new shopping centre or Enterprise Zone - are rarely joined up with plans to tackle local unemployment or used to create training opportunities. A ‘double dividend’ approach could ensure that all economic policies are linked to social outcomes.

6. ‘Alternative’ approaches to local economics can lead to gentrification and further marginalisation. Bristol is rightly proud of its strong ‘alternative’ sectors - large green and social economies - but is seeing inequality rise as the middle class jobs those sectors create leads to gentrification. A true ‘alternative’ to mainstream local economics focuses efforts on poverty reduction, tackling inequality and bottom-up job creation.

7. Small, locally-led businesses create stronger, healthier economies. Locally-led businesses help circulate money within a place and unlock greater economic power than big business, according to research from Localise West Midlands, which is working to make the case for greater levels of community economic development. Despite this, local economic policy tends to favour and support big business.

8. 'Grassroots economics' provides an alternative to mainstream job creation. In each city we have travelled to we have found examples of organisations that are focused on understanding local needs, unlocking the resources of people and places and building upwards. In Manchester, asset-based community development is mapping and connecting the assets of local communities; Black Country Make in Wolverhampton and Knowle West Media Centre in Bristol are providing training in digital manufacturing and using local assets to set up micro-businesses.

9. Anchor institutions such as hospitals, housing organisations, councils and colleges are becoming economic actors, by localising their spend and supply chains. The Midlands Metropolitan Hospital in Sandwell plans to root itself in its local community in a similar way to that of Cadbury’s in Bourneville, and in Manchester the council has analysed the impact of its spend on its local economy and is using progressive procurement policies to make that spend work harder.

10. There is an alternative. In many localities in the UK the economic picture has not shifted for many years and in some places it is going backwards. We can carry on doing the same thing over and over again, each time expecting different results. Or we can try a different approach. The last forty years have shown us what a policy focused on economic growth does to cities; now it’s time to see where a different approach might lead. Our work so far has uncovered an appetite for an alternative and glimpses of what that looks like on the ground. Cities now need pioneers to take that vision forward.

• Read New Start editions from Greater Manchester, Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff and Newcastle.

Reykjavik to be First City in Europe to Use Social Progress to Map Wellbeing of All Residents

by Social Progress Imperative: http://www.socialprogressimperative.org/blog/posts/reykjavik-to-be-first-city-in-europe-to-use-social-progress-to-map-wellbeing-of-all-residents

The Social Progress Imperative and the City of Reykjavik announced today that the capital of Iceland will be the first city in Europe to use the Social Progress Index to map and improve the well-being of all its residents.

A memorandum of understanding was signed at today's conclusion of the "Social Progress-What Works?" event. “Iceland is already a leading country in the world on social progress, and we’re used to thinking that life is pretty good in Reykjavik,” said Dagur Eggertsson, Mayor of Reykjavik.

“This new effort to map what is and is not working for people in different parts of our city will allow us to make sure that there is a chance for all residents to enjoy social progress. This initiative should also give renewed confidence that government exists to improve the lives of residents.”

Read the press release.