Peer2Politics

On November 6-7 in Bologna, Italy, leading scholars, researchers, policymakers, practitioners and social innovators will gather to further the discussion and movement around the urban commons.

Imagine going to a shop, borrowing anything you like, and returning it when you're finished. This is the idea behind SHARE: a Library of Things. Opened in late-April in Frome, a town in northeast England, the aim of SHARE is to enable people to spend less, waste less, and connect more. The first of its kind in the U.K., SHARE has already sparked interest from other communities.

Recently, Causa Justa::Just Cause (CJJC) released a report titled Development Without Displacement: Resisting Gentrification in the Bay Area. The 112-page document, prepared in collaboration with the Alameda County Public Health Department, goes beyond describing the public health implications of gentrification to proposing steps that cities like Oakland can take to stop displacement of historic residents.

What role do complementary currencies play in alleviating poverty, creating income equality, and building sustainable communities? According to John Boik PhD, a vital one. Founder of the Principled Societies Projectand author of the book Economic Direct Democracy: A Framework to End Poverty and Maximize Well-Being, Boik designed a multi-faceted framework for local democratic systems of which a complementary currency is a key element. A computer simulation model that describes the book’s proposed local-national currency system saw median and mean take-home family income more than double, income inequality nearly eliminated, and the unemployment rate drop to 1 percent over the 28-year simulation period.

What began as a childcare coop in Seoul, South Korea has grown into a cooperative, urban village and sparked a national movement of urban villages.

Shapes of Exchange in the Solidarity Economy is just one of many short films you can view as part of Solidarity NYC's Portraits of the Solidarity Economy video series.

Article and image cross-posted from the SUMC blog. Photo credit: Mariordo.

Have you started a summer reading list? For those of us interested in the sharing economy, there is no shortage of great reads. Whether your interests lie in collaboration, sustainable cities, community-building, simplicity, or work in the new economy, there is something for everyone. We’ve rounded up the top 21 books for summer to inspire, empower, and inform.

How much thought do you give to pavement? Our cities are covered with it, but it’s not exactly a hot topic of conversation—though it should be. Pavement causes all sorts of problems including the fact that water can’t soak through it and instead runs across it, collecting pollutants and biological contaminants that make their way into waterways, plants, animals, and ourselves.

Rainbow over Brattleboro, Vermont. Photo credit: Professor Bop / Foter / CC BY-NC-ND. Article cross-posted from Yes! Magazine. Written by Alexis Goldstein.

In 1958, three years before her masterpiece, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jane Jacobs wrote an article called “Downtown Is for People.” In it she noted: