by Cristiano Gatti | Aug 16, 2017 | The Urban Media Lab
Omnia Sunt Communia. On the Commons and the Transformation to Postcapitalism is a new book written by Massimo De Angelis, a professor of political economy at the University of East London and founder and editor of the web journal The Commoner.
The expression “omnia sunt communia” means “all things in common” and is a Latin expression, taken by the Bible. The quote is attributed to German rebel leader Thomas Müntzer during the massive peasant revolt of central Europe beginning in 1526. The slogan (and the book) calls for new ways of constituting human societies where enclosure, imprisonment, slavery, and war are no longer the means of production and reproduction.
In his book, Massimo De Angelis falls within the framework of rethinking capitalism, a field where Paul Mason and his “PostCapitalism: A Guide to our Future” play a crucial role if only out of the term “postcapitalism” that indicates the movement in charge of “creating something more dynamic that exists, at first, almost unseen within the old system, but which will break through, reshaping the economy around new values and behaviours”. So, in one of the worst crisis in the history of capitalism that is primarily economic and social but also environmental, Professor De Angelis affirms that neither states nor markets seem able to offer solutions but commons have become not only increasingly commonplace, but also increasingly relevant. Besides the concept of postcapitalism, the author builds his book around the idea of commons, viewed as “social systems in which resources are shared by a community of users/producers, who also define the modes of use and production, distribution and circulation of these resources through democratic and horizontal forms of governance”. According to this, the book is divided in four parts: in the Part One the author describes the elements and the structure of Commons as system, in the Part Two the book talks about Commons governance and money nexus and commons formula. In Part Three Massimo De Angelis explains that Commoning is the source of grassroots power through social labour mobilization and the production of autonomy, boundaries and sense; finally, Part Four, named “Social change”, indicates the path towards postcapitalism including the relation between commons, state and market.
The aim of the book is to provide information to construct postcapitalistic ways to reproduce more autonomous forms of social life, other than those provided by states and markets by conceptualizing the idea of commons not just as common goods but as a set of social systems. In his view, capitalism is not sustainable environmentally (pollution, climate change, etc.), socially (i.e. radical inequalities) and economically (economic crisis, unemployment, etc.) and it is not the solution to save our planet: only a commons-based postcapitalism could do.
Nonetheless, postcapitalistic world is not spontaneous and other different scenarios are possible. According to the author, it is necessary to develop postcapitalism through inventing new forms of commoning, building bridges between and beyond roles, such as employees and employers, clients and service providers, parents and nannies. It is fundamental to build new social system in which reproduction stems from the direct participation of communities of producers reclaiming, sharing, and pooling resources of various types, driven by values fundamentally opposed to those embedded in the capital circuits: solidarity, mutual aid, cooperation, respect for human being and the environment, horizontalism and direct democracy. In this scenario, social movements play a crucial role: although they don’t create reality, they have the capacity of shifting the boundaries of what is possible.
As reported in official book summary, Massimo De Angelis exposes attempts to co-opt the commons, through the use of code words such as “participation” and “governance“, and reveals the potential for radical transformation rooted in the reproduction of our communities, of life, of work and of society as a whole.
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Nel filone di ricerca sulle forme alternative al capitalismo, si inserisce anche Massimo De Angelis con il suo Omnia Sunt Communia. Con questa opera, De Angelis indica nella costruzione di una sistema postcapitalistico basato sui commons la salvezza del nostro pianeta.
by Cristiano Gatti | Jul 17, 2017 | The Urban Media Lab
According to the Department of Labor by 2020 there will be 1 million unfilled computer programming jobs in the United States. Striking in this sector is the ratio of racial representation: fewer than 10 percent of the software engineers are African-American.
The city of Detroit represents a critical example as 80 percent of its citizens are African-American. Indeed, different projects driven by the city of Detroit and companies alike are working in order to change that outcome. One of the main projects is Grand Circus.
Grand Circus is a training institute with the mission to elevate the tech community in the city of Detroit. It offers a multitude of part-time and full-time courses: Front-End Web Development, Full-Stack Web Development, etc.
Grand Circus launched in 2013 and now offers classes to public, rents co-working spaces and hosts events. Different Grand Circus boot camps prepare participants for a career in the tech industry, learning the most in-demand programming languages (such as JavaScript, jQuery, HTML, CSS, AngularJS and Node.js). After 10 weeks, participants are prepared for entry-level careers in software engineering and back-end development.
Although tuition fees are a little bit expensive – 8,500 dollars – Detroiters can apply for a limited number of scholarships provided by TechHire, a four-year local talent initiative that aims to provide workforce development training and apprenticeships in IT careers. Financing options are primarily offered to veterans, women (just 26% of computing jobs are filled by women) and those part of an ethnic group underrepresented in tech (e.g. African American, Latino, Native American and Pacific Islander). Upon graduation, students are provided with job assistance training and the skillset required for entry-level business analyst, web developer, quality assurance tester or program manager positions.
According to Jeff Donofrio, executive director of the Mayor’s Office of Workforce Development: “It’s important that we create opportunities for all Detroiters to have access to training connected to jobs, particularly within high-growth industries like IT. The TechHire program does exactly that, and helps Detroiters take that next step toward a good paying job and stable career”[1].
In a city like Detroit where traditional jobs in manufacturing have disappeared, entry level jobs in technology offer a similar financial security for the middle-class: statistics show that between January 2015 and March 2016, 93 percent of participants in Grand Circus boot camps found full-time employment in entry-level developer positions. This is a great achievement if we consider that nowadays 8.4 percent of Detroiters are unemployed.
In order to help disadvantaged groups to get a job in IT, Grand Circus also partners with Code 2040, a nonprofit named for the year when minorities will make up the majority of the U.S. population. Code 2040 creates educational, professional and entrepreneurial pathways for black and Latinx entrepreneurs. Damien Rocchi, Grand Circus CEO said that “The tech sector is rapidly changing, and we need creative solutions for sourcing talent to fill these jobs. Grand Circus will not only train Detroiters in some of the latest technologies, but also introduce them to the city’s top employers”[2].
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[1] The HUB Detroit. (2017). Detroit at Work Partners with Grand Circus to Launch ‘TechHire Bootcamp’ – The Hub Detroit. [online] Available at: http://www.thehubdetroit.com/detroit-work-partners-grand-circus-launch-techhire-bootcamp/ [Accessed 16 Jul. 2017]
[2] Crossroadstoday.com. (2017). Detroit at Work Partners with Grand Circus to Launch ‘TechHire Bootcamp’. [online] Available at: http://www.crossroadstoday.com/story/35330042/detroit-at-work-partners-with-grand-circus-to-launch-techhire-bootcamp [Accessed 16 Jul. 2017].
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A Detroit, l’attività di Grand Circus sta riscuotendo sempre più successo. Negli ultimi anni la quasi totalità dei partecipanti ai “bootcamp” organizzati per formare nuove professionalità nel mondo IT ha trovato un lavoro stabile. La peculiarità di Grand Circus è l’attenzione verso le categorie sociali che hanno più difficoltà nell’accedere a questo mercato del lavoro.
by Cristiano Gatti | Jun 16, 2017 | The Urban Media Lab
In today’s connected world, access to the internet should be an essential service, like water or electricity. And just like water and electricity, it should be available to everyone, regardless of circumstance.
Building entirely new networks, cities, supported by internet service providers and mobile carriers is good but it would be better if you are able to leverage already existing networks, like all the private residential Wi-Fi networks that are already spread throughout the city. Imagine turning every home currently connected to the internet into a mini Wi-Fi hotspot serving the public, so that anytime a subscriber walked past a participating home network their phones would automatically connect to that Wi-Fi network, thereby lessening their own data charges and significantly reducing the strain on mobile carrier networks. All this is made possible by home subscribers giving up a small, likely unused, percentage of their Wi-Fi to make it available for public use.
This kind of initiative started a couple of years ago in Spain, where Martin Varsavsky founded a company (Fon) with the mission of blanketing the world with Wi-Fi. Now Fon is an international company, supported by some of the world’s most important telcos (Google, Microsoft, British Telecom and Deutsche Telekom and Qualcomm) and in 2014 it broke the barrier with 14 million Fon hotspots.
This project is very important because it aims to help people overcome the barriers they might face when using technology, giving access to the internet to hundreds of people who currently can’t get online. That means you can check and send emails, use your social network, watch videos and browse the web, all without spending money.
Luckily, all over the world there are a lot of Wi-Fi communities that have a common, simple and fast operation. First of all, it is necessary to join the community and there are two ways to go: either you are a customer of the company that provides broadband services (in this case, by agreeing to get free and unlimited access to other consumers’ hotspots) or you have to buy pre-paid vouchers or subscriptions to be part of the Wi-Fi community. Secondly, you must download the dedicated app for smartphones and tablets where entering your username and password. Once installed, the app will use your location to show a list of nearby free hotspots that can be in bars, hotels, shops, schools, hospitals, banks but also in private homes. Finally, when you choose your favorite hotspot, you are connected and you can surf the net.
In addition to this, as Alison Powell pointed out in 2011, Wi-Fi communities could have a positive outcome on civic culture because it is clear that these projects are able to “motivate volunteers to participate in building technology and working towards shared social goals. They also hold the potential to shift the provision of communications access away from corporate and towards more public interest models”.
The World Bank estimates that for every 10% penetration of internet access, a country’s GDP grows by 1,28%, so it is useful to work with local, provincial and national government to provide Wi-Fi in communities for the purpose of education, economic development and social inclusion, enabling access to the internet as a catalyst for change. Community Wi-Fi holds a lot of potential for enabling a functional connected future, where the barriers between private and public Wi-Fi blur to the extent that both humans and machines are able to be constantly and reliably connected. The key to ensuring that the connected city, and indeed the connected world works, is to make sure that just as the traffic on our streets is regulated, so too is the data traffic in our air.
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Il futuro della diffusione della “connettività per tutti” non risiede solo negli investimenti infrastrutturali delle grandi compagnie del settore tech ma anche nella condivisione della connessione privata dei vari utenti. Le Wi-Fi Community, in modo spontaneo, stanno riuscendo sempre di più a fornire l’accesso ad Internet a milioni di persone in tutto il mondo che altrimenti non ne avrebbero la possibilità
by Cristiano Gatti | May 18, 2017 | The Urban Media Lab
A lot of analysts affirm that Donald J. Trump was elected as president of the “divided states of America”, but, a more in-depth analysis, reveals that Donald Trump is not the cause of this division but he is a consequence of the crisis of the American democracy.
When we talk about democratic crisis in America (but this phenomenon is about other countries in Western World, of course), we refer to polarization between right and left because Republicans and Democrats just don’t seem interested in reaching a “mutual partisan adjustment” but they prefer conflict. And this phenomenon is very rooted in the whole society: in fact, according to the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt: “Polarization is here to stay for many decades, and it’s probably going to get worse”.
Last November, Trump won the elections thanks to different aspects: the race (whites voted overwhelmingly for Trump and levels of turnout and support of racial minorities for Clinton are insufficient), party affiliation (Trump gained a great support among Republicans and also among Independents), the importance of some issues (i.e. economy, immigration, terrorism, federal government efficiency, etc.) and urban/rural conflict.
And it is the main point of focus: in America, but also in Europe, there is a stark difference between big cities and rural areas, between the center and the peripheries that leads to a polarization of political preferences among voters. This scenario reminds the masterpiece of Rokkan and Lipset about cleavage structures in Western countries. According to electoral studies based on United Kingdom (2016 Brexit referendum) and France (2017 Presidential elections) there is a re-emerging polarized pattern in American and European societies: the conflict between the center and the peripheries, namely the conflict between the more developed and richest areas and the less developed and poorest areas.
At this point, the mistake we must avoid is thinking that centralization of power is the answer to tackle the problem. Au contraire, it is not the solutions because the United States is a geographically, culturally, socially and economically varied place. In this case, a top-down approach could hit the trust in democratic institutions.
Is there a solution?
Richard Florida (director of the University of Toronto’s Martin Prosperity Institute) and Joel Kotkin (Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University in Orange) affirm that the way to adapt democracy under intense polarization does not lies in “enforcing uniformity from left or right but in embracing and empowering our diversity of communities”. This idea concerns two aspects.
First of all, the American citizens. Recent polls (2015 Gallup poll and separate 2015 Allstate/National Journal Heartland Monitor poll) say that almost half of Americans (49 percent) view the federal government as “an immediate threat to the rights and freedoms of ordinary citizens” and nearly two-thirds (64 percent) believe that “more progress” is made on critical issues at the local rather than the federal level. It is clear that citizens think that it is easier to solve problems through pragmatic responses provided by local government instead the dysfunction of national government.
In the second place, we have a lot of papers and books by political scientists, economists and sociologists that underline the fact that America is “a nation of cities” – to use a phrase popularized by Lyndon B. Johnson. One of the most important thinkers was Daniel J. Elazar, a scholar of federalism that thinks that the pragmatist orientation toward democracy and the democratic experience, emphasizing social intelligence for social problem solving and the self-guiding society, de facto offer a way to overcome the narrow view of democracy as an exclusive product of the central state.
It is indeed necessary to re-discover the importance of local roots of democracy and traditional American federalism based on local autonomies and cities. A federal approach is necessary if we want to recover an appropriate civic environment through civil society and civil community based on collaboration, cooperation and responsibility. Measures as shifting decision-making authority from the national government to cities and metropolitan areas, giving cities greater tax and fiscal authority, creating new mechanisms to coordinate major investments in infrastructure, talent, and economic development recognizes both the advantages that come from local innovation and problem solving and the substantial variations in local capabilities and needs.
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La polarizzazione ideologica nella democrazia americana ha trovato il suo apice nell’elezione a presidente di Donald Trump. Per ridurre questa polarizzazione bisogna operare a livello locale, promuovendo l’empowerment dei cittadini riscoprendo il carattere tipicamente americano di “nation of cities”.
by Cristiano Gatti | Apr 21, 2017 | The Urban Media Lab
Air pollution is a problem for China. According to World Health Organization, a safe level of air quality contains 10-25 micrograms per cubic meter of PM2.5, a measure that represents the amount of small particles in the air. For understanding the importance of the problem, it is sufficient to remember that in the past months Beijing has reached up to 400 micrograms per cubic meter. Moreover, the documentary Under the Dome revealed that Hangzhou suffered more than 200 smoggy days in 2013 and its annual average concentration of fine air pollution particulates was recorded at 66 micrograms per cubic meter. Surely, not the best situation.
So, public authorities understood the need for further action to address the problem. As reported earlier, Hangzhou, with its 9 million people, places in the top 10 most congested in China, and in 2013 TomTom ranked it as the worst nationally and sixth in world. Here, pollution comes from cars and vehicles emissions. Indeed, an innovation in mobility sector is needed to solve the problem.
Here, public authorities have expanded the metro system and have invested in 3,000 electric buses and taxis but the turning point might be bike sharing. Thirteen of fifteen biggest public bike shares are in China and Hangzhou has almost the same population of London but the former has five times the number of bikes that the latter. We are talking about 84,100 cycles, twice as many as its nearest rival.
This kind of “Uber for bikes” works in a very simple way: all you need is to download an app that indicates you where to find a bike here, a QR code or a password let you to unlock the vehicle. The difference with traditional rental services is that riders are free to leave the bikes wherever they need or want.
The trend is incredible: since last April, Mobike, created by Hu Weiwei and Davis Wang, former head of Uber Shanghai, has placed more than 100,000 bikes in Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen and Guangzhou and in the first three months of 2017 has launched in six more cities. Ofo, a Peking University pilot project started in 2015, now serves 10 million users in 33 cities. These are only the tip of the iceberg, because there are other firms as Bluegogo and Xiaoming and a lot of new copycat firms. This “revolution” is also spreading abroad: Mobike is launching in Singapore, Bluegogo in San Francisco, Ofo in United Kingdom (surely Cambridge, perhaps in London, Birmingham and Manchester).
In Hangzhou, public sector is playing a crucial role, too. Green Smart Traffic (GST) started China’s first public bike share in Hangzhou in 2009. Zhan Li Qiang, the chief executive of GST is optimistic: “Hangzhou’s population is increasing by 200,000 a year and the roads are blocked. But the historic center means you can’t just knock down and rebuild, as happens in other parts of China. The public bike share cuts the burden of traffic and promotes an environmentally friendly approach among the people of the city. It’s a very effective way to solve the problem.” Effectively, with 3,000 docking stations and some new dockless share bikes, the problem should be overcome. According to estimates by GST, this program cuts fuel consumption by 135m litres of petrol and diesel a year.
But not everyone has a positive idea of the impact and efficiency of dockless bike sharing. Eric Mao, marketing manager at GST thinks that startups are too focused on chasing investment to provide a good service. In his opinion, the problem is that thousands of abandoned bikes parked everywhere could destroy the city’s beauty. Xue Huang, Mobike’s head of communications replies that they are working with local governments to deal with issues as users parking in the wrong place. In his opinion, it’s a question of user education process. They have developed a new system of credits to reward good behavior and punish bad. For example, Mobike give 100 credits to each user, with the chance to earn more by reporting badly parked bikes around the city. If the information is correct, the “informer” will gain 20 credits, the perpetrator loses 20 points and if you have fewer than 80 credits, the costs of rental become very high.
These kind of solutions are very useful in term of sustainability of dockless bike, but there are other important issues: the accuracy of GPS is crucial because the mismatch between the position reported on your smartphone and the real position of the bike is a problem, for example, if the bike is behind a locked gate; although it is expensive, the presence of maintenance teams is fundamental in terms of giving a good service and improving users locality; finally, the approval of the government is crucial if you want to work in socialist market economy.
One way or another, new cycle-share firms in China allow you to simply drop your bike wherever you want. It seems certain that this innovation won’t just be flooding China.
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La possibilità di noleggiare biciclette senza doverle riportare nel loro deposito sta rivoluzionando il modo di muoversi in Cina. La competizione tra startup e settore pubblico sta contribuendo, tra le altre cose, a diminuire il livello di inquinamento nelle città, uno dei grandi problemi della Cina odierna.
