by Cristiano Gatti | Mar 22, 2017 | The Urban Media Lab
The 20th century income distribution system has changed entirely. The traditional framework of value creation based on the interaction of private, public and third sector is irremediably compromised. More and more companies don’t generate profit, as well as public administration doesn’t produce public value, and, thus, the society struggles to generate shared social value.
Given this scenario, where globalization and technological have had a disruptive impact on labor markets and systems of tax and there is growing concern about precariousness and insecurity, new innovative solutions are welcomed and necessary.
One of the most discussed ideas it’s the introduction of universal basic income (UBI). Unusually, basic income has a strength: both the right and the left appreciate that: leftist parties (i.e. Scottish National Party or Green Party in UK) place the emphasis on lower poverty, the rightist ones focus their attention on slimming down welfare system (in Finland it is a warhorse of Prime Minister Juha Sipilä, leader of the liberal and right-leaning Centre Party of Finland. Also, the far-right party Finns Party is interested in this policy).
According to the Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN), “A basic income is a periodic cash payment unconditionally delivered to all on an individual basis, without means-test or work requirement”. Summarizing, basic income is:
- Periodic;
- Cash payment;
- Individual;
- Universal:
- Unconditional.
Although this clear description, a wide variety of different Basic Income proposals are circulating today and there are different opinions: Finland launched a pilot project, Canada and the Netherlands have announced experiments whereas in Switzerland, 75% of voters rejected a basic income in 2016 because it would have meant increasing welfare spending. Let’s try to show the most important projects.
First of all, Finland that is the first country in Europe to applicate basic income to its inhabitants. Here, as elsewhere, the proposal hasn’t fulfilled the five criteria suggested by BIEN. In this case, 2,000 unemployed Finns aged 25 to 58 will receive a guaranteed sum of 560€ for two years. This nationwide pilot basic income project will replace part of their existing social benefits and will be paid even if they find work. According to Kela, the Finland’s social security body, the aim of the trial is to cut red tape, poverty and unemployment that nowadays stands at 8.1% in Finland.
Then, we have India, where about 6,000 men people in eight villages received a small basic income for 18 month. The results were compared with what happened in twelve villages where basic income wasn’t provided. In this case, the project born to reduce poverty has produced several positive effects on welfare (such as improved nutrition, better health and improved schooling) and on equality (the basic income helps the disabled more than others). Plus, basic income has reduced inequality and has driven a growth in productivity, output and in self-employed work.
Finally, we have tech giants in Silicon Valley where the “obsession” with basic income is very high. In a The New York Times article, journalist Annie Lowrey affirms that, “many technologists believe we are living at the precipice of an artificial-intelligence revolution that could vault humanity into a postwork future”. This vision of the future has lead Silicon Valley to invest in basic income projects “as a palliative for the societal turbulence its invention might unleash”.
For example, it is important the case of GiveDirectly, a nongovernmental organization that is not affiliated with any political party and is supported by tech industries. GiveDirectly is based in the United States but started a basic income project in Kenya to show that a basic income is a cheap, scalable way to aid poorest people on the planet. Roughly 6,000 people in Kenya will receive regular monthly payment for 12 years unconditionally. Furthermore an additional 80 villages, with 11,500 residents, will receive a two-year basic income.
Other well-known cases include those of Chris Hughes and Sam Altman. Mr Hughes is a Facebook founder that has started a $10 million, two-year initiative on basic income while, Mr Altman is the president of Y Combinator, a start-up incubator that is planning to hand out money to 1,000 families in Oakland, California. Read here to go into that.
In conclusion, we can assume that the situation is in fieri and is far from being over, especially in Europe. Last month the European Parliament have discussed this topic but rejected universal basic income as a compensatory measure for unemployment in tech sector caused by the use of robots and automation in labor market. For further discussion, it should be recalled what has been said in the Indian Ministry of Finance’s annual survey of the economy: a basic income “gives concrete expression to the idea that we have a right to a minimum income, merely by virtue of being citizens. It is the acknowledgement of the economy as a common project.”
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Nonostante l’introduzione del reddito di cittadinanza universale sia un tema divisivo su cui non c’è ancora un accordo su come debba essere portato avanti, qualcosa si sta muovendo in tutto il mondo, con iniziative nate sia da attori privati che da attori pubblici.
by Cristiano Gatti | Feb 16, 2017 | The Urban Media Lab
In years, digital capitalism driven by Silicon Valley has provided different services that are, to be honest, very useful and beneficial to all citizens. This fact has led to the development of theory of internet-centrism, the propensity to view all political and social change through the prism of the Internet and cyber-utopianism, the belief that online communication is in itself emancipatory and that the Internet always favors the oppressed.
Surely, no one can doubt that digital giants as Facebook, Google, Amazon, etc., have renewed our daily life (for example the way people organize their time or how government arranges the health care sector), but, to use their platforms, we must follow their logics that, as companies, are economic and only concern profit. This point is well-defined but, from the perspective of democracy, there are other interests at stake and it becomes clearer when we talk about fake news.
The theme of fake news and post-truth has become very crucial in 2016, especially during the electoral campaigns, from Brexit to US presidential elections to Italian constitutional referendum. The losing side of 2016 pointed out that democracy is sick due to fake news but when our elites consider fake news the main problem of Internet, their narrative becomes a shallow explanation of a complex and systemic problem.
According to sociologist and writer Evgeny Morozov, “The problem is not fake news but a digital capitalism that makes it profitable to produce false but click-worthy stories”. Mr. Morozov claims that the huge danger facing western countries today is not so much the emergence of illiberal democracy abroad as the persistence of immature democracy at home. Two are the factors that describe this immaturity: the denial of the economic origins of most of today’s problems (Brexit and Trump’s electoral success are explained only by cultural factors) and the refusal of the corruption of professional expertise. Elites don’t have recognized these denials: they only have found scapegoats.
As proof of these denials, solutions provided in Spain (ban internet memes), Italy (establish commissions to rule on the veracity of news) and German (set up centers of defense while fining the likes of social networks for spreading them) to reduce fake news by policymakers and authorities only promote more expertise, more centralization and more regulation, namely what alienates voters because they end up regulating the wrong things.
We must get out of a naïve cyber-utopianism because Internet is not positive or negative in itself but it is a technology: how it is important, it is the use of it. Moral panic caused by internet memes and funny YouTube videos is a marker of our democracies’ immaturity.
Hence, we must focus on the real problem affecting digital capitalism: digital giants must not monopolize problem-solving (Facebook has recently censored a photo of nude statue of Neptune in Bologna for obscenity, not the best way to solve the problem of freedom of expression). It is necessary to rethink the fundamentals of digital capitalism to really unleash the force and the genius of free market. We need to make online advertising less central in how we live, work and communicate and citizens must play a vital role in this shift because delegating more decision-making to them can to reduce the impact of corruptible experts and venal corporations.
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Il problema attuale delle democrazie occidentali non sono le fake news ma il capitalismo digitale degli Over-The-Top che rende conveniente produrre contenuti falsi ma redditizi.
by Cristiano Gatti | Jan 13, 2017 | The Urban Media Lab
In urban development, gentrification is a very important process that can transform the city, both socially and economically. Gentrification process in urban areas has several positive aspects (buildings are renovated and beautified, there are more jobs opportunities, more retail and service business, etc.) but also some negatives ones such as the loss of affordable housing and public assets (including parks, park buildings, former schools, library buildings, community gardens, etc.) and city-owned vacant lots are in the crosshairs of developers. This is the case of the Lower East Side in NYC that it is now one of the hottest real estate markets in Manhattan.
According to Susan Lerner, executive director of Common Cause New York, the state chapter of the national civic engagement and government accountability organization, in urban development, communities play the role of underdog, on the contrary, the government and real estate developers run the show (especially the latter).
So, it is important to analyze what set of organizing tools community-led organizations have built to help grassroots groups compete with private real estate developers when it comes to determining the future of publicly owned assets across the city.
An interesting example is given by Community Development Project at the Urban Justice Center, a group that provides legal, participatory research and policy support to strengthen the work of grassroots and community-based groups in New York City to dismantle racial, economic and social oppression and 596 Acres, an organization that builds tools to help neighbors see vacant lots as opportunities and create needed green spaces that become focal points for community organizing and civic engagement. These groups, in collaboration with Common Cause New York, are working on a huge project, named NYCommons.
According to the website, NYCommons is basically a new online map and database of all the public assets that helps New Yorkers impact decisions about public land and buildings in their neighborhoods and provides some type of potential real estate development opportunity. According to this statement, it’s hard to define precisely what it includes, but Paula Segal, founder of 596 Acres claims that, if it is true that in cities most of infrastructure and assets are shared (the subways, the roads, the sidewalks, the water, housing, etc.) so, the platform goes on and on to the point where privately owned property can start to seem like the real outlier.
This idea was born about three or four years ago, Mrs. Lerner says, when NYCommons partners started to see a pattern in the organizing around the future of public assets (i.e. a proposed soccer stadium in Queens, the Midtown Library in Manhattan and the main Brooklyn Public Library Branch). They “started thinking about the fact that all of these separate challenges had similar underlying policy issues that have to do with how does government think about commonly owned, shared assets.” In fact, although residents were spending a lot of time and energy, often they didn’t received benefits from these proposals involving public assets.
At the same time, there was some movement: 596 Acres supported some grassroots groups that organized around 36 former publicly owned vacant lots, which turned in declared permanent parks at the end of 2015. In addition to this, 596 Acres has developed a number of tools and created resources around city-owned vacant land: we are talking about Living Lots NYC and Urban Reviewer. The former is an online map and database that provides a useful platform for organizers to connect and maintain records of organizing activity around each lot, the latter is a catalogue of over 150 urban renewal plans that NYC adopted to get federal funding for making way for new public and private development.
In accordance with that, the specific purpose of NYCommons is indeed to create an expanded tool set to serve grassroots organizing around the broader universe of public assets in NYC. They decided to start by asking people in 10 neighborhoods and they finally found a great deal of interest for sharing best practices and connecting with others doing similar work. For testing their job, NYCommons chose three neighborhoods for pilot including the Sara D. Roosevelt Park in Lower East Side. This park presents a very strong story of citizen empowerment and, over time, that participation has contributed to the creation of Sara D. Roosevelt Park Community Coalition (SDRPC) with the aim to bring “together local stakeholders who seek to foster community-based stewardship by providing a voice for all who love the park and the communities it serves”.
Kathleen Webster, long-term resident on Manhattan’s Lower East Side and president of the SDRPC affirms that documentation, workshop facilitation and other resources to begin developing a tool kit provided by NYCommons were very helpful as a draft basis from which to go. The fact that all pilot sites will continue to shape the final NYCommons tool kit and the online platform and this pushes other sites to upload their data into the platform is the strenght of this project. Organizing track records provide vital talking points for future hearings and op-eds and community meetings.
In conclusion, the words of Mrs. Lerner are suitable to describe the characteristics of this projects: “Hopefully NYCommons can provide an entrée into a fairly sophisticated, experienced, citywide network of groups who are all thinking along the same lines, putting pressure on government to be responsive, with a similar vocabulary and set of expectations about public assets serving the public”.
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NYCommons è solo l’ultimo degli strumenti forniti ai gruppi grassroots di New York che lavorano per garantire ai cittadini la libera fruizione di spazi pubblici con un alto valore sociale. Nello specifico, si tratta di una mappa e un database online continuamente aggiornati secondo la dinamica bottom-up per mappare gli assets pubblici di NYC.
by Cristiano Gatti | Dec 9, 2016 | The Urban Media Lab
According to the website, JustSpace is a community-led network of voluntary and action groups influencing plan making and planning policy to ensure public debate on crucial issues of social justice and economic and environmental sustainability. They are active at three levels: neighbourhood, borough and London-wide levels. Because traditional planning system is considered unfit in terms of economic, social and environmental benefits, JustSpace network has worked for collecting a huge amount of experience and know-how from London’s diverse community organisations.
In August 2016, JustSpace has released a very interesting paper called “Towards a Community-Led Plan for London. Policy directions and proposals”. This paper is the outcome of more discussion by working teams of JustSpace network and other conferences.
In their opinion, participation and sustainable development should be central in the planning of London: JustSpace has developed five key themes:
- A fair, green, localised and diverse economy, where the social and economic diversity are a strength and a driver of the city’s future well-being.
- Maintain and refurbish existing homes, with home energy efficiency as infrastructure priority.
- Make London a Blue Green City, placing value on the connection and interaction between London’s blue and green assets.
- Support for well-functioning suburbs, providing many key amenities and job opportunities locally, thus reducing the need for costly and polluting travel.
- Delivery models for regeneration that prioritise social sustainability and social infrastructure, respecting and supporting Londoners’ attachment to place and sense of belonging.
Another central issue is about community participation and facilitation of the localism agenda for ensuring public support and the credibility of the process. For effective participation, communities should be involved from the very beginning and they should be an active role in design and production of the plan.
AN ECONOMY FOR LONDON
The London Plan needs to support an economy that delivers human wellbeing and tackles growing inequalities, all within environmental limits. JustSpace has identified three strategies to achieving a fair, green, localised and diverse economy:
- A Fair City, Among others, the London Fairness Commission lists a number of issues that are important to address growing inequality: such as reducing the cost of living, setting a higher London Minimum Wage, ensuring better opportunities for young people, etc. JustSpace has identified some policy proposals such as ensuring that in major new developments secure jobs are created, increasing the productivity of low pay occupations through access to different services (i.e. affordable workspace, business support, etc.), securing the provision of new facilities as part of new developments and exploring innovative models of community-led economic development to enable low and middle income people to participate in local business ownership and investment.
- A Green and Localised Economy. The principles of a green, circular and a more dispersed patter of activities are fundamental. JustSpace proposes some polices: encourage change to achieve a circular economy, raise the environmental performance of the buildings and re-configure settlement and urban patterns to reduce the need for travel and the reliance on non-renewable energy sources, protect London poly-centric economy, support development which fosters Lifetime Neighbourhood principles, recognize and protect street and covered markets.
- Diverse Economies. Diverse industrial economy is returning to growth after many decades of decline. In this sector it’s important to recognise and promote the diversity of London’s economic activities through different contributions. JustSpace proposes to work to increase capacity suitable for a diverse range of economic activities, foster innovations in the design, finance and management of development schemes so industrial and residential uses can co-exist, plan for the long-term infrastructure needs of industry, protect clusters of small and independent businesses and support capacity building in London’s diverse business communities to encourage business-led solutions to redevelopment and change.
HOUSING, HEALTH AND WELLBEING
In London, another problem concerns housing, health and wellbeing. In terms of maintain existing homes, it’s fundamental that the Mayor and the boroughs support maintenance and enhancement of the condition of London’s homes (energy efficiency, first of all) and environmental impact should be reduced. Proposed regeneration of council or housing association estates should require comprehensive, independent analysis of social, environmental and economic benefits of all options.
In the case of quality of New Homes, it is crucial to focus on longevity and duration (they should last for at least 125 years) and the attendance of communal meeting spaces and green and play space with natural light. Then, in terms of “Not-for-Profit Rented Homes”, the London Plan should set a separate target for social rented homes that reflects evidence of need.
A participation in London Wide Housing Policy is also a key factor to be inclusive and connect private renters with the community-led housing schemes that include housing co-operatives, community land trusts, community self-build, co-housing, tenant management organisations and community-led housing associations (right to transfer).
MAKING LONDON A BLUE GREEN CITY
The aim of this initiative is to bringing together the Boroughs, the voluntary and community sector and the private sector to protect the environment (nature, sustainable use of water resources, climate change, air pollution and citizen participation in the planning and implementation of these kind of policies).
After the Paris agreement December 2015 changes are required for energy generation and efficiency and targets for renewable energy (zero carbon new homes standard, solar panels, …). Next, London’s energy infrastructure needs a change to move away from fossils fuels and fuel poverty to renewables. Air pollution in London is dramatic: the city suffers under illegal level of NO2. To solve the problem of road traffic, a holistic approach is needed: for example, new schools and hospitals should be built in healthy areas but people should have less need to travel. Besides, policies that protect and enhance green spaces in quantity, quality and accessibility are also important: green spaces make a contribution to reducing air pollution and increase standard of living.
In the end, JustSpace talks about a food system that allows everyone access to good food and food growing spaces. The proposal is to promote food growing space in all new housing developments to shorten the food mileage and food chain.
TRANSPORT
Although London’s population is steadily increasing, London Plan has the aim to reduce the need for people to travel and maximise spread of walking and cycling. The Plan provide several solutions to achieve this goal:
- Transport Objective A: providing services and job opportunities locally will reduce need to travel.
- Transport Objective B: investing in walking, cycling and affordable public transport services throughout London is the alternative by choice to car dependency.
- Transport Objective C: strengthened low emission requirements, strong road traffic reduction targets are the way to improve the environment and tackle congestion and pollution.
- Transport Objective D: promote an integrated approach to freight with a network of consolidation hubs and managed distribution.
IMPLEMENTATION
According to the paper, in order to achieve strong and sustainable communities, the social dimension must be added to the economic one. Key factors are:
- Opportunity Areas because they have not functioned as expected. They should be more democratic.
- Lifetime neighbourhoods and community assets and spaces for fostering a sense of belonging, building networks of community organisations and enabling communities to thrive together.
- Social impact assessment is fundamental because it allows the consideration of alternative proposals and gives a high value to social sustainability.
- Monitoring indicators for measuring London’s economic success. For example, % of deaths avoidable through good quality health care / public health interventions or % of the labour force that has a secure job that pays at least the living wage.
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“A new and bold vision is needed to rethink London’s economy and enhance its multiple strengths, ensure it benefits all those who live and work in the city and provide the means for future generations to thrive”.
by Cristiano Gatti | Nov 15, 2016 | The Urban Media Lab
Harlem is one of New York’s most famous neighborhoods, known as a major African-American residential, cultural and business center. In the past, it has suffered a series of economic boom-and-bust cycles, with significant population shifts accompanying each cycle. In the last decades, residents have been experiencing the effect of gentrification and displacement of the area.
But even so, Harlem community is strong and vibrant: an example is East Harlem Neighborhood Plan (organized by Hester Street Collaborative, Neighborhoods First Found and Center for Urban Pedagogy), a community-led initiative that expressed a community-oriented approach in urban planning. This approach is consistent with the aim of promoting a new institutional and economic system based on the model of collaborative urban governance. The development plan tried to replace the number of losing affordable housing and added more benefits into the community, City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito said. Their mission is to provide leadership in sustainable, technology led, economic development for emerging urban communities.
Turning to another issue, such as broadband access affordability, it is important to remember Silicon Harlem, a for-profit social venture that got started in 2008 that is pushing to make Harlem a hub of technology and innovation that will will thrive and inspire the global digital economy. Co-founder and CEO Clayton Banks said that high-speed Web is “the electrification of the 21st century”, so “the most pressing issue regarding broadband is affordability”.
According to Silicon Harlem website, this social venture “is an ecosystem that is inclusive and driven by positive growth” and “the Technological Future of Harlem is a comprehensive set of steps needed to transform the community”. The idea of “a hub of technology and innovation” means establishing co-working spaces, gigabit infrastructure, securing investment capital, and hosting monthly meetups for boosting economic and social advancement in a neighborhood that has become increasingly multi-ethnic. New York University’s Furman Center, indeed, claims that, for example in Central Harlem, Black people were 77% in 2000 and they decreased to 55% in 2014, while Hispanic slightly increased from 17% in 2000 to 24% in 2014 and White rocketed up to 15% from 2% in the same period. These data are also important because they showed neighborhood incomes and educations levels on the rise.
Then, Apps Youth Leadership Academy (AYLA) is another program created to enhance the skills and prepare students for their careers in global digital economy. According to the website, The Academy launched in 2014 and put 20 High School students through a 7 week summer program. The students learned a variety of critical skills including: how to build a mobile app, how to build a website, how to manage as a team, how to pitch an idea, basics of coding, basics of design, problem solving and feedback, and much more. Bolstering the technology proficiency of students is important in U.S. because there are 5 million households with school-age children but without broadband access.
Another interesting initiative is “Mission Possible” program created by WeWork and Silicon Harlem: here Harlem-based entrepreneurs can win office space and networking chances and opportunities:
- Three to 12 months of space at WeWork Harlem;
- Access to WeWork’ 80,000 members;
- Participation in Demo Day pitch competition and other events;
- Mentorship and professional advice from members and industry experts;
- Reduced rates on health, payment processing, accounting, legal advice, etc.
Finally, CNBC reports that New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer considers broadband access the key to turn Harlem into the next Silicon Valley. In his opinion, broadband access creates wealth because it is inherently better to invest in human capital (especially for women and minorities) than merely to raise the minimum wage.
On this matter, Carrie Sheffield affirms that there is a diversity problem in technology: in Dropbox, Google, Facebook and Twitter only one or two percent of employees are black compared to African-Americans comprising 13 percent of the U.S. population. Moreover, according to CB Insights, a 2014 list of top tech venture capital firms shows just 1.54 percent of investors were black, and just 1 percent of tech startup founders were black. This isn’t to say we need rigid, racial quotas in tech, and in fact, economics tells us that sort of rigidity is bad for consumers. The key point is to build a robust culture around STEM education (science, technology, engineering and math) and it is precisely what Silicon Harlem is doing in Harlem and in other cities such as Newark, Philadelphia and Haarlem.
According to this view, Silicon Harlem really have an opportunity to lower crime in Harlem, the potential to lower unemployment rates, increase quality education opportunities and grow jobs and bolster the neighborhood’s reputation as both a cultural and business force.
