by Giulia Spinaci | Sep 12, 2015 | The Urban Media Lab
Photo Credit: Shutterstock.com/ Ivelin Radkov
Welcome back to the reflections on the New York City experience! Episode 1 showed the other side of the sharing economy, which is more linked to the economic struggles of the society than usually thought. Now let us have a deeper look into this reality.
The NYC directory of sharing economy organizations tells an interesting story about the needs of the New Yorkers. The directory is divided into 15 thematic sections and strikingly, the three longest lists are “Space” (25 organizations), “On-demand services” (18 organizations), and “Transport” (13 organizations), which together amount for almost 50% of the total. This does not come as a surprise if we think about Manhattan: a crowded and congested place, where people are always in a rush. It is the standard stereotype of the biggest American cities, but New York certainly epitomizes this characteristic.
Many of the organizations of the above-mentioned directory are actually solving most of the daily problems that living in New York City provokes. That is the reason why they are so famous and widespread. In fact, the operational model they are implementing in New York is replicable elsewhere, and sharing economy organizations like Airbnb and Uber are known – and used – worldwide.
The capacity of finding unexplored market niches is outstanding. If some of these sharing economy organizations are classical in terms of the service provided, others are quite bizarre! Do you need to hire someone to stand in line for restaurants or special events for you? Taskrabbit is the solution. Do you want to show off each month different luxury watches and ties? Eleven James and Freshneck will fulfil your wishes.
As previously noted, these sharing models are based on the match between a tiny/non-existent supply and a large potential demand, and on the assumption that trust is the “fuel” that ensures the correct functioning of the machine. Nevertheless, these models are not infallible and the first signs of dissatisfaction by users (but not only) have appeared. Quality has been often questioned and complaints rarely result in a disciplinary action or in a constructive solution. The problem primarily lies in the lack of a regulatory framework for these “sharing” experiments. Self-regulation has been invoked several times, but, as of now, it has not brought a definitive solution.
There are two main dilemmas and the case study of Uber will explain both of them. First, it is unclear (and not regulated properly) the relationship between users and providers of the service/good. Formally, drivers are not agents of the company and “Uber and its fellow service providers do not assign passengers to drivers nor control the conduct of the drivers. Rather, ride-sharing companies purport only to provide an “interactive computer service” through which a driver and a passenger may engage in a direct deal” (St Aubin Keith, 2014). From there, a question of civil liability arises and as of now, it is unlikely that Uber will be held accountable to victims of accidents.
Secondly, Uber undermines regular taxi drivers, who respect tougher regulation and earn much less. Since 2011, 12.000 cars have invaded New York apparently to enlarge the service to neighbourhoods usually outside the yellow cabs’ zone, but numbers speak clear. “In April, according to city data requisitioned from the company, of the roughly 76,000 New York City pickups Uber made on the average day, about 63,000 were in central Manhattan” (New York Times, 26/07/15). Substantially, they invaded the yellow cabs’ zone. This comes at the expense of regular taxi drivers who earn less and less money, and who thus accuse Uber of “economic terrorism”.
However, maybe the solution to these dilemmas is near. Gov. Andrew Cuomo proposed a State-wide regulatory framework for Uber (Observer, 23/07/15). On the one hand, it will not restrict job growth, while on the other it will provide the necessary norms for the service to operate rightly and safely.
If you are interested in this topic and to urban commons then SAVE THE DATE! LabGov is proud to announce that “The City as a Commons: Reconceiving Urban Space, Common Goods and City Governance” will be the theme of the first IASC Conference to be held on 6-7 November 2015 in Bologna, Italy. The conference will be co-chaired by Prof. Christian Iaione (LUISS Guido Carli and UniMarconi University) and by Prof. Sheila Foster (Fordham University), and it will develop along 6 different tracks. These thematic areas will be examined in two full days of plenary panels, keynote presentations, and parallel sessions with selected papers from a call for papers. The conference will conclude with a roundtable discussion intended to reflect on the methods and future directions for urban commons research. The second track will be “Mapping the Urban Commons”. What institutions with private-public partnerships might be considered an urban commons institution? What are the key research questions and methodologies to analyse these case-studies? If you wish to hear the answer to these questions by international experts, then come attending the conference!
by Giulia Spinaci | Aug 24, 2015 | The Urban Media Lab
I arrived in New York from Rome at the end of May, just before summer showed itself in all its beauty (and heat, sic!). The city is vibrant and rumours are true: it is the city that never sleeps. Lights, colours, noises, scents (and odours), everything contributes to the conflicting impressions that you are both part of and alienated from a community that is three times bigger than Rome.
This is not my first time in New York, but it seems as if it were. Living the Big Apple in all its forms and expressions and among its people is different from visiting it in one week or two. After the first month, you do not “see” anymore. You observe. You do not look the buildings, but the multitude of people that populate them.
Then, from the window of my office, high above the street, I began seeing hundreds, if not thousands of people, who everyday go to work, go to lunch, chat with friends and colleagues, and come back home (maybe after a good beer: after work Friday events are famous for a reason!). At this point, I seriously asked myself if it might ever be possible for such a big and densely populated city like this to develop effective and sincere forms of social and economic collaborations, like those we are experiencing in far smaller cities in Europe.
This is not supposed to be a naïve question but it is rather based on historical, economic and sociological factors. The United States are the motherland of the modern capitalist economy, whose basic tenets are private property, self-interest, competition, economic freedom, consumer sovereignty and laissez-faire. Can thus a form of socio-economic collaboration among citizens be feasible and rise in such a context – a collaboration that goes beyond the basic principles of capitalism?
The answer is 100 times yes[1]. This is the number of sharing economy organizations that currently make New York City a true hub in this field. As Collaborative Consumption put it, “with 8.5 million people crammed into such a small space, it really makes sense to share!” Personally, I came in contact with this brand new reality and I had the impression of entering a world that casts both light and shadow. Sharing economy organizations have the potentiality of simplifying everyday gestures by giving you access to otherwise out-of-reach services, but at the same time they often spark debate as they are perceived as outsiders and free-riders of the economic system system (see for example the debate about Uber on The New York Times).
Generalizations about the sharing economy are easy and tricky at the same time. We might be tempted to infer from these few data that, at least in New York City, the very idea of capitalism has been superseded in favour of a collective form of management of depletable resources in the name of a superior (and maybe utopic) goal, namely sustainable development for all. It might be true in part, and certainly it is for a number of people, but we should go deeper into the reasons why sharing goods and services has become so successful since the mid-2000s.
Let us have a look into the data. In New York City, people do share almost everything, in a range that goes from food (e.g. EatWith) and transport (e.g. Uber and Citibike) to accommodations (e.g. Airbnb), education (e.g. Brooklyn Brainery) and even expertise (e.g. Contently). What all these organizations have in common is the people – people who decide to trust each other to the point that mutually beneficial relationships can be established.
But is trust the real push-factor behind the rise of the sharing economy? What continues to be forgotten in almost all discussions is the socio-economic environment in which this phenomenon has developed. The term first appeared in the mid-2000s, along with reflections on the tragedy of the commons, and in particular on depletable resources. One of the first theorists of the sharing economy is Yochai Benkler, who in 2002, coined the term “commons-based peer production”[2] to describe collaborative efforts based on sharing information and in 2004, explored in depth the possibility of a sharing economy[3]. We should however recognize that, in the practice, sharing economy organizations experienced a boom only in latest years.
Probably the New York Magazine got it right when it finally highlighted that “the sharing economy has succeeded in large part because the real economy has been struggling. A huge precondition for the sharing economy has been a depressed labour market, in which lots of people are trying to fill holes in their income by monetizing their stuff and their labour in creative ways. In many cases, people join the sharing economy because they’ve recently lost a full-time job and are piecing together income from several part-time gigs to replace it. In a few cases, it’s because the pricing structure of the sharing economy made their old jobs less profitable. (Like full-time taxi drivers who have switched to Lyft or Uber.) In almost every case, what compels people to open up their homes and cars to complete strangers is money, not trust”[4].
Of course this is not saying that the sharing economy in itself reneges or betrays the theoretical foundations on which it is based. At a secondary stage trust becomes indispensable and it is certainly true that it helps in better managing the dilemma of depletable resources. The case of New York City and its 100 sharing economy organizations is just the exemplification of a society that is currently struggling to find a way across an infinite series of obstacles, from reduced liveable space and limited non-renewable energy sources to economic stagnation and recession. By chance this exemplification serves not only the cause of the individual, but (luckily) also the cause of the community. Still, even if the end is clear, a deeper reflection on the means to achieve the latter is desperately needed to dispel all doubts.
Coming soon: “Sharing NYC – Episode II” to explore sharing experiences in New York City, between success stories and contradictions. STAY TUNED!
[1] List retrieved from http://letscollaboratenyc.com/
[2] “Coase’s Penguin, or, Linux and The Nature of the Firm”, 112 Yale Law Journal (2002)
[3] “Sharing Nicely”: On Shareable Goods and the Emergence of Sharing as a Modality of Economic Production, 114 Yale Law Journal (2004)
[4] http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/04/sharing-economy-is-about-desperation.html
by Giulia Spinaci | Mar 12, 2015 | The Urban Media Lab
Commons have turned to be notorious only in recent times, but since they have timidly appeared, there has been literally an explosion of articles, studies and experiments of governance of the commons on field.
When a new phenomenon is taken into consideration, usually, one of the first things to do is its analysis: of its characteristics, of the possible implications and, obviously, its geographical distribution. Since ancient times, the explanatory power of maps has always been extremely helpful in both academic and professional sectors, because of the immediacy of the images in transmitting a message.
The daily routine does not always allow to be aware of what surrounds us and sometimes, we need active and passionate citizens to remind us of it. This is even truer when it comes to the commons. In this sense, a map might be even more powerful than usual, since it helps displaying the richness of a country in terms of places, monuments, traditions and experiments of governance of the commons.
Across Europe and the world, many countries already assimilated this lesson and a lot of associations and organizations produced wonderful maps, offering a glimpse of their variegated national heritage.
The case of “Mapping the Commons.net” is exemplary, because of the transnational nature of the investigation. Through a series of workshops and after a thorough analysis of the parameters to be considered and of the commons to be included, this project elaborated a total of six maps of the commons in as many cities in the world: Athens, Istanbul, Rio De Janeiro, Sao Paulo, Belo Horizonte and Quito. The philosophical and theoretical work behind these maps is huge. The map represents the ultimate effort of a sequential process that starts from the definition of the word “common” and passes through the study of the cultural and historical background of each city. In the end, “Mapping the Commons.net” won the Elinor Ostrom Award for research and social intervention linked to the Commons, on the category “Conceptual Approaches on the commons”: a formal recognition for this extraordinary work.
When it comes to Italy, it is a different story. A widespread culture on the commons has developed later than the other European countries and generally, than the rest of the world. Consequently, mapping the Italian commons is only a recent achievement. The attempt made by Zappata Romana is noteworthy, but limited in space (it covers only the city of Rome) and only green spaces are taken into consideration. Another map is the one provided by UNESCO, which on the one hand has the virtue of listing intangible benefits (local traditions), while on the other it obviously lacks a comprehensive classification of all the on-field experiments of governance, by marking only the artistic and archeological sites. We might enumerate all the mapping attempts in Italy. Still, there is not an exhaustive map of the commons and maybe there will never be, given the great variety of the commons.
With the willingness of bridging the gap, LabGov’s latest efforts dealt with this: mapping the Italian urban and natural commons, both the material and the intangible ones, also with an insight of the consolidated governance approaches and of the ongoing experiments on field.
Italy of the Commons – LabGov’s map
Let us start with the definition of the commons: commons are goods, tangible, intangible and digital, that citizens and the Administration, also through participative and deliberative procedures, recognize to be functional to the individual and collective wellbeing, activating themselves towards them pursuant to article 118, par. 4, of the Italian Constitution, to share the responsibility with the Administration to care or regenerate them in order to improve their public use That being stated, it has been quite easy making a list of the numerous (almost infinite) commons in Italy.
The map distinguishes the various categories with different marks and the classification includes the UNESCO material and intangible sites, the cooperative communities, the consumer cooperatives (water and electricity), but it also offers an updated list of the cities that approved the Bologna Regulation and of the ongoing projects of LabGov. The spatial distribution is homogeneous, even if the consumer cooperatives are concentrated in Northern Italy, for obvious physical characteristics, since they deal with water resources.
Being the project ongoing, the map will never be definitive. Still, it preserves the evocative power typical of images, through the transmission of a message of cooperation in the care and regeneration of the commons.
Le mappe hanno sempre avuto uno spiccato potere evocativo e nel caso dei beni comuni questo è ancora più evidente. La mappa così riesce a mostrare con chiarezza la ricchezza di un paese in termini di luoghi, tradizioni, monumenti ed esperimenti di governance dei beni comuni. Se all’estero lo studio e la mappatura dei beni comuni è una pratica assodata, in Italia è un’avventura nuova che ha tuttavia già prodotto risultati notevoli. Sulla scia di questi ultimi, LabGov presenta una propria mappa dei beni comuni, che tiene conto della loro natura variegata e trasmette un chiaro messaggio di cooperazione.
by Giulia Spinaci | Feb 12, 2015 | The Urban Media Lab
Today, community gardens are a widespread reality all over Europe, and not only. Italy has demonstrated to keep up with times and Rome is no exception. Nevertheless, the various experiments in collective governance of public spaces have never been on the forefront of local and national media. At least until the creation of Zappata Romana.
The very beginning of this project dates back to 2010, when a group of people, notably Silvia Cioli, Luca D’Eusebio and Andrea Mangoni, realized that the mere restoration of an abandoned public space does not bring long-term solutions in terms of maintenance. For this reason, they figured out that the efforts should be maximized though associations of willing and active people in order to provide a durable management for the benefit of the whole community.
Zappata Romana is a study project by StudioUAP, which “works mostly on public spaces and participation. Urban projects, architecture and landscape design are the occasions for experimenting models for the introduction of social interaction especially with children and low tech architecture”.
At the time when they rolled up their sleeves, they did an overview of the existing projects and they discovered that already 40 urban community gardens had already mushroomed in Rome, gathering many citizens and associations. It was the demonstration that the population was silently acknowledging the need for public spaces not only to be collectively managed but also to be a meeting place where socialization and exchange of best practices were the most important keywords.
Zappata Romana then can be better defined as a “network” because its ultimate goal is to put into contact the different projects that autonomously rise in the city of Rome. The always updated interactive map published on its website is the first and most remarkable tool at their disposal.
The different symbols represent different kinds of projects, i.e. vegetables gardens, gardens, guerrilla gardens, while the leitmotiv is the collective and direct management of these places by the citizens. Since every marker is accompanied with a brief description and the link of the related project/association, communication and exchange of practices are therefore possible. Not only. Cooperation is the expected outcome of this platform and the Roma Skill Share event in 2011 is the best example of the practical commitment and willingness already shown on the internet. It was a large event, where almost all the promoters of community gardens displayed on the map gathered and personally met in order to share the knowledge they had acquired (literally) on field. The idea of a handbook, published on the website, on the realization of community gardens is the result of the general will expressed on that occasion.
The flagship of Zappata Romana is the Hortus Urbis project. It best exemplifies the willingness of circulating skills and practices, combined with an educational and socializing goal.
The Appia Antica way was one of the earliest and strategically most important Roman roads of the ancient republic. Today, the spirit of the Ancient Rome revives in Hortus Urbis, which was launched by Zappata Romana and the Regional Park of Appia Antica. It consists in a 225sqm vegetable garden, which collects plants commonly used by the ancient Romans for a wide array of scopes: from the culinary to the therapeutic ones. Hortus Urbis is a collective garden where workshops regularly take place, where children, schools and adults, too have the possibility to learn how to take care of the environment they live in.
Hortus Urbis is just one of the over 150 community gardens in Rome, each of which is bearer of a particular knowledge that waits to be discovered and shared. Thus, not only the map of Zappata Romana is an orientation tool, but it also and foremost communicates an ideal and connects people.
Nel contesto dei giardini urbani condivisi, Zappata Romana è stata la pioniera nello studio e nella classificazione degli esperimenti condotti dai cittadini nella città di Roma. Lo studio ha preso la forma di una mappa interattiva che informa e mette in comunicazione realtà diverse tra loro, che tutto hanno da guadagnare nello scambio di esperienze e conoscenze acquisite sul “campo”. Zappata Romana opera ormai da qualche anno e ha collezionato iniziative di rilievo, come la guida pratica alla creazione di un orto condiviso e il progetto Hortus Urbis, che a scopo educativo fa rivivere lo spirito dell’Antica Roma.
by Giulia Spinaci | Jan 13, 2015 | The Urban Media Lab
Ever since the City of Bologna approved in May ’14 the Regulation on Collaboration Between the Citizens and the City for the Care and Regeneration of the Urban Commons, twenty municipalities have approved the Regulation and fourth-three more are examining it. In this sense, the city of Orvieto has numerous predecessors, but this does not change the fact that it should be considered a success in itself.
Every little, medium and big city that voted in favor of a collaborative governance of the urban commons represents an important achievement along the way towards the end of the practice of devolving power. Active citizens have the chance to take care by themselves of the place they live and to do it hand in hand with the public administration, in a constructive cooperation that brings benefits to the whole community.
On December 29th, 2014, thus, Orvieto joined the list of the cities that decided to completely revolutionize the way of thinking about the commons, and in particular about the urban ones. The Municipal Council endorsed the Regulation by a unanimous decision. A fact, this, which highlights that behind themes like this, there is a common background able to eliminate the differences between the various political factions in favor of a shared agreement. Furthermore, the approval in itself helps avoiding all those cases in which the active citizenship is blocked and even punished (e.g. the emblematic case of Mrs. Ilaria Montis who was fined for having cleaned the seaside of Is Solinas (CI) and for throwing the garbages in dumpsters far away from her house). To regulate a phenomenon does not mean to block it or to establish boundaries and limits, but rather to let it flow according to its characteristics and according to the different realities it takes place in.
The Regulation found its origin in the work carried out also by LabGov experts in Bologna and is centered upon the principle of horizontal/circular subsidiarity enshrined in the Italian Constitution (Art. 118) in an innovative way. Article 118 should not be interpreted as a way of merely dividing the responsibilities between the private sector and the public one, but rather as a shared background on which a new model of society shall be built. A society where active citizens can practically contribute to the renewal of the reality they live in. Obviously, this implies that the Regulation cannot be applied everywhere in the same form. Changes are firmly supported in order to adapt the goals to the concrete situation and to the history and values of the city at issue.
The analogies and differences between the four different versions of the Regulation approved in the cities of Bologna, Ivrea, Siena and Chieri were already analyzed, through seven parameters. Now, with the same methodology, it has come the moment to present the vision that the city of Orvieto decided to offer with the approval of the Regulation, in comparison to the original version of Bologna.
- Principles. The Municipality of Orvieto maintained all the original principles that constitute the foundations of the original version of the regulation. However, an interesting voice was added by the City Council of Orvieto during the drafting phase: art. 10 makes an explicit reference to the Framework Convention on the Value of Cultural Heritage for Society, approved in Faro in 2005. In the words of Paolo Maurizio Talanti, the Democratic Party councilman of Orvieto “a city with such an artistic and cultural heritage like ours shall know that the knowledge and use of the cultural heritage is an individual right […]”.
- Subjects. For both Bologna and Orvieto, the subjects taken into consideration are the active citizens, namely “all subjects, single or associated, anyhow gathered in social formations, also of entrepreneurial type or with social vocation, which are active for the care and regeneration of urban commons”.
- Organizational aspects. Unlike the case of Bologna, Orvieto does not explicitly provide a unique office for the evaluation of the proposals of the active citizens, thus provoking an organizational gap that risks to provoke overlapping procedures and ambiguity during the implementation. In fact, according to the topic, each proposal will be submitted to the competent office.
- Type of administration. The kind of administration that takes shape in Orvieto is based on the authorization by the public offices, which are competent to technically evaluate the feasibility of the projects.
- Relevance of the private assets. The Regulation of Orvieto puts a particular emphasis on the public spaces as objects of the care of the active citizens, leaving however the possibility for a shared management of the private spaces for public use. Worth mentioning is the fact that the regulation merges the provision about the public spaces with the one about private ones in a unique norm.
- Forms of support. This is probably the most interesting aspect of the whole Regulation of Orvieto. In fact, the text completely eliminate all forms of exemption and relief from levies and local taxes and of administrative facilities, such as in obtaining permits. The Municipality may contribute to the reimbursement of costs only in those cases where an in-kind support is not possible.
- Disputes. Contrary to the Bologna Regulation, which provided for the creation of a Conciliation Board in order to solve future disputes, the City Council of Orvieto did not, thus leaving open the possibility to submit the arising cases to the ordinary jurisdiction instruments.
Strongly adapted to the local situation, the Regulation of Orvieto, with its strengths and weaknesses, constitutes a remarkable example of how much our society is changing and how well the Regulation fits in this challenging and stimulating environment.
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Il Comune di Orvieto approva il Regolamento sulla collaborazione fra cittadini e amministrazione per la cura e la rigenerazione dei beni comuni urbani!
Il Comune di Orvieto ha due settimane fa approvato il Regolamento sulla Collaborazione tra Cittadini e Amministrazione per la Cura e la Rigenerazione dei Beni Comuni Urbani. Seppur con un testo adattato alla realtà della città, l’approvazione del Regolamento dimostra un rinnovato modo di pensare sui beni comuni urbani che si sta diffondendo velocemente in tutta Italia.
