Crowd-Mapping Gender Equality: A Powerful Tool for Shaping a Better City Launches in Melbourne

by Nicole Kalms, Monash University, The Conversation: https://theconversation.com/crowd-mapping-gender-equality-a-powerful-tool-for-shaping-a-better-city-launches-in-melbourne-105648

Ensuring both men and women have access to baby changing facilities is one of many issues that gender equality mapping can help tackle. Pixabay, CC BY

Inequity in cities has a long history. The importance of social and community planning to meet the challenge of creating people-centred cities looms large. While planners, government and designers have long understood the problem, uncovering the many important marginalised stories is an enormous task.

Technology – so often bemoaned – has provided an unexpected and powerful primary tool for designers and makers of cities. Crowd-mapping asks the community to anonymously engage and map their experiences using their smartphones and via a web app. The focus of the new Gender Equality Map launched today in two pilot locations in Melbourne is on equality or inequality in their neighbourhood.

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Read more: To design safer parks for women, city planners must listen to their stories

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How does it work?

Participants can map their experience of equality or inequality in their neighbourhood using locator pins. Author provided

Crowd-mapping generates geolocative data. This is made up of points “dropped” to a precise geographical location. The data can then be analysed and synthesised for insights, tendencies and “hotspots”.

The diversity of its applications shows the adaptability of the method. The digital, community-based method of crowd-mapping has been used across the globe. Under-represented citizens have embraced the opportunity to tell their stories as a way to engage with and change their experience of cities.

CrowdSpot and Monash University have developed the Gender Equality Map with support from the Victorian government. It will enable local government to tackle the issues of socio-cultural exclusion that have proven so elusive. The map will help uncover real experiences of gender inequality in public places, from local sports facilities to public transport, community services and infrastructure, to simply walking down the street.

Read more: Gender makes a world of difference for safety on public transport

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How will the data be used?

Melton and Darebin city councils will pilot the project. These councils are committed to engaging with the data in future decision-making with direct impacts on their communities and neighbourhoods.

The map is open to all genders with residence of Darebin and Melton encouraged to use the web app to tell their story. While we expect to see stories from women and men of a range of ages, the Gender Equality Map is also an opportunity to hear about the nuanced experiences of LGBTIQ+ people.

More than a new narrative of city life, the Gender Equality Map and crowd-mapping projects more broadly reflect a shift in how we understand cities, architecture and urban planning. To understand patterns of inclusion and exclusion, to consider individual perceptions of cities – ones that may not align with our own – is one of the greatest challenges place-makers face.

Trained as an architect and landscape architect and as the director of a university research lab, my research is committed to understanding the nexus of urban place and gender inequity. My recent research focuses on the possibilities and power of crowd-mapping as a method for shaping urban space. Recognising that cities need to be gender-sensitive, I seek to understand the stories of gender, equity and identity in cities – not fictional ones but real-life stories of individual people.

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Read more: Safe in the City? Girls tell it like it is

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Leading to more inclusive urban design

As a democratic process, crowd-mapping can lead to action that helps solve real-world issues. To design “inclusively” is more than a matter of providing community buildings, public transport and amenity. It’s about the determination to seek out the tricky stories of social justice – those of access, equity and diversity – and to actively shape our cities with these goals as our priority.

Considering how communities can advance agendas and unlock many of the complex and diverse needs of cities requires a tactical approach. Feminist architect and activist Lori Brown states:

Design is not a passive act. It is a critical engagement with community and you have to be cognisant of the power that you have and how you use it.

Crowd-mapping engages with community but also brings with it a particularly powerful form of activism – especially when it comes to gender inequity. Projects such as Everyday Sexism in the UK; Safetipin in New Delhi, Jakarta, Bogota and Nairobi; Harassmap in India; and Free to Be in Australia and internationally, have publicly charted the ways women, in particular, experience inequity in cities.

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Read more: Sexism and the city: how urban planning has failed women

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One obvious advantage is that web-based crowd-sourcing can challenge the historically disproportionate contribution of usually male voices in urban policy and design. One of the reasons crowd-mapping has been successful at engaging with women and girls is that it allows them to report when and where it suits them. What more will we learn about inclusion when we open up the tool to all genders?

The ubiquity of smartphone technology over the past decade has driven exponential growth in the volume of data about cities and their citizens. We have less data, however, about gender and inequity. More data and deeper insights will make these issues central to the design and strategy of local, urban decision-making.

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Read more: Mansplaining Australian cities – we can do something about that

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Nicole Kalms, Director of XYX Lab + Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture at Monash University, Monash University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The City as a Commons

by Jay Walljasper, UTNE: https://www.utne.com/community/the-city-as-a-commons-zb0z1602zcwil

The disaster with Flint, Michigan’s drinking water, incited by political leaders more devoted to fiscal austerity than the common good, illuminates why it’s important to think of our cities as commons — human creations that belong to all residents, not just the wealthy and politically well-connected.

The commons itself means all the many things we share together rather than own privately — a list that starts with air, water, parks and streets and expands to include more complex entities such as the Internet, civic organizations and entire communities.

Typically the commons evokes images of the countryside: sheep grazing on communally-tended pastures, people frolicking on a town green, untrammeled wilderness open to all. Even in the modern context, commons champion (and Nobel Prize winner) Elinor Ostrom is best known for research on the management of forests, fisheries and agricultural irrigation systems even though one of her important studies focused on police departments in metropolitan St. Louis.

Despite pastoral images of the commons, urban commons are much more widespread now.

Yet the recent resurgence of commons projects is happening in urban as well as rural areas, witnessed by the City as a Commons: Reconceiving Urban Space, Common Good and City Governance  conference held last November in Bologna, Italy — a city taking big steps to integrate commons-based collaboration into its own policies and operations (more on this below).

The strong pastoral association with the commons makes sense from an historical perspective. Individualism and market economics were embraced first in urban areas as enlightenment philosophies and industrialization spread throughout Europe and eventually the whole planet. It was in rural communities where cooperative traditions endured and in some cases expanded, said Dutch historian Tine De Moor, president of the International Association for the Study of the Commons, one of the conference sponsors. Cooperatives, for instance, grew up in the countryside of many nations during the 19th and 20th centuries because many rural communities’ needs could not be profitably met by private businesses.

In England, many villages once held Beating the Bounds parties in which folks hiked the boundaries of their local commons together, ripping out private encroachments on their collective land. US commons scholar David Bollier suggested urban and digital activists might update this custom to preserve commons of our own time.

The social alienation and crushing poverty associated with early industrial cities can be explained by the sudden loss of commons connections and resources by rural refugees forced off the land into factories, said Michel Bauwens, founder of the Foundation for Peer-to-Peer Alternatives, based in Thailand. Cities lacked the free common spaces where people could raise food, gather firewood or gather outside with their neighbors. These human necessities must all be purchased.

The Rise of Urban Commons

Urban commons like parks, sanitation systems, public schools, public transit, libraries, hospitals, labor unions, private and public social welfare agencies emerged throughout the 19th century in response to squalid urban conditions. And the commons movement today stands on the shoulders of people’s continuing efforts to improve urban life by addressing issues like racial and economic inequality, environmental problems, neighborhood vitality, community organizing, walkability and biking.

Does a city belong to its business owners and legislature, to its people, or to a mixture of both?

“The city as a commons is designed to be disruptive — to question who owns and controls the city,” explained Sheila Foster, Fordham University Law Professor at a post-conference conversation convened in a bustling Bologna park by Shareable.net magazine. “It’s a claim that the city is open to how we exchange goods and services. It’s not just elites who should have power.”

“The idea of the urban commons is still very much in development,” said Foster, who wrote a groundbreaking paper on the city as commons with her conference co-chair Christian Iaione.

Foster outlined four major tenets of the city as commons in conference’s closing session:

• The city is an open resource where all people can share public space and interact.
• The city exists for widespread collaboration and cooperation.
• The city is generative, producing for human nourishment and human need.
• The city is a partner in creating conditions where commons can flourish.

What Does the Future Look Like?

The form urban commons might take over the next 25 years was vividly sketched by Berlin activist Silke Helfrich. She described a convivial community living according to the African philosophy of ubuntu (“I am because you are”). Many people live in cooperative co-housing communities, and work at home or co-working spaces. The streets are alive with people on foot, bike, transit and in shared cars. Every neighborhood proudly sports community vegetable gardens, fruit orchards, flower patches, herb commons, sanctuaries for birds and bees, greenspaces, cafés, a cultural center, library, ballroom and open source hub.

“The space of the commons will expand, and the space of the market will shrink,” Helfrich envisions, because systems are designed to allow commons to happen. Commoning will be as easy to do then as shopping is today.

The conference’s workshops zeroed in lessons learned from local urban commons projects around the world, including US inner cities.

Even in New York City, in Brooklyn, there are 596 acres of unused land available to create commons spaces.

A struggling neighborhood on the west side of Buffalo, New York became a laboratory for applying Elinor Ostrom’s eight commons principles to community revitalization efforts. Ronald Oakerson, a political scientist at nearby Houghton College, and Jeremy Clifton, an AmeriCorps organizer, experimented with how to activate low-income renters in tackling crime and disinvestment problems on their blocks.

“What doesn’t work is flyers and knocking on doors,” says Clifton, who is now studying psychology at the University of Pennsylvania.  What worked is identifying the community’s natural leaders and helping them create block clubs. “People take action when they feel ownership, but not necessarily home ownership but ownership of the street where they live.”

In Brooklyn, local activist Paula Siegel discovered the borough harbored 596 acres of vacant land (more space than Brooklyn’s beloved Prospect Park). Under the banner of “this land is your land,” she launched 596 acres to explore how residents can claim it for public use as gardens, playgrounds and learning centers.

Barcelona is moving toward participatory democracy with new commons policies tapping citizen’s ideas “to create the conditions for social initiatives to flourish”, according to Miquel Ortega, the city’s Commissioner for Commerce, Consumer Affairs and Markets. Airbnb was recently banned in the city because it was jacking up rents in many residential neighborhoods and forcing families out in favor of tourists.

Hitting the Ground in Bologna

The City as Commons event, which attracted more than 200 commoners from around the world to a refurbished factory, closed with a panel featuring Bologna’s Deputy Mayor Matteo Lepore who outlined some of the more than 100 collaborative projects with citizen groups the city has undertaken in its pioneering plans to incorporate commons thinking and practice into municipal governance:

• Neighborhood regeneration projects, which he emphasized, are “not on behalf of citizens but with citizens, who are a great source of energy, talent, resources, capabilities and ideas.”
• An experiment where restaurants and bars work directly with neighbors to set rules for their businesses and cooperate on regenerating the community.
• A program to draw upon parents’ ideas and skills in improving kindergartens.
• A civic crowdfunding prototype to support projects that the city cannot wholly fund, such as restoration of Bologna’s 24 miles of arched porticoes over sidewalks.
• An ambitious program of urban gardens.
• Creation of digital platforms to support commons projects of all varieties.
• A citywide conversation “about what is collaboration, and how the city government can work in new ways.

“Commons aren’t just something we protect, but also what we invent,” declared Lepore.

Bologna’s urban commons initiative began in May 2014, when the city council passed landmark legislation, Bologna Regulation for the Care and Regeneration of Urban Commons. “A new era was dawning where citizens are active co-managers of the resources they use in cities instead of passive recipients of services,” wrote Neal Gorenflo in Shareable after visiting Bologna at the first anniversary of the project.

The origins of the idea date back to 2011 when a group of local women contacted the city about donating benches to their neighborhood park, which lacked any place to sit. The women grew frustrated as their generous offer was bounced from one municipal department to another until finally they were told it was impossible. In fact, it was illegal for citizens to contribute improvements to their hometown.

As one of Italy’s most progressive cities, home to Europe’s oldest university and with a regional economy based on cooperative enterprises, this incident caused a stir around Bologna and spurred city officials to partner with the Rome-based organization LabGov (Laboratory for the Governance of the Commons) which applies the work of Elinor Ostrom to city life. Conference co-chair Christian Iaione, a legal scholar, was instrumental in bringing the project to life. Similar projects sprouted in the Italian cities of Palermo, Montova, Battipaglia and Rome. In North America, Toronto is looking at implementing Urban Commons policies and LabGov is partnering Fordham Urban Law Center to launch a project in New York City.

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Top photo by Fotolia/mimadeo

Middle photo by Fotolia/Sergei

Bottom photo by Fotolia/nikla

Five Ways New Movement Leaders are Effecting Change

by Michael Silberman, Yes! magazine:  https://www.yesmagazine.org/peace-justice/5-ways-new-movement-leaders-are-effecting-change-20181016

It’s hard to think of anything more embarrassing than throwing up in front of millions of people waiting to hear you speak. But that’s exactly what Sam Fuentes did at the March for Our Lives rally she helped to organize in Washington, D.C.

Here’s the kicker: The school shooting survivor didn’t act embarrassed at all. Instead of running off the stage—like most of us would—she took it in stride and went on to give an impassioned speech.

Since 17 of their classmates were gunned down in February, Fuentes and other survivors from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, have turned their trauma into a mass movement against gun violence. They organized a national march without any infrastructure—and in record time. And this summer, they toured the country for a campaign to mobilize the youth vote in the upcoming midterm elections.

But perhaps most significantly, these young people have debunked the assumption that this issue could never be wrested from the hands of powerful and well-funded gun rights forces.

Among the doubtful were older activists and professional campaigners who’d been in the organizing trenches for years—and with the scars to prove it. While thrilled about the new movement’s success, they also had a feeling that something had changed. Is this the dawn of a new kind of organizing and campaigning?

In short, yes. And the March for Our Lives movement is only one example. From the Movement for Black Lives and 350.org to the Women’s March and the tea party, a new wave of people-powered action is flipping the script and in some ways confounding traditional organizations that have been unable to convert into nimble social movements.

What all have in common is what authors Jeremy Heimans and Henry Timms are calling “new power”—new models that are organic and grow directly from the people rather than being directed or managed by formal organizations that control what gets done and by whom.

“Old power models ask of us only that we comply (pay your taxes, do your homework) or consume,” they write. “New power models demand and allow for more: that we share ideas, create new content (as on YouTube) or assets (as on Etsy), even shape a community (think of the sprawling digital movements resisting the Trump presidency).”

Today, new movements are working with more established organizations to capitalize on their wide-reaching networks. And they are learning to embrace the kinds of technologically savvy tactics used by the Parkland students. Here are five strategies that are proving valuable.

Ditch the script

Seasoned campaigners have long understood that the most effective messengers and organizers are those with the most at stake, or—like the Parkland students—little to lose. Those most directly affected by an issue can speak from the heart, while many campaigners and advocates sound scripted when they cite statistics or the latest study to make their points.

Soon after taking the stage at the March for Our Lives in Washington, D.C., Parkland and speaking for two minutes, senior Emma González went silent. After standing wordlessly at the podium for another four minutes and 26 seconds, she informed the crowd that her entire six minute and 20 second speech had lasted the same amount of time as she and her classmates had endured an active shooter.

She captured attention not only by speaking from the heart, but by showing rather than telling. González and her fellow student leaders are compelling to us because they have what Frank Sesno, director of George Washington University’s School of Media and Public Affairs, says are the three critical elements of  good stories: (1) compelling characters, (2) characters who have overcome obstacles, and (3) characters who have achieved a worthy outcome.

Step back so others can step up

We all want to be recognized for the work we’re doing, especially when it comes to issues we’re passionate about. That desire to be front and center can sometimes hurt, rather than advance, a movement or mission.

At the March for Our Lives in Washington, for example, former U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona, a nationally recognized gun violence survivor, stood in the crowd instead of onstage. She had stepped back so students’ voices could be heard. At the same time, she stepped up in other ways such as paying for many students’ travel to Washington.

The bottom line: Transformative social change is going to come from organizations that see people as change agents, not just cheerleaders or foot soldiers carrying out plans designed by those “in charge.”

The power of social media

When Fox News host Laura Ingraham mocked Parkland student organizer and survivor David Hogg for not being accepted into certain colleges, Hogg didn’t spend the next few days convening staff meetings on how to respond.

Instead, he quickly posted a list of Ingraham’s advertisers on Twitter andasked his outraged followers to let those companies know how they felt. As a result, more than a dozen advertisers dropped her show.

The most effective social change organizations understand that as technology moves everything to warp speed, the ability to respond rapidly and nimbly matters more than ever before.

The key to such agility? Agreeing on an overarching vision and message. This provides team members with the autonomy needed to respond quickly and creatively when opportunities arise.

Dream big to go big

In one of the most viewed TED talks of all time, behavioral researcher and author Simon Sinek uses Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous speech to explain why a big, bold idea is a key element of movement building and social change.

“He gave the ‘I Have a Dream’ speech, not the ‘I Have a Plan’ speech,” Sinek says. “He spoke for a different world, how to go from here to there. And he so beautifully described what ‘there’ is.”

King’s vision of a positive future mobilized a quarter of a million people to make the trek to Washington, D.C. (long before the internet). The Parkland students inspired over a million to stand up against gun violencein Washington and cities across the U.S. And March for Our Lives inspired an even bigger nationwide school walkout to keep up pressure on politicians and continue building local power.

Adopting a movement mindset

Could your organization pull off a national march in five weeks? Without any infrastructure or paid staff? With little financial support? And while leaders are still reeling from major trauma?

A lot of people told the Parkland students that what they were attempting was impossible. Luckily, they ignored the concerns because they weren’t fixating on what they didn’t have. Instead, they had a “movement mindset” that allowed them to focus on creatively and efficiently using the resources they did have.

Organizations of all sizes are discovering that they can take a page from social movements and find ways to act before everything is in place or completely figured out. Through participatory planning, rapid audience testing, and real-time ongoing improvements, organizations are developing initiatives that can be successful in rapidly shifting and unpredictable contexts. In short, the perfect is no longer the enemy of the good.

Correction: October 19, 2018.
This version updates the full length of Emma González’s March for Our Lives speech.

Michael Silberman wrote this article for YES! Magazine. Michael is the global director of Mobilisation Lab, which is transforming social change for the networked age. MobLab supports advocacy campaigners and their organisations to break through and win in today’s digital world with a systems-based, people-powered approach.Follow him on Twitter @silbatron and @mobilisationlab.

My Favourite Community Change Resources

by Liz Weaver, Tamarack Institute:  https://www.tamarackcommunity.ca/latest/my-favourite-community-change-resources

Image: comnetwork.org

Many of us working in community change efforts are continually searching for new resources and tools to help facilitate effective community engagement and community change processes.  Over the last several weeks, some of my favourite twitter leads have shared their lists of sites that they regularly visit for tools and resources. 

In the Tamarack Learning Center library, you will find a wide variety of tools useful to collective impact, collaborative leadership, community innovation and community change efforts.  A simple way to access these tools is to insert the word – tool – in the search function on the home page of the website and a list of Tamarack tools will appear. 

Additionally, Tamarack welcomes posts from our Learning Centre network. We are very interested in the tools and approaches that you have found to be particularly impactful. 

In addition to the Tamarack tools, here are some websites that we like where you will find tools, resources, approaches and thinking that you can use in your community change efforts.  

• Co-Creative Consulting – This is one of our favourite tool resource websites. Co-Creative Consulting makes their tools open source.  They are interested in community change efforts and improving community change processes. In addition to tools and resources, Co-Creative Consulting also engages in consulting and training in collaborative innovation. 

• Liberating Structures – For those of you working in systems change, this website is one you will want to bookmark. The Liberating Structures website provides links to 33 tools for engaging communities in systems change strategies. The tools are useful for large and small groups. 

• Ontario Trillium Foundation Knowledge Centre – Recently launched, the Ontario Trillium Foundation (OTF) Knowledge Centre focuses on the six people priorities of the OTF as well as sections focusing on measurement and open data. OTF invites community members and partners to contribute to the conversation on the website. 

• Service Design Tools – This website was suggested by Galen MacLusky as a site that he visits regularly. The Service Design Tools website is an open collection of communications tools used in design processes for complex, systems change work. For those of you wanting to improve communications across diverse partners, this website has some great resources. 

• Beth’s Blog – Beth Kanter writes extensively about the power of networks and community impact. In a recent blog post, Beth wrote about eight facilitation playbooks for designing effective meetings. This list of resources and links focuses on effective meeting processes. One website on the list that intrigued me is Hyper Island contains 75 tools to improve engagement and meeting processes. 

• Chris Corrigan – is someone you might want to follow. In a recent post, Chris provides 70 links to websites, tools, and processes which focus on group process methodologies, process architecture and maps, suites of tools, and specific learning resources. 

For those of you wanting to build your tool kit, these links and resources are useful to improving processes and engaging stakeholders. Take the time to practice new tools and approaches.

Revitalizing Community Connection

by Corey Binns, Stanford Social Innovation Review:  https://ssir.org/articles/entry/revitalizing_community_connection

Corey Binns (@coreybinns) is a journalist based in Northern California. She writes about science, health, and social change.

A 100-acre glacial lake known in the 1900s as Akron’s million-dollar playground sits just a two-mile jog south of the city’s downtown. Thousands of Ohioans once spent summer days riding the park’s roller coaster and swimming in the lake. But after the area’s booming rubber industry contaminated Summit Lake, the nearby neighborhood fell into decades of decay and isolation.

In 2016, a series of meetings with community members led to inexpensive improvements around the lake. Today, families from all over the city sit next to each other on new benches under shade umbrellas, grill hot dogs, and paddle canoes. For Akron Mayor Dan Horrigan, the process revealed the critical role that public spaces play as a platform for equity: “It’s allowed us to reevaluate how we view city parks and view our citizens as cocreators of public land.”

Akron is one of five US cities involved in a three-year, $40 million initiative launched in 2016 that has developed a measurement system for parks, trails, and community centers to model how cities can restore their civic commons. The goal is to create, or re-create, public spaces that matter. “Libraries and parks and recreation centers have historically served the purpose of amplifying citizenship,” says Carol Coletta, a fellow at The Kresge Foundation, one of the four funders of Reimagining the Civic Commons in addition to the JPB, Knight, and Rockefeller foundations. “We’re trying to reclaim their legacy as institutions.”

Communities, especially disinvested ones, need a boost, says Coletta. We no longer know our neighbors, and our belief in institutions has dwindled. She and her colleagues set out to pinpoint hiking trails and civic spaces they might repurpose to rebuild capital and trust in disenfranchised neighborhoods.

The team claims it has built the first comprehensive set of metrics that connect the impact of revitalization to things such as trust between people; perceptions of safety; and a community’s ability to draw together people of diff erent incomes, races, and backgrounds.

Treating plazas and hiking trails as a linked portfolio tied to social outcomes marks a simple yet significant shift, says Bridget Marquis, director of the Civic Commons Learning Network. She urges city officials to recognize the value of existing parks and libraries that communities invested in a century ago, rather than building anew: “Every city, and almost every neighborhood, has civic assets that if reimagined could connect people of all backgrounds, cultivate trust, and counter the trends of social and economic fragmentation.”

Marquis and her colleagues developed a set of indicators, collected from a combination of focus groups, surveys, and police and real estate records. Trust, for example, is measured in part by asking if people trust their local government to do what is right. Public life is gauged by the number and duration of times people visit a public space.

The initiative also studies socio-economic mixing by measuring the diversity of race and income levels among visitors to each site, the time people spend with their neighbors, and the opportunities people have to meet someone new. Despite mounting research espousing the benefits of diverse, mixed-income communities, socio-economic mixing doesn’t appear on many city agendas. People working with the initiative can bridge divides, starting with the civic commons as places that make it convenient and pleasant to be in the company of strangers.

In Philadelphia, the Swim Philly program lured more swimmers to its public pools with bright lounge chairs and umbrellas, free water aerobics, and poolside yoga. The pools’ popularity inspired Mitchell Silver, commissioner of the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, to launch five freshly painted “Cool Pools” in each borough. Silver believes the civic commons program can revitalize communities—if leaders manage expectations and build public trust. The Learning Network will continue to share resources with other cities.

“If all cities were making strategic investments in our civic assets to connect people of all backgrounds, cultivate trust, and counter these trends of social and economic fragmentation, I believe we would see stronger, more equitable cities,” Marquis says. “Places that finally live up to the American ideal that we are all created equally and that we all can share equally in public life.”

What Would a Society Designed for Well-being Look Like?

by Tabita Green, Transformation - Open Democracy:  https://www.opendemocracy.net/transformation/tabita-green/what-would-society-designed-for-well-being-look-like

Credit: Pixabay/Geralt. CC0 Public Domain.

In early June of this year, the back-to-back suicides of celebrities Anthony Bourdain and Kate Spade, coupled with a new report revealing a more than 25 percent rise in U.S. suicides since 2000, prompted—again—a national discussion on suicide prevention, depression, and the need for improved treatment. Some have called for the development of new antidepressants, noting the lack of efficacy in current medical therapies. But developing better drugs buys into the mainstream notion that the collection of human experiences called “mental illness” is primarily physiological in nature, caused by a “broken” brain.

This notion is misguided and distracting at best, deadly at worst. Research has shown that, to the contrary, economic inequality could be a significant contributor to mental illness. Greater disparities in wealth and income are associated with increased status anxiety and stress at all levels of the socioeconomic ladder. In the United States, poverty has a negative impact on children’s development and can contribute to social, emotional, and cognitive impairment. A society designed to meet everyone’s needs could help prevent many of these problems before they start.

To address the dramatic increase in mental and emotional distress in the U.S., we must move beyond a focus on the individual and think of well-being as a social issue. Both the World Health Organization and the United Nations have made statements in the past decade that mental health is a social indicator, requiring “social, as well as individual, solutions.” Indeed, WHO Europe stated in 2009 that “[a] focus on social justice may provide an important corrective to what has been seen as a growing overemphasis on individual pathology.”

The UN’s independent adviser Dainius Pūras reported in 2017 that “mental health policies and services are in crisis—not a crisis of chemical imbalances, but of power imbalances,” and that decision-making is controlled by “biomedical gatekeepers,” whose outdated methods “perpetuate stigma and discrimination.” Our economic system is a fundamental aspect of our social environment, and the side effects of neoliberal capitalism are contributing to mass malaise.

In The Spirit Level, epidemiologists Kate Pickett and Richard G. Wilkinson show a close correlation between income inequality and rates of mental illness in 12 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development member countries. The more unequal the country, the higher the prevalence of mental illness. Of the 12 countries measured on the book’s mental illness scatter chart, the United States sits alone in the top right corner—the most unequal and the most mentally ill.

The seminal Adverse Childhood Experiences Study revealed that repeated childhood trauma results in both physical and mental negative health outcomes in adulthood. Economic hardship is the most common form of childhood trauma in the U.S.—one of the richest countries in the world. And the likelihood of experiencing other forms of childhood trauma—such as living through divorce, death of a parent or guardian, a parent or guardian in prison, various forms of violence, and living with anyone abusing alcohol or drugs—also increases with poverty.

Clearly, many of those suffering mental and emotional distress are actually having a rational response to a sick society and an unjust economy. This revelation doesn’t reduce the suffering, but it completely changes the paradigm of mental health and how we choose to move forward to optimize human well-being.

Instead of focusing only on piecemeal solutions for various forms of social ills, we must consider that the real and lasting solution is a new economy designed for all people, not only for the ruling corporate elite. This new economy must be based on principles and strategies that contribute to human well-being, such as family-friendly policies, meaningful and democratic work, and community wealth-building activities to minimize the widening income gap and reduce poverty.

The seeds of human well-being are sown during pregnancy and the early years of childhood. Research shows that mothers who are able to stay home longer (at least six months) with their infants are less likely to experience depressive symptoms, which contributes to greater familial well-being. Yet in the United States, one-quarter of new mothers return to work within two weeks of giving birth, and only 13 percent of workers have access to paid leave. A new economy would recognize and value the care of children in the same way it values other work, provide options for flexible and part-time work, and, thus, enable parents to spend formative time with their young children—resulting in optimized well-being for the whole family.

In his book Lost Connections, journalist Johann Hari lifts up meaningful work and worker cooperatives as an “unexpected solution” to depression. “We spend most of our waking time working—and 87 percent of us feel either disengaged or enraged by our jobs,” Hari writes.

A lack of control in the workplace is particularly detrimental to workers’ well-being, which is a direct result of our hierarchical, military-influenced way of working in most organizations. Worker cooperatives, a building block of the solidarity economy, extend democracy to the workplace, providing employee ownership and control. When workers participate in the mission and governance of their workplace, it creates meaning, which contributes to greater well-being. While more research is needed, Hari writes, “it seems fair ... to assume that a spread of cooperatives would have an antidepressant effect.”

Worker cooperatives also contribute to minimizing income inequality through low employee income ratios and wealth-building through ownership—and can provide a way out of poverty for workers from marginalized groups. In an Upstream podcast interview, activist scholar Jessica Gordon Nembhard says, “We have a racialized capitalist system that believes that only a certain group and number of people should get ahead and that nobody else deserves to … I got excited about co-ops because I saw [them] as a place to start for people who are left behind.”

A concrete example of this is the Cleveland Model, in which a city’s anchor institutions, such as hospitals and universities, commit to purchasing goods and services from local, large-scale worker cooperatives, thus building community wealth and reducing poverty.

The worker cooperative is one of several ways to democratize wealth and create economic justice. The Democracy Collaborative lists dozens of strategies and models to bring wealth back to the people on the website community-wealth.org. The list includes municipal enterprise, community land trusts, reclaiming the commons, impact investing, and local food systems. All these pieces of the new economy puzzle play a role in contributing to economic justice, which is inextricably intertwined with mental and emotional well-being.

In Lost Connections, Hari writes to his suffering teenage self: “You aren’t a machine with broken parts. You are an animal whose needs are not being met.” Mental and emotional distress are the canaries in the coal mine, where the coal mine is our corporate capitalist society. Perhaps if enough people recognize the clear connection between mental and emotional well-being and our socioeconomic environment, we can create a sense of urgency to move beyond corporate capitalism—toward a new economy designed to optimize human well-being and planetary health.

Our lives literally depend on it.

This article was first published in YES! Magazine.

Time to Ignite the Power of Translocal Social Movements

by Flor Avellino, The Broker:  http://www.thebrokeronline.eu/Blogs/Inclusive-Economy-Europe/Time-to-ignite-the-power-of-translocal-social-movements

Countless social movements are currently simmering below the radar. They are locally rooted and globally connected in translocal networks, creating new practices and ideas for tackling economic, ecological and social challenges. 

However, they merely flicker in the shadows if they fail to address existing power structures. In this blog, I provide some ways to harvest the full potential of translocal social movements to challenge existing economic and political systems.

This summer has seen raging wildfires and some of the hottest days in recorded history. Our world seems to be on fire, both physically and politically. The good news is that there is also fire reflected in the passion with which people are taking action. While they may seem invisible or marginal to many, there are communities everywhere across the globe implementing social change in neighbourhoods, cities and rural areas. 

They are doing this through community energy initiatives, basic income experiments, cooperative banks, ecovillages, co-working spaces, digital fabrication workshops, sharing platforms, agriculture cooperatives, urban labs and much more. Rather than waiting for systems to change, these initiatives are creating new ways of doing, thinking and organizing, based on ecological and human values and by nurturing common goods and treasuring basic human rights and democracy.

Many of these initiatives are supported, promoted, connected and organized through social movements and international network organizations. There is, for instance, the Global Ecovillage Network (connecting hundreds of ecovillages across the world), Transition Towns (grassroots communities working on local resilience) and the International Co-operative Association. 

In the field of food and agro-ecology, there is the Seed Exchange Network (defending biodiversity and seed freedom), the Slow Food movement and La Via Campesina (a farmers’ movement to promote social justice). Focusing specifically on finance and economics, there is the European Federation of Ethical and Alternative Banks (FEBEA), Time Banks (reciprocal service exchange), the Intercontinental Network for the Promotion of the Social Solidarity Economy (RIPESS), Shareable and the Basic Income Earth Network. 

There are many more examples, such as the International Observatory for Participatory Democracy, the Impact Hub (social impact entrepreneurs), FABLABS (digital fabrication workshops), the DESIS-network (design for social innovation and sustainability), and the international Living Knowledge Network of science shops  (for more information on these examples see here).

These networks share two important characteristics. First, they breed social innovation by changing social relations through new ways of doing, thinking and organizing. As such they are not just protesting against existing systems, but also creating and implementing alternatives. Second, they are locally rooted, while also being globally connected through translocal networks. These translocal networks can integrate the best of both the global and the local, connecting communities internationally and promoting global solidarity while also acknowledging and appreciating deep local identities and traditions. This combination of an innovative spirit and translocal connections is important to empower people to take collective action.

Yet, these movements merely flicker in the shadows if they fail to address existing power structures in the global economy. For each translocal network promoting alternative approaches, there are a dozen (inter)national formal and informal networks lobbying the political and commercial interests of existing conglomerates. 

Be it the fossil fuel industry, the housing market, central banks, agricultural monopolies or authoritarian political regimes, the power of these centralized public-private partnerships extends across all domains and regions. In this context it is not enough to empower people to choose alternative solutions. In order to transform existing systems, it is also necessary to challenge, alter and replace existing power structures. Or, in other words, it is necessary to ignite the countervailing power of translocal social movements to challenge existing economic systems, commercial interests and political ideologies.

One important condition for countervailing power is more mutual recognition and strategic collaboration between social movements. Initiatives are often forced to focus on their own strengths, choose their own battles, and fight over scarce resources in order to survive, instead of stressing their complementarities and collaborating. 

Some interesting network collaborations have already started exploring synergies and complementarities, such as ECOLISE, the European Network for Community-led Initiatives on Climate Change and Sustainability. We need to support more of these meta-networks and spaces for encounter and reflection, including constructive confrontation and debate.

Another condition for countervailing power is spreading alternative news stories. Alternative news stories are a pivotal driving force behind physical change: they serve to communicate and clarify why the world has to change, who has the power to do so and how this can be done. This is not just about storytelling, it is also about informing and directing physical action: how new houses are built, community-gardens are set-up, start-ups are born, better and fairer products are made, and so on. 

Different initiatives have different stories, ranging from lifestyle change and inner transformation, to changing economic models and redesigning products, political activism, and fundamental institutional change. These real life stories are essential to challenge the ‘there-is-no-alternative’ logic that dominates the mainstream media and political discourses.

This plea for more strategic collaboration and storytelling is not just a matter of social movements extending their networking or PR activities, or of convincing more journalists to pay better attention. Much more interesting is what you and I can do, even if we are not journalists or activists ourselves. What can we – as policymakers, critical intellectuals and engaged citizens – do to help ignite the countervailing power of translocal social movements?

Discover and support. We cannot know all the examples of social movements, but we can strive to discover which social movements are active in our own neighbourhoods and fields of work. Are any of the above mentioned networks active where you live or work? With the Internet, the answer is just a few clicks away. Whether we become an active member, give a donation, buy a product, or share their ideas, there are so many ways to support these movements.

Critically connect. When developing hubs or networks to connect people and ideas, we should work with existing networks and initiatives instead of creating unnecessary new versions. At the same time, be wary of initiatives that are entirely self-enhancing, for-profit and reluctant to share assets, benefits and power. Support initiatives in creating alternative platforms that offer similar services in a more inclusive manner (see for instance the movement of platform co-ops as alternatives to platform companies such as Uber or AirBnB).

Spread the news and tell the story. We can all challenge existing structures and ideologies by sharing encouraging news stories about what alternative movements are doing on the ground. Sign up to one of the many newsletters or social media channels of these social movements and share your favourite examples with friends and colleagues – not just via social media, but also in your presentations, bar talks and dinner conversations. More importantly, make sure to share these stories with the younger generation, in the classroom and at home.

Further reading:
Check the case-studies of 20 translocal networks and 100+ local initiatives across 25 countries
Sign the Manifesto for transformative social innovation
Check out the website of the Social Innovation Community

Photo credit main picture: Virada Sustentável (via Flickr)