Bikes and Rails: Co-housing with solidarity and an environmental mission

Self-managed and affordable, ecological and inclusive – the pioneering project Bikes and Rails in Vienna’s Sonnwendviertel stands as an alternative to real estate speculation in the increasingly pressured housing market. The concept provides for buying houses collectively through private financing, freeing them from the market in the long term and thus securing affordable housing. The […]

Kilowatt: Remodeling work through social environmental innovation

Kilowatt is a co-working space inside the Margherita Gardens in Bologna. Opened in 2012, it was developed through the Incredibol public tender and it became a hub for environmental and social innovation. Besides the co-working space, it features a community garden, a kindergarten, a restaurant and an open area where cultural and social events are […]

Barcelona’s pioneering efforts in fostering a sustainable and healthy food system

In the global pursuit of sustainable urban development, Barcelona has emerged as a pioneering city, leading the way in fostering a sustainable and healthy food system. This pursuit exemplifies the power of collaborative efforts, innovative policies, and a commitment to transformative change. From international pacts to local initiatives, the city has demonstrated that urban areas […]

Yourspace.Sutton community garden: Championing social inclusion

Yourspace.Sutton is more than a community garden. It provides workshops to kids, supports social therapeutic activities, and hosts local sustainable businesses in a horticultural environment. Tucked away in the back of the nursery of Seears Park in Cheam, at the edge of London, this hub is booming with activities. Its unique atmosphere and social impact […]

Urban Lab Torino: making sense of urban processes

Urban Lab Torino is an independent association that tells the story of the large-scale transformation of Turin and its metropolitan area. Working closely with the Turin Municipality, the Lab spreads knowledge and promotes debate about the city that has been transformed so much in the last decades following a massive de-industrialisation process. Its building right […]

Gender and Diversity Equality Policy

Public document – Gender and Diversity Equality Policy The purpose of this policy is to provide diversity and equality to all in employment, irrespective of their gender, race, ethnic origin, disability, age, nationality, national origin, sexuality, religion or belief, marital status and social class. We oppose all forms of unlawful and unfair discrimination. All employees, […]

No single recipe to revive markets

Over the past decade, market halls and open air food markets have become an important arena for urban regeneration. Although many of today’s European cities are essentially built around markets and fairs, these markets have now disappeared, relocated or, like other community infrastructures such as cinemas, public baths, psychiatric hospitals or prisons, lost some of […]

Spores Home – A self-sustaining co-living space that is a second home

Spores Home is a self-sustaining co-living space in Spain. Founded by an innovative entrepreneur, it offers affordable housing to people from various ways of life. With no on-site management, residents rely on common sense and self-initiative to co-manage their dwellings and common spaces. The community thrives through trust and collaboration, contributing to a unique ecosystem […]

Rome’s interconnected, holistic and circular food policy

Rome’s transformative journey towards developing a comprehensive food policy reflects the profound influence of food on the city and its inhabitants. Inspired by international research and experiences the Rome municipality embraced a city-region food system approach, recognising the interconnectedness of urban and rural areas. Through a bottom-up process which began in 2018, diverse stakeholders united […]

Szeszgyár: An ecofeminist, queer community garden in the centre of Budapest

Right in the heart of an inner district in Budapest lies a 7700 square metre wild, at first sight untamed green space, sandwiched between unassuming residential buildings. Walking in the area, one is surprised to find Szeszgyár, this vast ecofeminist and queer community garden behind the graffiti-filled walls, away from sight. Szeszgyár is different to […]

Overcoming isolation: Multigenerational and multicultural co-housing in Sweden

 “A new way to live” states the website of the revolutionary SällBo co-housing project where young people between the ages of 18 and 25, including refugees, and over 70s live together. The aim of mixing these different groups is to support social interactions of people who can easily feel like outsiders, isolated and lonely. The […]

So Stay: Poland’s first socially responsible hotel

In the past years, tourism’s growing share in national economies and the increasing touristification of many European cities prompted social innovators to develop new forms of tourism with new, non-extractive business models and more inclusive employment policies. So Stay Hotel in Gdańsk is one of the hotels born from this need for a more responsible […]

Climate adaptation through participation: urban approaches from Vienna

We are flooded by the effects and consequnces of the global climate crisis, whether in the news, on social media, in education, or in discussions with friends and family. The conversations are filled with frustration and hopelessness of climate activists as well as scientists, leading to a sense of climate anxiety in society, effecing especially […]

Reclaiming public space through tactical urbanism: Milan’s Piazze Aperte programme

In the past years, Milan has become a model city in public space regeneration. The Piazze Aperte (“Open Squares”) programme, launched in 2018 has become a key reference for municipalities and activists aiming at transforming their cities with safer streets, more attractive and more accessible public spaces, more climate-resilient infrastructure and stronger, more compact and […]

Vienna’s Wohnpartner: Overcoming conflicts in social housing  

Good neighbourly relationships are an essential pillar of well-being and social coherence in the city. But what happens when a family with small children moves to a quiet building and conflict occurs? How do neighbours communicate when there is no common language spoken? These are among the topics Wohnpartner, a subsidiary of the city of […]

Inclusion Potentials of Co-Housing – A look at OASE.inklusiv 

wohnbund:consult is an independent office working in the field of social and sustainable urban developments with a focus on housing. Its interdisciplinary team focuses on urban and social housing issues as well as research projects, development and planning. In accordance with Vienna’s subsidised housing schemes, wohnbund:consult supported the development of the project OASE.inklusiv as part […]

Vibrant streets make cities better: nine stories from Thriving Street

Eutropian collaborated with the URBACT III network focusing on sustainable mobility as engine for social and economic cohesion of local communities. An overview on the integrated plans and pilot actions developed by nine cities involved in the network. Streets and squares of our cities play a key role in making our urban experience more enjoyable, […]

The Metropolitan Institute of Bratislava: The Slovak capital’s urban think-and-do-tank

The Metropolitan Institute of Bratislava (MIB) is a new urban centre that aims to bring fresh, dynamic, participatory and data driven urban developments to the city. It can be described as a “think-and-do-tank” that is concurrently responsible for strategic urban planning, as well as for the development and implementation of architectural and spatial urban interventions […]

Solidarity Everyday – A space for social initiatives inside the European Solidarity Centre

Solidarity Everyday Space is a co-governed space inside the European Solidarity Centre in Gdańsk. The aim of the Solidarity Everyday Space builds on the mission of the European Solidarity Centre, to commemorate and to propagate the ideals of the 1980s Polish Solidarity movement: freedom, democracy and the power of civic society. Solidarity Everyday was established […]

Planning a new cultural venue: Exploring the needs of the local cultural ecosystem

How to plan a new cultural venue in a district already rich in cultural life? How can a new cultural institution help to connect existing spaces and organisations, instead of competing with them? Adaptér will be an Art & Technology Centre in the Újbuda district of Budapest, co-financed by the Urban Innovative Actions-funded project CUP4Creativity. […]

FABER Timisoara: A refurbished industrial site to boost the socio-creative scene

FABER is an independent cultural centre in a rehabilitated factory building located on the banks of the river Bega in Timisoara, Romania. Its mission is to “create sustainable projects that have the power to change the cultural, social and creative scene” of the city. The name FABER (“smith” in Latin) has a double meaning: it […]

Precariousness, double standards and racism in housing refugees

The blog presents an initial reflection on emerging challenges that the influx of refugees from Ukraine – about 7 million people since 24 February 2022 – poses to cities and their housing infrastructures. Based on a recent exchange convened within the framework of the JPI-funded research project HOUSE-IN, it focuses on the project’s case studies […]

Social housing with self-determination: Wiener Wohnen’s quest to involve tenants in decision-making

Vienna is the largest municipal housing owner in Europe. About half of the city’s population lives in subsidised housing, while only around 30% of the Viennese apartments are privately owned. The public ownership of such a large housing stock gives the Vienna municipality an important leverage over housing affordability and other aspects of urban development. […]

CUP4Creativity: Can culture become the protagonist of social cohesion in Újbuda?

CUP4Creativity is a project of the Budapest district of Újbuda, funded by the EU’s Urban Innovative Actions programme. The project builds on the district’s current dynamic as a new cultural centre, by generating new connections between cultural producers, artists, creatives, technology initiatives, businesses and residents. CUP4Creativity tackles a variety of challenges: on the one hand, […]

Ois In An: Social and ecological sustainability all-in-one

In the centre of Vienna, a small commercial space is trying to make a difference working with a social and sustainable oriented mission. Ois In An is a restaurant combining the inclusion of migrant women in the workplace and the promotion of sustainable food products in a warm and cosy environment. We visited Ois In […]

KAŅIERIS: Riga’s Youth Centre for realising ideas

Riga’s Youth Centre KAŅIERIS is a non-formal learning and inclusive collaboration space for young people and their organisations to gain knowledge and skills, as well as to develop mutual cooperation. The main goal of the centre is to provide support to non-governmental youth organisations in their work of non-formal education and capacity building. Its main […]

Rewarding green actions: a digital platform for citizen engagement in Prato

Prato Urban Jungle (PUJ), a project launched by the city of Prato, funded by the Urban Innovative Actions (UIA) programme, will regenerate selected districts of Prato by developing high density green areas – so-called urban jungles. PUJ also aims to increase social inclusion and promote the sustainable development of the urban environment. Towards these objectives, […]

Solidarity City Policy Observations

Policies for a City of Solidarity: Observations Solidarity City is a media project by Cooperative City Magazine to promote and strengthen social and solidarity economy practices throughout Europe. Taking Vienna as its starting point, the project mapped initiatives that focus on social inclusion, participation, citizen-led urban regeneration, ecological transition, sustainable food systems, ethical consumption and […]

Solidarity City Videos

What is Solidarity City Solidarity City is a media project of Cooperative City Magazine to promote and strengthen social and solidarity economy practices throughout Europe. Taking Vienna as its starting point, the project aims at mapping initiatives that focus on social inclusion, fair employment, participation, sustainable food systems, ethical consumption and responsible tourism. Watch our […]

The Wiener Tafel: Building bridges between abundance and need

About one-third of the food produced worldwide gets thrown away[1]. Since its foundation in 1999, the Wiener Tafel has been providing social institutions such as women’s shelters, homeless care facilities and refugee homes with food and other goods that would otherwise have ended up in the waste bin. It is Austria’s oldest food bank and […]

Zukunftshof: An agricultural city laboratory at the edge of Vienna

On the site of the old Haschahof, a former farm at the southern edge of Vienna’s Favoriten district, stands today’s Zukunftshof (meaning Future Farm), which has been a place of forward thinking since the 1980s. Rothneusiedl, the former village where Zukunfthof is located, will become a new settlement for approximately 20,000 inhabitants in the next […]

Nut & Feder: Joining forces through carpentry

Nut & Feder is a Viennese carpentry shop, a social business, that supports the integration of asylum seekers through work with local carpenters. This peer-to peer cooperation helps to overcome the challenges faced by asylum seekers getting into the job market due to legal, social and cultural barriers.  At the border of the City of […]

Reprogramming Barcelona: Towards a new paradigm of public space

Xavier Matilla, Barcelona’s chief architect and Silvia Casorran Martos, deputy chief architect, visited Budapest at the invitation of Eutropian, the Hungarian Contemporary Architecture Centre – KÉK and the Instituto Cervantes de Budapest to share Barcelona’s recent innovative urban development plans. Xavier Matilla and Silvia Casorran Martos, together with the city’s Urban Ecology department, had a […]

Gradual space: Room for Diversity in the Future of Urban Public Spaces

Article by Levente Polyak for publicspace.org, a project by the CCCB. In 1748, the Italian architect Giambattista Nolli published an ichnographic plan of Rome, documenting every building in the city and their adjacent spaces. The Pianta Grande di Roma, besides outlining all the buildings, and separating them from the surrounding public spaces, also depicted publicly […]

PlaceCity participatory interventions with students for better school spaces

As part of the European project called PlaceCity, placemaking for sustainable, thriving cities Nabolagshager established a collaboration with H20 High School in Grønland, Oslo to empower and facilitate the students to create inclusive meeting places in Grønland, Oslo’s most diverse district. The area has significant social challenges such as high child poverty rate, high unemployment […]

Public procurement with social impact

Local communities and their local governments have two possible ways to cooperate. One is centred upon the use of public procurement for social purposes. The second is based on new forms of partnerships. The perspective of new types of partnerships that overcome the public-private binary and allow new forms of public-community or public-private-community collaboration is […]

Neighbourhood Mothers – from the target group to actor

Neighbourhood Mothers (Naapuriäiti in Finnish) is a social inclusion programme that is reaching out to women who moved to Finland and encouraging them to become active in society. Project is empowering women through strengthening otherwise often unrecognised skills, enabling women to get peer support, providing them with tools to organise activities in their own neighbourhoods, […]

Confiscated spaces as a common resource

Confiscation is an asset security measure consisting in the expropriation, in favour of the State, of something which has been used to commit an offence or which constitutes its profit; or even of something dangerous, objectively or subjectively. This measure is a legislative tool for the Italian State to fight the power of the Mafia, […]

Kultura Nova: Supporting networks in the field of culture

Kultura Nova is a public foundation promoting civil society organisations in the field of contemporary arts and culture. The foundation was established in 2011, when the Croatian parliament adopted the Law on Kultura Nova Foundation. The idea of this new institution was born among non-governmental associations that work in the fields of arts and culture […]

Citizen Innovation Maps – Visualising relevant communities as a tool to link us with our natural allies

When we undertake any type of project, of whatever nature, it is more necessary than ever to be able to count on natural allies for its development, so that their contribution allows us to give relevance and pertinence to our practice. By Miguel Jaenicke co-creator of [VIC] Vivero de Iniciativas Ciudadanas | www.vicvivero.net | www.civics.cc […]

Mapping the Darsena: In search of visions, lost and found

Many urban regeneration schemes focus on architectural interventions or masterplans that aim to transform the social fabric of an area through shaping its built environment. However, If physical sustainability lies in the reuse of existing buildings, social sustainability builds on the ideas, visions and narratives that are already in place. Therefore, it is crucial to […]

Towards a More Social Europe: Inclusion and innovation in three UIA projects

In 2021, Europe is facing a number of challenges. The Covid-19 pandemic has brought to surface many structural problems in European societies, from climate change through innovation gaps to geopolitical tensions. Inequality is of key importance among these challenges: the gradual polarisation of European societies has brought us towards political populism, social exclusion and damaged […]

Busy as bees: A rooftop garden and a dynamic community hub for social integration – BeeOzanam in Turin

BeeOzanam is a community hub whose challenge is to combat cultural poverty and social exclusion, stimulating the growth of a sustainable generation through the co-production of cultural, educational and aggregative activities. Following the deindustrialisation of the city of Turin, several workers’ districts scattered across the city generated many empty spaces that were once factories, workshops […]

Collaborative housing: innovation in community engagement, social inclusion and participatory design 

Collaborative housing can be conceived as an approach to complement state- or municipality-led public housing schemes with bottom-up, self-organised housing projects. It has been the object of a great diversity of experiments throughout Europe, turning housing into a field of innovation when it comes to community engagement, social inclusion, solidarity economy, ethical finance and participatory […]

Building community and culture in Warsaw’s urban village – Exploring Open Jazdow

Right in the centre of Warsaw, where there once was the summer residence of royals, now lies a one-of-a-kind symbol of resistance, rebirth and civil consciousness, a settlement of Finnish wooden houses that resist the modern processes of urban development. Open Jazdów is a bottom-up community on its way to become a new, atypical neighbourhood. […]

Co-Housing students and homeless people – VinziRast in Vienna

A four-storey historical building in the heart of Vienna that houses bicycle, woodworking and sewing workshops, a restaurant serving international cuisine and a café hosting events sounds like a hipster tourist trap. In reality, though, it is a social initiative by VinziRast, an ambitious volunteer-based organisation, that aims to give a second chance at life […]

Cooperative City Podcasts

Welcome to Cooperative City podcasts! You can follow our episodes on Anchor, Spotify, iTunes, Google Podcasts, Breaker, Radio Public or Pocket Casts. CUP4Creativity   In this first Zoom-in for the UIA project CUP4Creativity, Levente Polyak joins a pop-up event in the future Adaptér, to learn about the art & tech centre under construction in the heart […]

Peter Weiss Haus: a literary centre in Rostock

The Peter Weiss Haus is as a free educational and cultural centre located in an historical building in downtown Rostock.  Through the creation of an original and spontaneous governance structure, supported and bounded by different entities in the city, the Peter Weiss Haus Association has launched a community finance scheme to buy its building and […]

Welcome to Cooperative City

What is the Magazine about? Cooperative City Magazine brings its readers the stories of collaborative urban development processes in different areas in Europe. It is a project run by Eutropian, a company and association developing collaborative planning processes in various cities in Europe. Latest Article More articles Explore more articles The Cooperative City Webinars Placemaking […]

Cooperative City in Quarantine #14: Manifesto – Planning post-Covid cities

During the first weeks of the lockdown we noticed that there was little or no exchange across nations about how to respond to the emerging crisis. This is why we launched Cooperative City in Quarantine, bridging this gap and brought together lots of people from different backgrounds and countries to contribute to the discussion. We […]

Creating Soil from urban waste – experience of Maribor

The City of Maribor is piloting circular economy projects to close the material loops through the involvement of the municipal companies. In this interview with Igor Kos and Brina Lazar we understand more about their Urban Soil 4 Food project funded by the Urban Innovative Actions EU program.  What is the experience of the City […]

COOPERATIVE CITY IN QUARANTINE #5: Tourism

Tourism is big business: It employs more than 12 million people in Europe, it counts for 3,9% of EU’s GDP, in 2019 global tourist revenues amounted to 9,25 trillion USD, and half of the tourists worldwide visited Europe. Due to the current lockdown, international tourism may drop by 30% in 2020, causing unprecedented damage to […]

Cooperative City in Quarantine #11: VITA PUBBLICA – IT

Con l’arrivo della pandemia e del lockdown che ne è seguito, lo spazio pubblico è stato uno degli settori più colpiti della nostra vita urbana. Con la chiusura di negozi, parchi e altri luoghi di ritrovo nei mesi scorsi la vita pubblica si è bloccata, lasciando la nostra vita sociale ed economica piena di cicatrici. […]

Revolutionary social centre in an occupied prison – Ex OPG in Naples

Ex OPG Occupato Je so’ pazzo (Neapolitan for “I am crazy”) is a former criminal asylum. The building was saved from abandonment and returned to its neighbourhood (and the city) in the form of an autonomous social centre. “Je so’ pazzo” is the name they have chosen, “because in a world where normality is made […]

Agri-urbanism with social integration in Paris – Ferme du Rail

How can a complicated, abandoned parcel of land in a dense urban tissue gain new life through gardening and housing? Ferme du Rail is an agri-urban space in the 19th district of Paris, addressing the challenges of homelessness, urban agriculture, gardening, social integration and circular economy. Selected within the framework of the project “Réinventer Paris” […]

The Art of Traveling Light: Tourism with a Positive Impact

The extractive nature of mass tourism is made possible by tourist behaviour, missing regulations and lacking alternatives. There has been very little work done to make tourism more responsible, sustainable and enriching for local communities. While there is a growing number of emerging NGOs, cooperatives and social enterprises to channel tourism revenues into socially meaningful […]

The Bip/Zip strategy – empowering local communities in priority districts of Lisbon

Based on the experience developed over the past ten years in Lisbon, the Bip/Zip program is currently at the basis of the URBACT Transfer Network Com.Unity.Lab which aims at sharing the knowledge with other cities across Europe. In this article the different tools of the strategy are outlined.  The Portuguese capital city of Lisbon counts […]

Welcommon Hostel: sustainable tourism and social-cultural activities for the promotion of social innovation

The Welcommon Hostel is a responsible hostel using tourism revenues to invest in social activities. First converted from a hospital into a refugee shelter, the building located in Exarchia is now run by the social cooperative Anemos Ananeosis (Wind of Change in English), working for the promotion of social innovation, greenovation and circular economy in […]

Social Solidarity Economy in Barcelona: The Ecos Cooperative

Ecos is a cooperative of cooperatives which works to support the growth of single cooperatives and to promote inter-cooperatives projects in Barcelona. In this article, we share what we learned from Roger, the coordinator of Ecos, and Guernica, a member of the organisation, who explained us how does social solidarity economy work in Barcelona and […]

Ecomuseo Casilino: an open-air museum in the Eastern periphery of Rome

Ecomuseo Casilino is a museum that operates beyond the standard walls of a museum. The Associazione Culturale Ecomuseo Casilino Ad Duas Lauros is committed to collect cultural resources, based on what local communities consider as such. Besides all the historical, archaeological and artistic heritage, the association also explores objects of cultural value that local residents […]

Fostering community cooperation through a multifunctional private space: the case of Via Baltea in Torino

Via Baltea is a multifunctional space initiated and run by Sumisura, a cooperative of architects and social workers who operate in the field of urban regeneration and local development. Via Baltea features artisan workshops, a community kitchen and spaces for services for citizens and the neighbourhood. What is Via Baltea and how was it created? […]

Deviszont Közösségi Tér: a new community space for teenagers in the periphery of Budapest

Deviszont is a community space located in the suburban area of Budapest. It offers non-formal educational activities and space for the socialization of disadvantaged working class teenagers. Deviszont was recently opened by a group of young professionals following a long process consisting of organisation and fundraising, as well as the refurbishment of a vacant building. […]

Dynamo Velostation: making urban cycling easier for commuters in Bologna

Dynamo Velostation was opened in 2015 with the support of the Incredibol tender promoted by the Municipality of Bologna. Behind Parco della Montagnola, few hundred meters away from Bologna Central Train Station, it became an intermodal hub for urban cyclists and commuters. It provides a safe bicycle parking space and a variety of services, giving […]

The power of co-creation in redesigning Valencia’s waterfront

In the early 2000s, La Marina de Valencia hosted editions the America’s Cup and the F1 Grand Prix Race. These events attracted investment and fueled rapid infrastructure growth, but they also left behind a staggering debt. Many of the installations put in place were afterwards abandoned with no future plan. Since 2016, La Marina’s new […]

Digital media for relational urban governance

With today’s European cities hosting most of the continent’s population and urban areas being the stage for many of contemporary conflicts such as social inequality, environmental threats or economic crisis, collective action must be taken immediately. In the past years, there has been a lot of discussions about the potential role of smart technologies in […]

There’s more to Digital Democracy than just a tweet

The US presidential election results came as a surprise to many of us especially because we hadn’t encountered any testament of sweeping support towards the current president in any of our communication channels. None of our friends on Facebook seemed to support Trump, so how could he be elected? Recent public discussions have highlighted the […]

Cycling for alternative systems – The Cargonomia experiment in Budapest

In Budapest, a group of enthusiastic and passionate young people came together to mix their own ingredients, in the form of independent initiatives: an organic and biodynamic farm, Zsámboki Biokert Spaces; a community-based Do it Yourself (DiY) bike workshop, Cyclonomia Spaces; and a self-organised bike messenger and delivery company, Kantaa, with an intended ‘spill’ of […]

WASTED – How to create local welfare from waste management

Based in Amsterdam since 2008, CITIES Foundation has been working to address global urban development problems by implementing solutions at the local level. CITIES first research project, Farming the City, has evolved into a social enterprise for local food distribution service, Foodlogica. In 2017, CITIES published “The Wasted City,” a book exploring models of circular economy […]

Ökokauf in Vienna – Procurement for sourcing ecological food

ÖkoKauf (Eco-Purchase) is an initiative of the City of Vienna, part of the Eco-Business Plan of the City, that was started in 1998 to purchase goods and services according to ecological considerations (from laundry detergents and office supplies to construction services). The City of Vienna has around 65.000 public employees and a total cost of […]

TERRITORIALISING EUROPEAN DEBATE – Preparing for the 2019 EU elections and the post-2020 funding strategy

While decisions taken in Bruxelles are increasingly recognised as affecting our daily lives, little if any discussion is taking place on what our impact on decisions of the European Commission may be. As a contribution towards the 2019 EU elections and to the post-2020 funding debates, this article wants to highlight some of the messages […]

Caught between the public and the private: urban cooperative solutions in Central Europe

In the early 2000s, some cities in the Central Eastern European region began to introduce new mechanisms for citizen participation in urban development. These attempts have remained mostly sporadic however, and the possibilities of the third sector in shaping the region’s cities have remained very limited. In order to understand the reasons that hinder the […]

Szatyorbolt – Buy and consume local

Szatyorbolt has been operating an association and a food shop within a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) scheme for the past 9 years. The shop’s aim is to bring local produce from the countryside to the city, by connecting consumers with small and mid-size farms and food producers within a radius of 50-70km from Budapest. Establishing […]

Toolbox Torino – Spaces for work, made of community and stimuli

Toolbox was established in 2010 in an industrial zone of Turin. In the city’s postindustrial search for new identity and new jobs, Toolbox emerged as a new workspace for the maker scene as well as for the field of digital economy, by bringing together many emerging initiatives from these fields. The experiment of turning a […]

Toestand – Temporary use for mixing communities

Toestand is a temporary use organisation in Brussels, helping citizen activities and community groups access spaces at an affordable rent or for free. While the organisation undertakes the work of identifying buildings, negotiating with owners, renovating the spaces and recruiting tenants, it is also responsible for the daily management of the reactivated sites, bringing together […]

Járókelő – A platform for street maintenance

Communication between citizens and local administrations is a key element of well-functioning services. The rise of digital platforms and smartphone applications created new interfaces for communication and have shown the potential of civic tech in triggering structural change in how cities work, from civic engagement, to stronger participation in the accountability of municipalities or major […]

The Welcome Class – Language learning for social integration

The last decade has seen a significant change in the nature and pattern of migration flows within the EU. As a result one can observe a rapid change in the population structure and interactions between individuals and social groups in cities. Cities of migration are places of inclusion and exclusion. Local authorities need to deal […]

Complementary currencies for a commons-based economy

Responses to the economic crisis of 2007-2008, and ambitions to create autonomous systems of exchange generated hundreds of complementary currencies in the past decade. Created to connect local actors, help local businesses or assure financial transparency, mutual credit systems, convertible local currencies and cryptocurrencies have evolved into mechanisms used not only in socio-economic experiments, but […]

Public policies in support of civic initiatives

Civic initiatives regenerating urban areas emerged all over Europe as an answer to the crisis of traditional urban policies. Often they share a conflicting attitude towards the public sector or aim at extending their independence. In the following chapter, we focus on citizens’ demand for cooperation with public administrations. Firstly, we describe some opportunities for […]

Laituri Helsinki – An urban laboratory to make strategies alive

Laituri is an urban information centre in Helsinki established in 2008. Attached to the Helsinki Municipality’s city planning department, Laituri helps disseminating information about the city’s development plans and new projects through exhibitions and presentations. Instead of being a one-directional communication channel, Laituri also acts as an interface for feedbacks from citizens: with the help […]

Foundations for affordable space – a Swiss case study

While affordable space for housing and community activities in Europe has traditionally been provided by states, public companies and private corporations, the transformation of the welfare state and labour markets in the last quarter of the 20th century has gradually caused the disintegration of these institutions. The financialisation of real estate together with the growing […]

Community Land Trusts – A model to secure community access to land

Community Land Trusts (CLTs) are a model of community-led development, where local organisations develop and manage homes and other assets important to their communities, such as community enterprises, food growing or workspaces. The CLT’s main goal is to ensure that these spaces are affordable, based on the income level of the locals living in the […]

Stad in de Maak – From crisis to a shared ownership model

Stad in de Maak is an association set up to take on the redevelopment of vacant properties in Central Rotterdam, together with the local community. The association renovated six buildings, investing upfront the amount of loss the buildings were projected to generate for their owner, a housing corporation, in the coming 10 years. Stad in […]

Locality – Supporting self-organisation in local communities

Locality is the national network of ambitious and enterprising community organisations, working together so neighbourhoods thrive. They support organisations to work effectively through best practice on community enterprise, community asset ownership, local services contracting and collaboration. In a continually evolving landscape, Locality supports community enterprises to develop their organisational and business models to survive and […]

Regulating crowdfunding – International resources for local communities?

In the past years, civic crowdfunding has become an increasingly used tool by communities to help finance their urban infrastructure projects. However, while some legal contexts encourage experiments around community finance, other national regulations categorically exclude the possibility of peer-to-peer lending or crowdinvesting, thus limiting the impact crowdfunding can have in the built environment. Jan […]

Brickstarter – Crowdfunding for urban services

Brickstarter is a platform for crowdfunding and crowdsourcing architectural projects, initiated by Bryan Boyer and Dan Hill, and realised within the Finnish Innovation Fund, Sitra. Brickstarter was conceived as an experiment to test the possibilities of opening the design and development of urban environments, to reduce the opacity of urban development processes and to create […]

A bundle of rights and obligations: Privately Owned Public Spaces

In the winter of 2007, exactly nine years before Donald Trump became president of the USA, I was a regular visitor to Trump Tower. Not as a guest or an admirer though: each time I went to 725 Fifth Avenue, I went as an inspector, on behalf of the New York Department of City Planning’s […]

Granby Four Streets CLT – From demolition to regeneration

Granby Four Streets Community Land Trust was created in 2011 to address housing issues within Liverpool’s Eighth District. With the help of local activists, architects and social investors, the organisation managed to engage the Liverpool City Council as well as housing associations and cooperatives in a Community Land Trust scheme. In this scheme, the local […]

Stiftung Edith Maryon – Buildings for socially relevant uses

Stiftung Edith Maryon was created in 1990. The foundation’s mission is to secure socially responsible places of residence and work, and to promote transparent land use, mixed-use development and green building. By acquiring real estate and signing long-term building leases, it moves properties out of speculation and makes them available for self-administered and self-accountable socially relevant uses. […]

Exploring property: Perspectives of ownership

In the last decades, ownership has become a key factor of our societies and economies. As Thomas Piketty demonstrated in his recent book Capital in the Twenty First Century, the late 20th and early 21st centuries witnessed the return of the primacy of wealth over work in economic benefits and ownership has become an increasingly […]

Coop57 – Financing projects in the social and solidarity economy

Coop57 is a cooperative for ethical financial services with the objective of financing projects in the social and solidarity economy. It was created in Barcelona in 1995 from a compensation fund that former employees of the publishing house Bruguera received when the company went bankrupt. In the following years, the organisation gradually increased its member […]

Rákóczi Collective – Alternatives to individual homeownership

In 2011 a dozen young people retreated for a weekend to one of the suburbs of Hungary’s capital to discuss the alternatives of individual home-ownership, and to sketch the contours of a possible model of co-housing. By Ágnes Gagyi, Csaba Jelinek, Zsuzsanna Pósfai and Márton Szarvas for Autoportret Magazine Images by Community Living initiative