—AN INTERVIEW WITH ROBERT NEUWIRTH Sara Bissen interviewed writer and researcher Robert Neuwirth in November 2016 on the United Nations Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development (Habitat III), held in Quito October 17−20, 2016. The text in which the interview refers to is the Draft Outcome Document of the United Nations Conference on Housing […] read more
It has become almost cliche to suggest that we live in a fast-changing world, yet we continue to cling to ideas of permanence. Neo-nomadism challenges these suppositions, hinting at a future culture that is likely to be far less attached to the material and where networking—digital and social—become increasingly critical to how daily life functions. […] read more
by Stefano Serafini Our friend Marco Fioretti is a former electronic engineer with much more interest in the ethical implications of Free Software than in coding. He focuses on the impact that open digital standards and Free Software have and may have on both society and environmental issues since the 90’s, and his mantra is: “Your civil rights […] read more
Definition prepared by the “Peer-to-peer Urbanism Task Force” consisting of Antonio Caperna, Michael Mehaffy, Geeta Mehta, Federico Mena-Quintero, Agatino Rizzo, Nikos A. Salingaros, Stefano Serafini, and Emanuele Strano. Part A. Problems with existing urban implementations 1. Centrally-planned urbanism doesn’t address anything but a big-picture view, and misses all the local details that significantly affect the […] read more
by Federico Mena-Quintero and Nikos A. Salingaros P2P (peer-to-peer) Urbanism joins ideas from the open-source software movement together with new thinking by urbanists, into a discipline oriented towards satisfying human needs. P2P-Urbanism is concerned with cooperative and creative efforts to define space for people’s use. This essay explains P2P-Urbanism as the outcome of several historical processes, […] read more
by Michel Bauwens P2P and Communal Shareholding With P2P, people voluntarily and cooperatively construct a commons according to the communist principle: “from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.” The use-value created by P2P projects is generated through free cooperation, without coercion toward the producers, and users have free access to […] read more
by Michel Bauwens Not since Marx identified the manufacturing plants of Manchester as the blueprint for the new capitalist society has there been a deeper transformation of the fundamentals of our social life. As political, economic, and social systems transform themselves into distributed networks, a new human dynamic is emerging: peer to peer (P2P). As […] read more