Peer2Politics

What would a city look like if its infrastructures were designed, built, certified, and managed by its residents? Cities worldwide are witnessing today a transformation of their infrastructural and material landscapes. In the name of ‘open technology’, ‘open hardware’, or, more broadly, ‘open source urbanism’, citizens are wiring the landscape of their communities with the devices, networks, or architectures that they deem worthy of local attention or concern. From community urban gardens to alternative?energy microstations or Wi?Fi networks, open source hardware projects wireframe the city with new sociotechnical relations.

Situated in the heart of Madrid’s La Latina district, El Campo de Cebada is a community-managed urban space. It is also a great working example of a for-benefit P2P association. Everybody is welcome to contribute and benefit from El Campo de Cebada, where neighbours invest their time and effort building and maintaining both the physical and intellectual structures that hold “ECDC” together.

“Citizen networks, wireless or not, could become a transversal infrastructral layer, reaching across society and different domains, becoming a revolutionary enabler of a new urban life in a way that points beyond capitalism as we knew it. … Rather than having corporations and the state who centrally organize production and consumption, in such a commons mode of production peer-to-peer forms of cooperation link infrastructural, political and cultural layers. The decentralized utopia envisioned by the 68 generation can now become a concrete project. With citizen networks and decentralized computing power localized exchange economies can be organized.”

This proposal consists on a fab city made up of an interconnected community of neighborhood fab labs, as explained here by Tomas Diez, who is interviewed below by Sara Alvarellos:

Teleconferencing has made telework more common. E-commerce has reduced the need to drive to the mall. Real-time arrival apps have made public transit more predictable. Solar-powered stations have helped bike-share expand. WiFi and smart phones have made it possible to get work done on a moving bus, raising the mental cost of driving alone. And social media, for some people, has reduced the need to travel across town to see a friend you might more easily connect with on Facebook.