The Logic of the Freespaces
The social logic of the freespaces is not that they are ‘free’, they have costs associated with them! These are liberatory spaces, where we are all responsible for taking care of them.
They rely on financial patronage & donations, as well as active stewardship and participation to look after them and allow them to flourish. They are spaces for learning about the power of community both intellectually and through immersive experiences. These are spaces where we learn to be otherwise through our collective action and care. Read more of the theory behind this here. Donate or become a monthly patron here.
The theory of the commons
These spaces, the activities, community & culture that are cocreated in them, are a commons. Economist Paul Samuelson's work characterized public goods as non-excludable and non-rivalrous. For example street lights are public goods - you can’t stop anyone from using or benefiting from the light that they produce (non-excludable). But neither is the light produced depleted by those benefiting from them (non-rivalrous). Common goods, however, are non-excludable and rivalrous, posing the risk of a tragedy of the commons through overuse or mismanagement. The commons encompass resources like air and water, once held collectively but increasingly subject to privatization. It's not just about the type of resource but also about community-driven management, as demonstrated by Elinor Ostrom's work, which earned her the 2009 Nobel Prize in Economics.
The struggle
As the commons are often at risk of being depleted, so to then does the social logic - the skills and the psychological experience of self governing and common resource. In many of our spaces, District Commons hopes to give people the embodied experience of living in a different social logic. If we want to be able to have a commons, we need to make sure that we have the skills, psychology, attitudes and norms to be a commoner.
Our theory of change
These spaces are intended to be spaces that serve under a different social logic, so that people can FEEL what it is like to operate and be cared for in a commons based setting. This space serves as a site of transfer culture (Ehrlich, H). Transfer Cultures, according to Ehrlich, are an attempt at future worlds right here amongst the status quo, the old world, an experiment in the future made in the present.
More specifically, a transfer culture is the manifestation of the ideas, processes, behaviours, skills and activities that are needed to help humans transition from the current social formation to the incoming one.
If we are to collectively take care of spaces, resources, ecosystems and each other, we need to learn how to do that and how to take joy in it.
From Commons to Commoning
“There is no commons without commoning” – the social practices and norms for managing a resource for collective benefit. Forms of commoning naturally vary from one commons to another because humanity itself is so varied. And so there is no “standard template” for commons; merely “fractal affinities” or shared patterns and principles among commons. The commons must be understood, then, as a verb as much as a noun. A commons must be animated by bottom-up participation, personal responsibility, transparency and self-policing accountability.”
