







Transforming society together


Design principles for long-lived circular organization: An Ostromian perspective
Circular organizational templates such as holacracy and sociocracy have gained popularity. In such organizations, all members have rights to participate in decision-making. Which factors enable such organizations to sustain their circular form? We investigate 18 highly diverse circular organizations to answer this question. Our findings show that Elinor Ostrom’s design principles for avoiding the tragedy of the commons may also explain circular organizations’ longevity. With regard to their relevance, we sort these principles into three groups: indispensable, queasy, and quite unproblematic principles. Our main theoretical contribution is to show that circular organizations can be understood as commons, and thus to make research on the governance of commons fruitful for the design of circular organizations. We show that implementing circular forms has to mind especially the queasy design principles of monitoring, graduated sanctions, conflict resolution mechanisms, and balancing individual contributions and rewards.
Commoning as a Transformative Social Paradigm | David Bollier
Every so often I am invited to write a piece that in effect answers the question, “Why the commons?” I invariably find new answers to that question each time that I re-engage with it. My latest attempt is an essay, “Commoning as a Transformative Social Paradigm,” which I wrote for the Next System Project as part of its series of proposals for systemic alternatives.
Computational Public Space
Flânerie without Politics: The Middle-Class Fetishization of the City
The middle-class spectacle of urban decay.

Building Roundabout: A Pro-Social Platform for Local Communities
A conversation with the team behind New_ Public's Roundabout.
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Third Places as Mini-Cosmopolitans - Surfing Modernity
What happens to identity in times of movement and change? In my second post, I proposed the importance of cultivating a third space that is not dependent on…
Reflector: Infrastructure for Meetings, by Greyhaven
Most organizations run on meetings. Strategy gets debated there. Decisions get made there. Context lives there. And yet...

Communities are not fungible
There's a default assumption baked into how Silicon Valley builds products, and it tracks against how urban planners redesign neighbourhoods: that communities are interchangeable, and if you "lose" one, you can manufacture a replacement; that the value of a group of people who share space and history can be captured

Where Does Community Live? - some responses - Connected Places
I agree that the architecture of a space matters, but I'm not sure the extent we agree as to how much a protocol really matters, versus what we build with them. Roundabout is built on atproto, and I'm quite happy with the decision. I think our architecture very strongly supports our communities.
Circular Economy
The circular economy prioritises the reuse of materials, preventing the over extraction of natural resources and usable materials that end up in landfill.

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Solidarity Infrastructures is a class that brings together creative practitioners from respective communities to investigate, strategize, upskill, and dream toward alternative socio-technological systems.

Downtown is for people | Fortune
If the downtown of tomorrow looks like most of the redevelopment projects being planned for it today, it will end up a monumental bore. But downtown could be made lively and exciting—and it's not hard to find out how.
