Hi Michel, thanks for sharing your most recent thoughts and work on this. I've been thinking generally about cities being driver of change for a while now. Here I wrote something very general and without much substance a while ago, of course emerged out of my context, as you know, as software developer: http://fbarone.net/blog/?p=50 Now. I was very enthusiastic for a while about Medellín becoming a proto-partner-city as I settled 6 years ago here, where you came to visit us a few years back. Today, we had a major policy change, a new major, a new legislation, and all this potential (and work done to that extent) seems to have been gone. 1. How do you think such setbacks can be mitigated? Is this a local issue, do you see this happening in other parts of the world as well? 2. I couldn't see the concept of commons (which in my limited knowledge of it, has its roots in Europe) taking much hold here locally. What are your experiences in your travels around the world, meeting people working on all kinds of "transition" experiments? Is it a local outcome, or is it indeed successful in Europe mainly? 3. You recently shared an article about a guy warning about the romanticism around the commons. http://smallfarmfuture.org.uk/?p=1240 I thought this guy was very spot on on a few issues. Indeed I've also always perceived the commons as a complementary concept, i.e. in Switzerland, where I grew up, there was (and in parts still exists) the "Allmend", where cows were brought to graze. The Allmend was a commons, a shared piece of land - but the cows were owned by the farmers individually. I haven't read your transition plan of Gent yet (I hope I'll find the time soon), but do you conceptualize on what the commons fit and where they don't in that paper? Any other recommended read in that direction?
in fact, what is needed is to trans-nationalize the idea and practice of public-commons-generative partnerships, i.e. to complement the inter-state system with globally scaled trans-national organizations that reflect the interconnection of the new wave of commoning,
I believe I share this thinking, do you have any example of such trans-nationalization taking shape? Thank you