[JoPP-Public] ISSUE #11: CITY of the Journal of Peer Production is out!

[Nicholas Anastasopoulos]

The new special issue of the Journal of Peer Production on CITY is
published!

It showcases a wide variety of case studies in cities from different
geographies of the Global North and Global South namely *Barcelona, Berlin,
Brisbane, Brussels, Ciudad Juárez, Dhaka, Genoa, London, Melbourne, Milan,
New York, Paris, Rosario.  *

Some of those case studies focus more on peer production technologies and
others more on the social and political processes on the ground, all with
different research methodologies and approaches. They invite us to reflect
on various forms of peer production of knowledge and representation of the
city as a commons, where technology should be considered as both a tool
(infrastructure) and a contested space. They look at challenges of
governance focusing on citizen-driven models of peer production in the city
where local governments are called to be in dialogue and build synergies
with different stakeholder communities. They use participatory and
collaborative methods to collect their data following co-creative research
approaches. They are transdisciplinary as much as interdisciplinary in both
the methodological and theoretical approaches taken by contributors who
merge together urban studies, architecture, informatics, political and
social sciences, and ethnography to name a few. The authors collaborated
directly - as activists or through their research with other activists,
communities and/or stakeholders- giving voice to all those involved in the
making and sharing of those projects.

In numbers, there are *eight case study research papers* which have been
peer-reviewed and revised through the particularly transparent review
process of JoPP (i.e. for each of the peer-reviewed papers the originally
submitted version, the reviews and the final feedback of reviewers on the
revised version are made public) and *four experimental contributions* that
have been reviewed by the special issue editors. The experimental pieces
follow a less rigorous and more playful format, an interview with
commentary, a dialogue, a call for participation, and an open-ended online
article. They all invite us, the readers, to follow up their stories in
dedicated online venues, or even in face-to-face meetings, and participate
in the form of peer production that they advocate for.

Along similar endeavours opening up to possibility and hope in the midst of
uncertainty, these twelve stories of peer production, most of them positive
and encouraging, document and analyse different forms of citizen engagement
and participation. They are good examples of situated action that can
provide inspiration and eventually help to build tools, toolkits, best
practices, patterns, and methodologies. As editors, we learned a great deal
while putting together these contributions, all different in style,
context, and methodology. We hope that they will prove inspiring and
empowering for all readers as well to engage as citizens-activists,
co-creators, insurgent architects, who appropriate and contextualise urban
technologies and materialities to serve local collective needs.



The editors,

Nicholas, Penny, Panayotis
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