Bologna Regulation

The Bologna Regulation in Italy, Europe was crafted to legally enable the city government to host public collaboration for urban commons. The Regulation [ (pdf ) is based on Article 118, paragraph 4, of the Italian Constitution.

The central regulatory tool is the "collaboration agreement," signed by citizens and the city, which establishes the object of care, and the rules and conditions of collaboration among any group of citizens and the local government, or other actors.

Bologna Regulation logo. source

# When did it start?

Bologna Regulation on public collaboration for urban commons is part of the “The City as a Commons” project that started in 2011.When some residents of Bologna sought to get a bench erected in their neighborhood, they discovered that the city government had no recognized process for dealing with initiatives of this nature. The Regulation was drafted to address this need, and released in 2014. It provides that

"The City periodically advertise the list of spaces, buildings or digital infrastructures which could be target of actions of care and regeneration, specifying goals to be pursued through collaboration with active citizens." pdf

Transported image. source

Key players were Roman law professor Christian Iaione and the academic legal center LabGov (html ), working with the mayor and city agencies.

# How do they work?

The Bologna Regulation is a formal program of the City of Bologna, which invites ordinary citizens and neighborhoods to invent their own urban commons, with the government's active assistance. The project is a deliberate attempt to move beyond top-down, expert-driven bureaucratic control to a more flexible, needs-based system of bottom-up initiative and innovation. Bologna Deputy Mayor Matteo Lepore declared:

Commons aren’t just something we protect, but also what we invent.

# Legal Status

The Bologna Regulation starts by regarding the city as a collaborative social ecosystem, not simply as an inventory of resources to be administered by politicians and bureaucratic experts. City residents are regarded as resourceful, imaginative agents in their own right, and citizen initiative and collaboration as under-leveraged energies that – with suitable government assistance – could be recognized and given space to work. Government is re-imagined as a hosting infrastructure for countless self-organized commons.

To date, the city and citizens have entered into more than 90 different “pacts of collaboration” – formal contracts between citizen groups and the Bolognese government that outline the scope of specific projects and everyone’s responsibilities. The projects fall into three general categories – living together (collaborative services), growing together (co-ventures) and working together (co-production).

Phase I projects in 2014 included a kindergarten run by parents, a “social streets” initiative, and an urban agricultural coop. In 2015, a new set of Phase II test projects were selected by citizens to extend the scope of the efforts, with the idea of supporting collaborative housing and new sorts of social services provisioning, perhaps with new co-learning programs in the public schools and neighborhood markets. html Commoning bodies include street or neighborhood associations, consortia, cooperatives, and foundations to manage various public spaces.

# How are they financed?

The "City as Commons" project counts on the support of Fondazione del Monte di Bologna e Ravenna (html ) and the City of Bologna. The city government provides financial and technical support to citizen groups as needed.

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# Which Core Dimensions of Commoning are enacted?

The Bologna Regulation differs from conventional bureaucratic/legal approaches in trying to enable the agency and creativity of citizens. As law scholars Sheila Foster and Christian Iaione point out, the Regulation seeks to foster "experimentalist, adaptive, iterative governance and legal tools" so that citizens can enter into co-design processes" for making common goods in cities.

As a new type of public-commons partnership, the Bologna Regulation seeks to break down some of the traditional barriers between government and the citizenry by facilitating collaborative governance. The goal is also to provide a citizen-friendly vehicle for people to care about their city and work to make it better -- i.e., to Cultivate Shared Purpose & Values and perhaps reduce citizen alienation from the state and each other. Honor care Strengthen the Nested-I

Unlike many state programs, the Bologna Regulation seeks to Trust Situated Knowing and encourage ordinary citizens to Be Creatively Adaptive. By breaching the normal, the Regulation may also encourage citizens to regard state-commons partnerships as a useful civic tool. Reflect on Your Peer-Governance.

# Peer Governance in Commons

The commons that arise from the Bologna Regulation are not typically commons in that the state is the official host, legal arbiter, and technical facilitator of what transpires in the citizen-led commons. That said, the legal regime does provide significant room for collective citizen initiative and responsibility. In a neighborhood, for example, it can help Assure Commoners' Consent in Decisionmaking, Relationalize Property that is otherwise managed by the city government, and Ritualize Togetherness by providing a vehicle for neighbors to work together.

At a more general level, the program helps bring together the citizens of the city; cultivate trust and transparency that may not be present in bureaucratic decisionmaking; and take citizens seriously as sources of good ideas and commitment. It can also be a way to Direct Capital to Commons Provisioning, although so far, in rather modest ways.

# Provisioning through Commons

In 2015, Bologna Deputy Mayor Matteo Lepore described some of the collaborative projects that the city has undertaken with citizen groups. As reported by Jay Walljasper html , these included: - Neighborhood regeneration projects, which he emphasized, are “not on behalf of citizens but with citizens, who are a great source of energy, talent, resources, capabilities and ideas.” - An experiment where restaurants and bars work directly with neighbors to set rules for their businesses and cooperate on regenerating the community. - A program to draw upon parents’ ideas and skills in improving kindergartens. - A civic crowdfunding prototype to support projects that the city cannot wholly fund, such as restoration of Bologna’s 24 miles of arched porticoes over sidewalks. - An ambitious program of urban gardens. - Creation of digital platforms to support commons projects of all varieties. - A citywide conversation “about what is collaboration, and how the city government can work in new ways.

The public-commons partnership is a classic case of making and using things and services together, and co-creating generative change. In this case, however, a key participant is the state. This introduces an unequal power relationship and distorts classic bottom-up commoning.

But if the state players are sincere and motivated, it is nonetheless a way of pooling and sharing diverse talents and resources for shared benefit. Any returns here are likely to be services or access to infrastructure, whose benefits are only loosely conjoined through giving and taking. Commons developed under the Bologna Regulation tend to rely upon distributed structures with a modest centralized coordination. Share the Risks of Provisioning, Make & Use Together, Pool & Share, Rely on Distributed Structures, Cocreate Generative Change

ontological ground and political culture

# Inner Kernel

- Relational categories. name them - Epistemology. - Ubuntu-Rationality.

# External Politics & Culture

To be assessed later in the process based on the Regulation itself: wiki

- Beat the Bounds - Establish Discrimination-Free Infrastructures - Finance Commons-Public-Circuits - Accept State Mediation & Support if Needed - Emulate & Then Federate - Protect & Extend Value Sovereignty

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# Realms of Commoning

Art&Culture, Communication, Democratic Innovation, Housing, Knowledge, Land, Learning, Spaces for Commoning