Are you interested in:

Place-based activism
You support community mobilizing from social, cultural and/or environmental perspectives in Cities.

Justice & Rights
You support local movements that promote climate justice, feminism, racial justice, LGBT rights, diversity, a new economy based on collaboration, the rights of indigenous people as well as the rights of migrants or a broader vision of systems change through a Just Transition…

Democracy
You support citizen participation, participatory governance models, new forms of direct democracy.
You are concerned by right-wing authoritarian trends, nationalist populism and shrinking space for civil society

and/or…
You are interested in connecting locally rooted systemic approaches by grassroots and civil-led movements that address the multiple economic, social, political and environmental crises
If you fund locally, domestically, globally or trans-local connections and…
don’t shy away from experimenting with cross-sectoral strategies….
…the Cities of Change Funders Collaborative is meant for you! It will expand your horizon and connect movements across cities and towns for deeper change and impact!

 

The context
Systemic crises, dead-ends of national politics and failing global governance: cities as the space of solutions

From China to the USA, Brazil and throughout Europe, the nation state is enclosing. Authoritarian regimes limit the space for civil society to be active and responsible. Thriving on fears – caused by economic globalization, social insecurity and cultural clashes – illiberal democracies and authoritarianism seem to gain momentum after the peak of (neo)liberal era (1980 to 2008). There is a collapse of global governance, reflected by the betrayal of the COP21 Climate Agreement, the recent US withdrawal from the UN Human Rights Council, the numerous violations of the international treaties regarding migrants, etc.

The post-World War II world order and geopolitical alliances have given way to a logic of feudal short-term deals between nationalist and authoritarian leaders – which can very quickly be broken and cause regional or global tensions or even wars. Even the attempt of setting global rules to govern the expansion of unrestrained free market is challenged by unilateral protectionism or bilateral forced trade agreements.
In 2018, almost 55% of the world population lives in cities. Cities are the melting pot of where the challenges of these crises are being met with hope and solutions.

Those cities and towns that stand at the forefront of the world’s toughest problems, are strengthened by citizens movements that experiment with place-based, democratic and ecological solutions. In doing so, they counter what has become a normality in many places: to put the destiny of the city in the hands of extractive, private and franchised interests. Instead, they are investing in active and direct participation of citizens.

A new narrative
Cities of Change: the rise of a trans-local, progressive, citizen-led movement

Cities of Change embody a new narrative and include urban movements, like Right to the City, Urban Commons, Rebel Cities, Sanctuary Cities, Transformative Cities, Transition Towns and more recently, Fearless Cities. Cities of Change symbolize the local environment as a key space of transformation in political, economic and cultural terms. We’re not talking only about big cities since a lot of major organizing initiatives are taking place in medium-size towns and villages all over the world.

Coined by activists from the municipalist platform Barcelona en Comù in 2017, “Fearless Cities” represents a different, feminized political culture that includes direct citizens’ engagement in the development of cities and also smaller towns.
From Right to Housing and Right to the City movements to “radical municipalist” candidates, from the Occupy movements to the Rojava autonomous experiments in Kurdistan, cities are more than ever the relevant places for complex systems change “where those without power get to make history” (Saskia Sassen).

The rationale is quite simple: local activists and leaders are able to bring together a governing offer focused on solving local, concrete problems through progressive solutions, in sharp contrast to national politics, often characterized by polarization, partisan divides, and stalemate. By creating citizens platforms, by organizing people from the streets to the City Halls, by embedding and feminizing urban political expertise in daily lives, Cities of Change have the capacity to sidestep the worst of national political dysfunction.

The political program as a means to transform cities matters, as there are false solutions also in play at the local level. For example, more commodification and privatization lead to less autonomy and participatory decisions for the inhabitants of cities. The private sector has surely a key role to play in providing technical solutions but it should be under the governing control of the public and civil society institutions.
As we see it unfolding, the Fearless Cities movement has three main priorities: participative democracy, re-localisation of the economy and equality by feminization. For each of these priorities, actors in cities envision and, in some places, implement new concrete public policies that try to change the course of an unsustainable and unequal economic system and to reconnect with the real needs of residents and their neighborhoods. But their approach is not only local (“small-is-beautiful” oriented). The municipalist movement is also based on solidarity world views and envisions a new form of translocal collaboration and worldwide confederation.

The proposal
Let’s accompany this new progressive, transnational movement that has the power to create systemic change in towns and cities! Changing the world one city at a time….

Through this funders collaborative, we wish to learn from these current dynamics and help this momentum grow and spread beyond the few experiments that are currently existing.
As funders, grantmakers or programmatic and advocacy based foundations, we see at least three areas of interest and engagement

• Transitioning from the sectoral resistances to the systemic alternatives: on the ground, we often see an overwhelming logic of siloed campaigns, resistances and CSO projects. Some of these are just replicating the issue-based, topic-oriented programmes of private foundations or subsidizing public institutions. Applied to a place-based approach within the Cities of Change narrative, the notion of systemic alternatives can help bridge some gaps between the various struggles and forge a common agenda that could eventually entail citizen-led candidacies or a new power dynamics with the traditional political parties.
• Support collective policy expertise: taking the power back to cities as the foundational level of human societies requires building a new form of knowledge in order to be able to engage with and change local public policies. The issue of gentrification has to do with urban planning tools, the remunicipalisation of public services can only occur with strong technical and juridical competencies, the public-commons partnerships involve complex governance schemes, etc. In other words, the best practices are to be scaled up into best policies in City Hall. This means working with critical academics, think tanks, public servants and policy makers.
• Scaling across: the new social, ecological and solidarity solutions can’t be just local. They might not be easily scaled up at all other levels (provincial, regional, national…), but they must avoid the JIMBY (“just in my backyard”) syndrome through a form of scaling across that will make translocal exchanges relevant and helpful. Cooperation Jackson in Mississippi visiting Barcelona en Comù, Cambio Messina invited by Ne da(vi)mo Beograd—the need to learn from the most politically advanced initiatives is becoming more urgent than ever. The Barcelona Fearless Cities Summit in June 2017 has indeed spurred many discussions and still ongoing learning exchanges. But beyond the language barriers, the tension is to combine an exhausting local agenda with the demands coming from outside the territory.

Do you want to be part of this?
We propose the launch of the Cities of Change Funders Collaborative within the EDGE Funders Alliance through three main activities

•  learn from and convene practitioners and experts in the field (webinars, special newsletters, workshops, deep-dive, wikis and online library…)
• coordinate our existing individual funding to facilitate knowledge sharing and cover the needs of Cities of Change movements in the different areas where they emerge, converge and scale across (citizens’ watch bodies, mappings, directories, policy tools and wikis, storytelling, national, regional and global gatherings…
• push more philanthropic money towards the systemic alternatives rooted in territories and cities with the longterm vision of overcoming the nation state enclosure.

We’ll be partnering with the main historic actors in the different geographic and thematic areas.

If you are interested in participating to this project, sign up to our mailing list through this survey; you can also read the first blog post, titled Fear and Courage at the EDGE, by Peter Jenkinson and Shelagh Wright.