The goal was to identify, map, understand and promote examples of transformative urban social change. The initial focus was on municipalities within Europe, with ambitions to expand or support the development of partner projects in different regions.
The organizations involved in Urban Alternatives share the analysis that cities are emerging as fundamental places for transformative change. From citizen-controlled energy companies through to citizen-led platforms, and from policies that promote the solidarity economy through to innovative procurement strategies, it is in our cities that people are demonstrating that other ways of living in solidarity - rather than competition - are possible.
Our initiative looked to map these moments of transformative change. The result is neither a simple list of ‘radical’ councils nor a database of autonomous initiatives, but rather an attempt to map those moments and processes that move our cities away from a logic of competition and towards one of solidarity. We are interested in those moments when the right balance of unrest, opposition, pragmatism, institutional openness and innovation leads to progressive change in how we run our cities.
Having collected around 40 indicative cases of transformative change for the beta version (urbanalternatives.org, pictured below), the next goal is to substantially broaden participation in the process to organisations across Europe, and to begin discussion with non-European partners about the development of ‘partner’ projects.
