{"id":1193,"date":"2019-04-25T14:47:47","date_gmt":"2019-04-25T12:47:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/euroalter.local\/?p=1193"},"modified":"2020-02-21T14:48:11","modified_gmt":"2020-02-21T13:48:11","slug":"urban-alternatives-mapping","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/euroalter.com\/it\/urban-alternatives-mapping\/","title":{"rendered":"Urban Alternatives: mapping cities of resistance, innovation and alternatives"},"content":{"rendered":"
After long months of work, today we are finally launching \u00a0Urban Alternative<\/a>s\u00a0is an online map that has emerged from the cooperation between independent activists and researchers, and a number of different organizations, including\u00a0European Alternatives<\/a>,\u00a0Transnational Institute<\/a>,\u00a0Habitat International Coalition<\/a>\u00a0and the\u00a0University of Sheffield\u2019s Urban Institute<\/a>. The map is still ongoing and open for new content, so if you know about initiatives that should be added, do not hesitate to\u00a0contact us.<\/h5>\n

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Cities are a scene of resistance, innovation and alternatives: the place where social protests erupt and mutual cooperation unfolds, where street mobilisations, cultural creation and productive innovations emerge.<\/p>\n

The Urban Alternatives map website should act both as a participative platform, and as a communication tool to work on transnational alliances of local actors and initiatives. The map currently contains over 40 cases. For their selection, we have paid attention to geographical distribution, and the mapping process is ongoing. Last year we were able to observe many different mappings of Europe, like the\u00a0Transformative cities<\/a>\u00a0map by\u00a0Transnational Institute<\/a>\u00a0and the\u00a0Fearless cities<\/a>\u00a0map by\u00a0Barcelona En Com\u00fa<\/a>. It seems that the dynamic visualization of civil society processes is increasingly becoming an interesting source of information for activists, scientists and the public. The map is user-friendly, accessible and open for external collaboration and inputs.<\/p>\n

The Urban Alternatives map website should act both as a participative platform, and as a communication tool to work on transnational alliances of local actors and initiatives. The map currently contains over 40 cases.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

For example, since October 2018, homeless people have faced prison in Hungary after a tough new law was passed. One of the initiatives mapped is\u00a0A Varos Mindenkie<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 \u201cThe city is for all\u201d \u2013 a homeless and non-homeless activist group of grassroots volunteers in Budapest and P\u00e9cs that works towards an equal and just urban society. Its purpose is to stand up for the dignity of homeless people and to fight for the right to housing. In all the activities of the organization \u2013 from decision-making to organizing actions \u2013 people living in homelessness and housing poverty play a leading role.<\/p>\n

EWS Elektrizit\u00e4tsWerke Sch\u00f6nau<\/a>\u00a0is another example. This initiative is established as a citizens-led energy utility that now sells clean electricity to more than 170 000 households in Germany. After the catastrophe of Chernobyl (UA), a citizens\u2019 initiative was founded in Sch\u00f6nau (DE), in order to tackle topics like saving energy and producing clean electricity together.<\/p>\n

From its very beginning, the Urban Alternatives initiative was a collaborative project. The main challenge was how to find the best way to put all the data together, discuss it, analyse and visualise to make it interesting, comprehensive and useful. We split into several thematic working groups that will continuously work on the information gathered, help to inform the rest of the group, debate and provide different overviews on each case. To make it more concrete, the aforementioned working groups will discuss within their members and decide if an initiative would be included in the map, under which theme and under which tags to make it accessible and easy to navigate.<\/p>\n

The themes on the map are:<\/p>\n