Digital Commons, Urban Struggles and the Right to the City?

Andreas Unteidig, Marco Clausen Who has access? Who designs? Who
uses and who profits of collaboratively produced content? In this
talk, we want to argue that these questions are not only equally
relevant to the physical as well as the digital space, but
increasingly interdependent. This is powerfully exemplified in many
prevailing smart city visions, in which highly profitable dreams of
streamlining, control and efficiency are being cultivated –
predominantly by a handful of global enterprises. Within the
European MAZI-Network, we are querying alternatives to these
corporate, top-down implemented and centralized futures. We seek to
support and amplify these alternatives and we work on the
development of counter-proposals, by connecting academia with urban
activism in four different pilot studies across Europe. In Berlin,
the Design Research Lab of the University of the Arts is partnering
with the Nachbarschaftsakademie (Neighborhood Academy) within
Prinzessinnengärten: At Berlin‘s Moritzplatz, we are testing how
affordable and open hardware together with open source knowledge
can act as a toolkit, enabling local communities to create their
very own “internet outside the internet”, and to employ network
technology beyond the prescribed application of Facebook or Google.
To learn from practice, we are developing a locally constrained,
community owned and maintained WIFI network with a set of custom
designed applications. With this, we aim at providing a network for
exchange, information and participation, and ultimately at the
 amplification of Berlin‘s critical urban practice through
technology. By applying the Neighborhood Academy‘s core concept of
“collective learning”, this process is decisively participatory and
involves a wide range of actors and initiatives that are engaged in
the struggles for the right to the city – both in spatial and in
digital terms. With this, we go beyond the mere development of
technology and open up spaces for discussion on the
interdependencies of Digital Commons, Urban Struggles and the
Right to the City.