The commons: land, property, information and landscape agency

[00:04:55] But also the RaFinancial settlement after the murder of George Floyd that began to combine social, cultural and justice issues as you face these public health pieces. And in the middle of it all, the lack of willingness and governance and agencies, the lack of support in many places, mutual aid systems came and rushed to serve the needs of the people, things that were not top down, things that were determined and directed by the local communities and really the abilities of the people corresponded very powerfully Grassroots activists even to this day to meet the needs that the state does not have.

[00:05:29] And that begs a really interesting question, because one point of view reflects the idea of ​​the Commons, and the idea of ​​the Commons as an idea that wass popularized by an article by Garrett Hardin in 1968, but as a criticism, the tragedy of the Commons, and phrased in a broader discussion of environmental sustainability that says we are prone to chaos because of people’s personal self-interest and tend to overuse and poorly manage shared resources. The fact that we share them together means that no one is responsible. There is no orderly structure.

[00:06:02] And so he offered this as a criticism of the idea of ​​cobring together and pool resources. But that was of course pushed back by Elinor Ostrom, for whom she received the 2009 Nobel Prize in Economics, where she really advocated the idea of ​​local knowledge and institutional adjustment as a means of mitigationng these factors that do with self-interest. And this quote is really interesting: “Breaking development, improving institutions is an ongoing process that needs to involve users directly. Instead of designing a single blueprint for all the locations and Civil servants have to improve the ability of social actors to shape their own institutions. ”And it’s interesting, volunteer landscape architects – we believe that with all our hearts when we deal with issues ranging from community to design, democratic design and the social factors in dealing with sustainability. But the idea that it is possible is that with the right tools, the right skills, the right focus, people will be able to govern themselves as well regulate yourself Resources.

[00:07:00] And as a personLast anecdote, we went through that a few years ago Design studio in North Carolina. The eastern part of our state is still struggling with very high levels of poverty and many social indicators that we want to improve. and Henderson, North Carolina, is one of those places, and that was my first contact with a cooperative and working with a cooperative, as a landscape architect and as an instructor. And as part of that work, we were really challenged with the community, a legacy comCommunity that had an abundance of unused public infrastructure currently under development due to a shrinking population and the desire for that organization, the Green Rural Redevelopment Organization, which has the very catchy slogan G. wears, stood emptyROW, which is literally the acronym for their name, which finds ways to deal with micro-farming, farmers who either work small parts of their property or have very small lots, for example vacant lots in old communities, to pool their resourcesWrestle fresh produce to those in need with cardiovascular disease, other diseases related to diet, and their limit, their inability to reach a certain level serve more people.