The Journal
of
Design
Strategies
Cooperative Cities
Vol. 9, No. 1 | Fall 2017
VOL. 9, NO. 1 | FALL 2017
COOPERATIVE CITIES
EDITORIAL STAFF
The Journal of Design Strategies is published by The
New School in association with the School of Design
GUEST EDITORS
Strategies at Parsons School of Design.
Miodrag Mitrašinovic´and Gabriela Rendón
The Stephan Weiss Lecture Series and Journal of
EXECUTIVE EDITOR
Design Strategies are made possible by an endowment
Matthew Robb
established by The Karan-Weiss Foundation, Donna
Karan, Gabrielle Karan, Corey Weiss, and Lisa Weiss.
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© The New School 2017. All rights reserved.
ISSN: 1935-0112. ISSN: 1935-0120 (online).
TABLE OF CONTENTS
3
LETTER FROM THE DEAN
4
STEPHAN WEISS LECTURE SERIES
5
LETTER FROM THE EDITORS
Miodrag Mitrašinovic´ and Gabriela Rendón
18
Black Women, Cooperatives, and Community
Jessica Gordon Nembhard
33
Commoning The City: From Survival to Resistance and Reclamation
Silvia Federici
38
A Feminine Reinvention of the Commons
Doina Petrescu
52
We Stay in San Roque! Fighting for the Right to the Territory in
a Popular Market in the City of Quito, Ecuador
Ana Rodríguez
62
Working Together: Toward Imagined Cooperation in Resistance
Elke Krasny
71
Putting the Solidarity Economy on the Map
Maliha Safri, Stephen Healy, Craig Borowiak, and Marianna Pavlovskaya
84
Building A Neighborhood Cooperative: Interview with Jeanne van Heeswijk
Gabriela Rendón
108
CONTRIBUTORS
PUTTING THE
SOLIDARITY
ECONOMY ON
THE MAP
Maliha Safri,
Stephen Healy,
Craig Borowiak, and
Marianna Pavlovskaya
MAPPING ECONOMIES
Over the past 20 years, the term “solidarity economy” (SE) has come to refer to eco-
1
See Duncan Fuller,
Andrew E. G. Jonas, and
nomic activities that seek to prioritize “people and planet,” as opposed to private
Roger Lee, eds., Interrogating
proit maximization over all else. The organizations, enterprises, and practices
Alterity: Alternative Economic
comprising the solidarity economy tend to be collectively and democratically run
and Political Spaces (London:
Ashgate, 2010).
for the beneit of their members. While the activities associated with the solidarity
economy do not preclude turning a proit (or generating surplus), nor do they
necessarily require disengaging from market exchange, they do usually exhibit
a substantial alignment with ethical principles of social equity and solidarity,
environmental sustainability, and pluralist democracy. Put most simply, there is
something we could characterize as non-capitalist about these organizations.1
The table in Figure 1 represents examples of typical SE organizational forms in
the contexts of production, consumption, distribution and exchange, inance, and
governance (see Figure 1).
In many parts of the world, the SE has signiicant impacts on local and regional
economies. However, these impacts have been largely unrecognized by policymakers
and community members alike, since people are generally unfamiliar with the SE
concept—and in some places are unaccustomed to seeing solidarity-based provisioning as economic activity at all. For example, SE initiatives are altering local
economic landscapes in the United States (as elsewhere), yet they typically fall outside of mainstream studies of the economy, which tend to focus instead on federal
and state budgets, for-proit capitalist enterprises, and the market economy. In the
U.S. speciically, relatively little empirical research has been done to evaluate the
PU T T IN G T HE S O LIDA RI T Y ECO N O MY O N T HE M A P
71
PRODUCTION
CONSUMPTION
DISTRIBUTION/
EXCHANGE
FINANCE
GOVERNANCE
•
Worker
cooperatives
•
•
•
•
•
Credit unions
•
Participatory
budgeting
•
Producer
cooperatives
Buying clubs
•
•
Volunteer
collectives
•
•
•
Community
development
credit unions
Collective
management
of community
resources
•
Community
gardens
•
•
Affordable housing
cooperatives
•
Collectives of
self-employed
•
Community land
trusts
Solidarity economy support
organizations/
networks
•
•
Unpaid care work
Consumer
cooperatives
Co-housing
Intentional
communities
Fair trade networks
Community supported agriculture/
fisheries
•
Alternative
currencies
•
•
•
Barter networks
Free-cycle networks
Time banks
•
Peer Lending
Babysitting/
childcare clubs
FIGURE 1: Solidarity Economy Typology.
contribution of the SE to local economies. Our research deploys mixed methods at
2
For a review of some
recent mapping projects, see
different scales to address and remediate this gap in our understanding.
Maliha Safri, “The Politics
of Mapping Solidarity
Economies and Diverse
Economies in Brazil and the
Northeastern United States,”
in Gerda Roelvink, ed., Making
Other Worlds Possible:
In recent years, practitioners and researchers of the solidarity economy have shown
a great interest in the idea of “mapping.”2 One impetus for the new focus has come
from a growing appreciation of mapping as a creative activity, as opposed to being
a merely passive means for relecting a preexistent reality. Geographic scholarship
Performing Diverse Economies
in particular has come to investigate the ontological power of mapping—that
(Minneapolis: University
is, the ways maps help to make speciic human landscapes real by making them
of Minnesota Press, 2015),
296–321; Craig Borowiak,
“Mapping Social and
Solidarity Economy: the Local
and Translocal Evolution of a
visible.3 Not being indicated within the mapped territory leads to conceptual
obscurity and marginalization (besides the SE, examples include the invisibility,
hence theoretical neglect, of the informal economy, domestic work, or indigenous
Concept,” in P. Ngai, B. H. Ku,
knowledge), whereas being on the map requires articulation in theory, policy, and
H. Yan and A. Koo, eds., Social
practice. As a consequence, solidarity economy practitioners and scholars around
Economy in China and the
World (New York: Routledge,
the world are turning to mapping as a way to help constitute this economy, making
2015), 17–40.
it visible and including it in our social imaginary. In our work, too, we seek to put
3
the solidarity economy of the U.S. “on the map,” constructing it ontologically and
Marianna Pavlovskaya,
“Theorizing with GIS: A tool
for critical geographies?”
opening up a terrain for theoretical examination and political action.
Environment and Planning Vol.
38, no. 11 (2006): 2003–2020.
Here, we report preliminary results of our National Science Foundation-funded
4
research projects in New York City, Philadelphia, Worcester, Massachusetts, rural
NSF awards BCS 1339748
(PI Safri), BCS 1339846 (PI
Healy), BCS 1339974 (PI
Western Massachusetts, and nationally.4 In combination with other research
Borowiak), BCS 1340030 (PI
methods, mapping and spatial analysis can be used to reveal geographic patterns
Pavlovskaya).
in the solidarity economy. By identifying patterns in cities marked by race, income,
72
T HE JOURN A L OF DE SI G N S T R AT EG IE S
Solidarity economy practitioners and scholars around the
world are turning to mapping as a way to help make it visible
and include it in our social imaginary.
gender, and class divisions, we can then examine the economic and social relations
that have shaped the geographies of the economic arrangements. Another of our
goals has been to assess the regional economic impact of nonproit SE entities.
Finally, we have created and begun to populate an internet-based open access
platform including an interactive mapping tool, thus establishing a repository of
information for researchers and educators and contributing to the SE’s growing
visibility and consolidation. To gain access to the diverse solidarity economy
communities in New York, Philadelphia, and Worcester, we partnered with community-based organizations and networks working within these communities.
Our participatory methodological approach transformed the composition of our
research questions and accordingly shaped the results we obtained. In the remainder of this report, we concentrate on one interesting outcome from our nationwide
study, as well as on a few preliminary place-based indings.
RESEARCHING SOLIDARITY ECONOMIES IN NEW YORK CITY,
PHILADELPHIA, AND WORCESTER, MASS: MULTIPLE SITES,
MULTIPLE METHODS
Our research includes several different components. First, as noted, we are
creating a single, national-level spatial database of SE initiatives that can help
researchers understand factors including the extent, composition, and geographic
distribution of these initiatives in different parts of the country. This database
will be used to contextualize our in-depth cases and to identify macro-level
contours of the SE across the U.S. Second, we are generating detailed inventories
and spatial databases of SE entities in three urban sites of different size, and in
one rural area: New York City (pop. 8.2 million), Philadelphia (pop. 1.5 million),
Worcester, Massachusetts (pop. 180,000), and rural Western Massachusetts. We
also cross-checked the location of various SE enterprises with U.S. Census data to
analyze the distribution of these organizations with respect to racial and income
patterns. Third, we continue to conduct surveys and in-depth qualitative interviews
with practitioners in different SE sectors in our research sites. The result of these
multiple undertakings is a set of tools for raising the visibility of the spatial and
economic footprint of diverse economic activities that prioritize social and environmental considerations at least as much as, if not more than, proit.
PU T T IN G T HE S O LIDA RI T Y ECO N O MY O N T HE M A P
73
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHY OF SE AND THE
5
Rob Eletto and Marianna
MAPPING PLATFORM
Pavlovskaya, “Geographies of
Ethical Finance: Credit Unions
At the national level, the sheer extent of some segments of the solidarity economy
in New York City,” (unpub-
can be astonishing. For example, the number of credit unions in the country is
lished manuscript).
6
about the same as the number of private banks. Moreover, the U.S. has the world’s
Craig Borowiak, Maliha
highest level of credit union membership, encompassing almost two-thirds of the
Safri, Stephen Healy,
working age population.5 In one form or another, the SE is present in all parts of
Marianna Pavlovskaya,
“Navigating the Fault
the U.S., despite remaining largely unacknowledged. As mentioned above, one
Lines: Race and Class in
Philadelphia's Solidarity
signiicant aim of our research has been to develop a national SE mapping plat-
Economy,” Antipode (forth-
form that is publicly available and practically useful for a variety of purposes. This
coming); see also Craig
platform launched in June 2015 (see Figure 2).
Borowiak, “Mapping the Social
Demographics of Cooperatives
in Philadelphia and Madison,”
The mapping platform draws on and represents data from our national spatial
in Craig Borowiak, Richardson
Dilworth, and Anne Reynolds,
database of the SE, itself built from several national and local datasets provided
eds., Exploring Cooperatives:
by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the National Credit Union Association,
Economic Democracy and
and several other local research partners. The mapping platform is designed to
Community Development in
Pennsylvania and Wisconsin
provide a user-friendly way to search for and ind solidarity economy initiatives
(Madison, WI: University of
all across the country. Hence, the platform was designed both for local consum-
Wisconsin-Extension, 2015),
ers, businesses, and organizations and for academic researchers. Local users
13–23.
can search for speciic organizations in a particular area, while researchers can
analyze geographic patterns exhibited by the SE at different scales. The map is thus
intended to serve multiple functions: irst, to make various SE activities visible to
consumers, businesses, activists, and policy-makers; second, to contribute to the
construction of supply chains in which economic actors intentionally source from
one another in order to foster alternative development relations
(e.g. cooperatives sourcing from one another); and third, to provide
A national database and
comprehensive data for researchers interested in analyzing the
map provides a user-friendly
organizations and practices of the solidarity economy.
way to search for and find
solidarity economy initiatives
PHILADELPHIA
all across the country.
Philadelphia is the site in which the highest number of unique
organizational forms were mapped. Borowiak’s research in that
city inds over 470 community gardens, two community land trusts,
nine time banks and alternative exchange networks, 18 housing cooperatives and
intentional communities, nine worker cooperatives, seven consumer cooperatives,
107 credit union branches, 17 community supported agricultural farms having
149 pick-up locations, one fair trade organization, and over 30 other cooperatives
and collectives.6 In conducting his research, Borowiak partnered with local
organizations, including the Philadelphia Area Cooperative Alliance (PACA), The
Reinvestment Fund, and the Garden Justice Legal Initiative, as well as with other
74
T HE JOURN A L OF DE SI G N S T R AT EG IE S
FIGURE 2: Internet-based mapping platform indicating select sectors of the national U.S. solidarity economy.
Clusters of SE enterprises are represented by circle icons with numbers; the color and size of the icon changes
with the number of organizations contained in each cluster. Individual organizations are marked with icons
that represent various economic sectors, although users can search by many other criteria in addition to these
sector categories. Source: Solidarity Economy Mapping Project.
local researchers. Using Geographic Information Systems methods, he spatially
analyzed the SE entities’ locations against demographic data on race and class.
7
Borowiak et al.,
“Navigating the Fault Lines.”
The resulting maps yield some interesting discoveries, one being that the solidarity
economy as a whole has a signiicant footprint in Philadelphia. Arguably more
important, however, are the ways that the maps illuminate social relations in the
city—a key issue for social movement actors. For instance, once the credit unions
are separated out from the rest of the analysis, housing, worker, food, artist, and
childcare cooperatives are virtually absent from neighborhoods with the deepest poverty, and from those with the highest concentrations of racial minorities.
However, neither do these SE organizations cluster in the higher-income, predominantly white neighborhoods. The maps instead reveal patterns of cooperatives
clustering within border zones between rich and poor, and between white, Black,
and Latino neighborhoods.7
PU T T IN G T HE S O LIDA RI T Y ECO N O MY O N T HE M A P
75
FIGURE 3: Philadelphia map showing residential distribution of Black population and presence of cooperatives
and collectives (excluding credit unions). Source: Borowiak et al., “Navigating the Fault Lines.”
76
T HE JOURN A L OF DE SI G N S T R AT EG IE S
Borowiak’s important work raises more questions than can be currently answered:
Why do SE enterprises tend to locate in these border areas? What supportive
conditions may exist in these neighborhoods, helping to elicit such practices?
8
Borowiak et al.,
“Navigating the Fault Lines.”
9
Marianna Pavlovskaya,
Meanwhile, some racial patterns were to be expected in Philadelphia, given its
“To be or not to be on the
deeply segregated city structure, but the results serve both to neutralize some
map? Visibility and secrecy
criticisms of the SE movement, while also raising some troubling new questions
within the solidarity economy” (paper presentation
for the movement. The formal SE’s absence in the most racially homogenous
for the annual meeting of
neighborhoods—whether Black, Latino, or white—suggests that it is not sim-
the American Association of
ply a movement that primarily helps white people (as is sometimes alleged by
Geographers, Chicago, IL, April
21–25, 2015).
critics from the political left), but neither is it a movement that to date has been
successfully extended into the poorest and most homogenously Black and Latino
neighborhoods. While the former point bolsters defenses against critique or
dismissal of the SE, the latter inding is a source of some concern to a movement
having stated goals of equity and pluralism. If social action and public policy are to
help redress racial and class inequities, the absence of these organizations across
large swaths of Philadelphia is not a good sign.
It is important not to overinterpret the geographical data. The speciic locations
of some SE organizations, for example, may not accurately relect their effective
geographic reach (think of a home care cooperative that delivers services to customers in their homes across a wide area, or a large community garden that draws
participants from across the city). We may also be missing solidarity economy, or
non-capitalist, practices that occur more routinely in communities of color. For
example, Borowiak inds more community gardens growing edible crops in poorer
(and also in Latino) communities than in medium and high-income communities.8
Furthermore, there is reason to believe that some nonmarket practices, such as
informal childcare networks and cooperatives, and alternative practices such as the
zero-interest lending arrangements maintained by certain immigrant groups, may
generate signiicant but dificult-to-quantify positive impacts on their participants’
lives. The informality of these practices makes them more challenging to capture
in our research. Additionally, when the practices skirt boundaries of formality or
legality, outright identiication can sometimes actually jeopardize participants.
This has meant that our mapping project necessarily and intentionally refrains
from visualizing certain activities and enterprises. For instance, we know there are
at least some community gardens on squatted or illegally occupied land—gardens
which could be endangered if their legal status were made clearly visible. To map
in this case might actually undermine the goal of social empowerment. Hence, we
are careful to represent only those sites that would not be put into legal jeopardy by
being made public, even though incomplete maps occlude some SE practices, perhaps especially in certain low-income neighborhoods and communities of color.9
PU T T IN G T HE S O LIDA RI T Y ECO N O MY O N T HE M A P
77
WORCESTER, MASSACHUSETTS
10
See Suzanne Bergeron
and Stephen Healy, “Beyond
In Worcester, Healy deployed an in-depth interview approach to illuminate solidarity
the Business Case: A
economy practices and participant motivations there. Using a purposive sampling
Community Economics
technique, he conducted 30 interviews with representatives from worker coopera-
Approach to Gender,
Development and Social
tives, housing cooperatives, community governance organizations, and volunteer
Economy,” in Peter Utting, ed.,
collectives, in addition to representatives from community supported agriculture
Social and Solidarity Economy:
Beyond the Fringe? (London:
Zed Books, 2015).
initiatives, time banks and community gardens. Worcester has been an epicenter for
solidarity economy organizing statewide, hosting annual organizing conferences
since 2011 as well as the 2015 East Coast Work Place Democracy Conference.
Our research identiied Worcester Roots, an organization created a decade ago
by graduates of Clark University’s International Development Community and
Environment program, as a solidarity economy hub. Founder Matt Feinstein
explained how the organization’s focus has evolved from environmental justice in
low-income neighborhoods and communities of color to cooperative economic
development. Central to its expanding mission was the establishment of Stone
Soup, a community center that provides a collaborative space for progressive organizing in the city. As part of its commitment to providing space for some 15 other
cooperatives and political action groups, Stone Soup created a community land
trust, securing below-market rents for its tenants. In turn, these successes have
contributed to the proliferation of other solidarity economy activities in the area.
Three encountered in our research were a live-in artisan collective which houses 40
artists including metal and ceramic workers; a carpentry
shop; and a commercial greenhouse. It is obvious, there-
The solidarity economy may in effect
fore, that “incubating spaces” such as Worcester Roots
produce a moment of democratic
and Stone Soup can play an important role in cooperative
“dissensus”: an interruption of the
development and generation within a community.
received ideology, pervasive in
the U.S., that expert-led economic
While Worcester presents exciting possibilities, there
growth, neoliberalism, and austerity
is also a concern articulated by some practitioners and
are all that is reasonable because
academics that cooperative development may come to
they are all that is possible.
be deployed as a conventional tool in poverty reduction
efforts, either being conined to those areas experiencing a market failure, or, even worse, becoming part of
a process of “responsibilization” in impoverished communities.10 In this scenario, poverty increasingly comes to be treated as the personal responsibility of
individuals, rather than a structural outcome produced by the economic system.
(The widespread practice known as “lunch shaming,” in which children receiving
subsidized or free lunch at their public schools are forced to clean the cafeterias, or
are stigmatized in other ways, illustrates this phenomenon.) However, it is crucial
to understand how radically the solidarity economy can democratize economic
78
T HE JOURN A L OF DE SI G N S T R AT EG IE S
development, since non-experts determine the organization of production,
exchange, consumption, investment, and the management of common resources.
11
Jacques Rancière, “The
Ethical Turn of Aesthetics and
Following Rancière, we therefore suggest that SE actors in effect produce a
Politics,” Critical Horizons
moment of democratic “dissensus”: an interruption of the received ideology, per-
Vol. 7, no. 1, (2006): 1–20;
vasive in the U.S., that expert-led economic growth, neoliberalism, and austerity
Mark Purcell, “Rancière and
Revolution,” Space and Polity
are all that is reasonable because they are all that is possible.11 Continual dissen-
Vol. 18, no. 2, (2013): 161–181.
sus might allow the SE to escape domestication as a “development” strategy; in
12
this connection a promising trend is the way in which concerns about racial and
Shear, “Solidarity Economy
postcolonial justice have become more central to SE discussions.12 Our research
in New York suggests still other ways that we might ensure the democratic vitality
of the solidarity economy by continuing to examine precisely how such entities,
organizations, and practices contribute to a broader sense of well-being within the
communities they serve.
Penn Loh and Boone
and Community Development:
Emerging Cases in Three
Massachusetts Cities,”
Community Development Vol.
46 no. 3 (2015): 244–260.
13
See Amanda Huron,
“Working with Strangers in
Saturated Space: Reclaiming
NEW YORK CITY
and Maintaining the Urban
Commons,” Antipode Vol. 47,
In New York City, Safri and Pavlovskaya limited their initial round of research to
no. 4 (2015): 963–79; James
cooperatives, including worker cooperatives, limited equity housing cooperatives,
DeFilippis, Unmaking Goliath:
food co-ops, and credit unions—all of them formal economic entities engaged in
their respective markets. We also formed partnerships with community organizations and networks that form part of the SE there. The National Credit Union
Community Control in The
Face of Global Capital (London:
Routledge, 2004); Jane
Leavitt and Susan Saegert,
From Abandonment to Hope:
Association, for example, shared data on all the credit unions within New York,
Community-Households in
and indeed throughout the U.S. We beneitted immensely from the advice and
Harlem (New York: Columbia
participation of local activist group SolidarityNYC to access and survey food coop-
University Press, 1990).
eratives. SolidarityNYC further aided in connecting us to a multi-member worker
cooperative coalition that included the Federation for Protestant Welfare Agencies,
the New York City Network of Worker Cooperatives, the Working World, the U.S.
Federation of Worker Cooperatives, the Center for Family Life, Green Workers’
Cooperative, and others. Lastly, we partnered with the Urban Homesteading
Assistance Board (UHAB) to learn more about affordable housing cooperatives in
the city. We have become deeply involved with these community partners, especially
since our research was in part guided by their own goals. Here we report some
indings from the research on cooperative forms of housing.
Obviously, housing plays a paramount role in the political economy of New York
City, given its large population and high cost of real estate. The stock of affordable
housing has been declining for decades, with waves of gentriication leading to
the displacement of longstanding residential populations in many neighborhoods. Limited equity cooperative housing is one of the few affordable-housing
options falling under community control.13 In New York City, there are two primary
types of limited equity housing cooperatives: housing development fund corporations (HDFC), and limited proit housing companies (known as Mitchell-Lama
PU T T IN G T HE S O LIDA RI T Y ECO N O MY O N T HE M A P
79
Legend
UHAB_geocode
Median Income
0.0000 - 48724.4000
48724.4000 - 97448.8000
97448.8000 - 146173.2000
146173.2000 - 194897.6000
194897.6000 - 243622.0000
0
1
2
3
4 miles
FIGURE 4: Northern New York City clustering of HDFC limited equity housing cooperatives in census tracts orga-
nized by household median income. Source: Christian Siener, Marianna Pavlovskaya, and Maliha Safri.
cooperatives). Both are designed to keep housing affordable by exchanging tax
14
Alexander Roesch,
“The Urban Homesteading
breaks for an agreement to rent or sell only to those whose income falls under a
Assistance Board (UHAB)
limit set by the city (typically no higher than the median income for the area). Some
and Affordable Housing
of the HDFCs, and all of the Mitchell-Lama housing co-ops, also have price limits
Cooperatives in NYC” (presentation at Parsons School of
on housing units (speciied either by number of bedrooms or by unit size in square
Design, New York, NY, Sept 14,
feet). In total, there are approximately 1,300 HDFCs in New York City, comprising
2015).
31,000 units of housing with an average size of 24 apartments per building.14 The 88
current Mitchell-Lama cooperatives, which are generally much larger than the HDFC
buildings, create another 64,669 units of housing for moderate income families.
The maps in Figures 4 and 5 show the geographic distribution of HDFCs throughout New York City in the context of median income at the census tract level. The
clustering of HDFCs in low-income areas is clearly visible. Most of these cooperatives came into existence during the 1970’s and 80’s, primarily through three city
programs (Tenant Interim Lease, Community Management Program, and Third
Party Transfer) in which the city turned over ownership of the buildings to collectives of tenants who could demonstrate capable self-management. UHAB was the
80
T HE JOURN A L OF DE SI G N S T R AT EG IE S
Legend
UHAB_geocode
Median Income
0.0000 - 48724.4000
48724.4000 - 97448.8000
97448.8000 - 146173.2000
146173.2000 - 194897.6000
194897.6000 - 243622.0000
0
1
2
3
4 miles
FIGURE 5: Southern New York City clustering of HDFC limited equity housing cooperatives in census tracts orga-
nized by household median income. Source: Christian Siener, Marianna Pavlovskaya, and Maliha Safri.
primary organization helping residents navigate this transition, sometimes becoming an interim landlord itself. Tenants not only managed the residences, but also
invested any “sweat equity” needed to bring their buildings up to code.15 Hence
15
See Leavitt and Saegert,
From Abandonment to Hope;
DeFilippis, Unmaking Goliath.
these maps can be read as showing areas that experienced serious disinvestment
during the 1970’s and 1980’s and in which collective self-management schemes
arose as a survival strategy.
Our work with UHAB shaped both our thinking and subsequent research on
housing in New York. We added research questions we had previously not thought
to ask. For instance, we knew that all affordable housing co-ops had income limits
for owners—and, at least oficially, sale price limits as well. But through UHAB,
we learned of serious disagreements around price limits, and how some buildings
were actually failing to maintain such limits in practice, allowing apartment prices
in these buildings to creep up toward market rates. This development threatens
to make the apartments unaffordable for many people after all, thus undermining
the goals of the city program in which the buildings are enrolled. Meanwhile,
during the Fall of 2015, graduate students in the Design and Urban Ecologies
PU T T IN G T HE S O LIDA RI T Y ECO N O MY O N T HE M A P
81
Program at Parsons School of Design in New York conducted a series of inter16
For more on the wide
range of value-creating activ-
views with local housing cooperative residents, yielding a different perspective on
ities that are inadequately
the issues facing limited equity housing cooperatives. The interviews make clear
understood in mainstream
that being shareholders in a co-op can profoundly affect residents’ approaches
economic theory, and on the
need to develop alternatives
to life decisions both large and small, in very positive ways. One co-op owner, for
to market capitalism, see J. K.
example, claimed that without her apartment, retirement would have been incon-
Gibson-Graham, The End of
Capitalism (As We Knew It): A
ceivable. Another shared that being a member of an affordable housing co-op had
Feminist Critique of Political
changed the career decisions both he and his wife were able to make, allowing his
Economy (Minneapolis:
wife to work on climate justice issues in which she earned a relatively low income.
University of Minnesota Press,
1996); J. K. Gibson-Graham,
Others simply reported that they were able to travel, or “go to a movie.” Overall,
Post-Capitalist Politics
the interviews with housing co-op residents reveal that they are able to exert more
(Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 2005).
control over their own economic lives and decision-making because of their access
to a secure and affordable place to live. We interpret the reports by residents as
evidence of a broader well-being in which income is not the sole yardstick. Such
a inding is signiicant for anyone interested in designing economic development
outside of conventional parameters that privilege increasing overall economic
production over distributional concerns. Yet at the same time, our indings also
demonstrate that this practice is coming under serious threat: all the housing
co-ops we studied had chosen to continue observing income limits for eligibility,
but none had maintained price limits on sales of the apartments themselves.
CONCLUSION
Our ambitious collaborative research on the solidarity economy has already generated interesting insights nationally and about each location focused on to date. At
the national level, it is clear that the SE has a strong presence in the United States,
even if we typically take note only of its formal components such as credit unions,
worker cooperatives, and food and housing co-ops. Therefore, demonstrating the
ontological presence of the solidarity economy is vital to the task of developing
working alternatives to capitalism, both those already existing, and those yet to
be imagined.16 In Philadelphia, we are made conscious of critical geography’s
debates on the politics of visibility. Visibility can both empower and disempower,
and researchers must always be aware of this knife’s edge. As important as what
the maps reveal is what they conceal: we must pay attention to the blank spots on
these maps, and remember that they can’t tell us everything we need to know. In
Worcester and New York City, our results reveal the importance of incubating and
supporting organizations, showing that SE entities do best when they exist in a
kind of ecosystem of organizations all pursuing similar goals. Worcester’s results
in particular indicate a growth of the SE there, built around key actors such as
Stone Soup and Worcester Roots.
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Solidarity economy entities do best when they exist in a kind
of ecosystem of organizations all pursuing similar goals.
It is important to remain aware of the pressures to domesticate or tame the radical
potential of projects like these. If cooperatives are allowed to become a conventional
17
DeFilippis, Unmaking
Goliath, 111.
strategy of poverty alleviation or containment, or a pathway to entrepreneurial
initiatives, they will make it harder to address more challenging, structural impediments to enacting social solidarity and progressive economic transformation. On
the other hand, our results suggest that we should read dissensus into the current
functioning of SE entities, appreciating the way they expand the political terrain. If
non-experts are allowed to guide economic decisions about production, inance,
investment, and management, what kinds of different decisions might they make?
At least one possibility is analogous to what we have observed in our interviews in
New York City’s limited equity housing co-ops: people with secure housing have
more freedom to engage in other solidarity-oriented activities and practices (e.g.
devoting one’s career to social or justice-related issues at comparatively low levels
of remuneration). In this way, solidarity economy practices can actually shape the
people participating in them, as well as the larger communities in which they are
located. In the case of the housing co-ops discussed above, even if these entities are
facing pressures from the mainstream real estate market, “they have given residents
a degree of control over their own lives that would not be possible otherwise.”17
Ultimately, this is perhaps the most powerful argument in their favor.
PU T T IN G T HE S O LIDA RI T Y ECO N O MY O N T HE M A P
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