A lesser-known type of organization, a community land trust (CLT), uses similar legal tools in a very different way to accomplish very different objectives: the preservation of affordable housing; avoidance of gentrification; and building of community wealth. 

According to GroundedSolutions.org, as of 2022, there are 314 community land trusts with Shared Equity programs in 46 U.S. states, Puerto Rico, and Washington, D.C., with almost 44,000 affordable housing units. A majority (87%) of those residents are first-time home buyers, and 45% are people of color.

The CLT model works by purchasing land on behalf of the community and holding it in trust, in perpetuity. The CLT can sell the land and structures on the properties, with the option to repurchase, or enter into a long-term lease, typically a ground lease, during which the tenant can make improvements to the property, and during which time the CLT maintains an interest in maintenance of the structures and property. If the buyer chooses to sell, the CLT retains the right to repurchase the structures for an agreed-upon formula giving the buyer partial equity. The remaining equity stays with the CLT, and the structure is re-sold at below market rate. The cost of the land is forever retained within the trust.

The National Community Land Trust Network provides resources and coordination for CLT’s in the U.S.

Steps for Establishing a Community Land Trust

1. Determine Rationale

When establishing a CLT, one or more of the following rationales are commonly identified:

• Developing communities without displacing people.
  • Avoiding gentrification and displacement of low-income residents.

• Perpetuating the affordability of privately owned housing.
  • Avoiding market-rates on housing that was developed intentionally for affordability by public or private measures.

• Retaining the public’s investment in affordable housing
  • Avoiding market-rates on housing that was developed for affordability with public dollars.

• Protecting the occupancy, use, condition, and design of affordable housing
  • Ensuring occupancy, stewardship and maintenance of affordable housing over time.

• Assembling land for diversity of development
  • Assembling land under which CLT tools can be used to develop multiple types of development within the CLT’s service area.

• Enabling the mobility of low-income people
  • Providing additional routes to housing for lower- and moderate-income people beyond what the market offers.

• Backstopping the security of first-time homeowners
  • Stepping in to cure defaults and prevent foreclosures, protecting the homeowner, the housing, the bank and the community

2. Determine Sponsorship

CLTs generally get their start from some sort of impetus initiated by one of the following four potential sponsors:

• Individuals and institutions at the grassroots level (typically faith-based and community organizations.)
  • Advantages of grassroots organizations include:
    
    • Acceptance by the community being served.
    • Legitimacy in the eyes of lenders and funders.
    • Market insight.
    • A lack of baggage from other organizations.
• • Disadvantages include: 
    • Challenges in building staffing and financial capacity.
    • Credibility.
    • Competition with existing organizations.
    • Difficulty in selecting beneficiaries.

• Governmental officials at the local, regional, or state level (typically municipal government.)
  • Advantages include:
    • Access to public community development funds.
    • Staff support.
    • Regulatory assistance.
    • A view of the entire housing non-profit local landscape to establish the appropriate niche for a CLT.
  • Disadvantages include: 
    • Public distrust of the government.
    • Political tainting.
    • A top-down approach that may be perceived to be out of touch with community needs.
    • Resistance to including community members in the CLT governance structure.
• Other nonprofit organizations operating within the CLT’s service area (typically community development corporations, social service organizations or housing non-profits, which may convert, spin-off, adopt a CLT as a program, or establish an affiliate organization).
  • Advantages include:
    • Foundational capacity from the existing nonprofit.
    • Increased productivity, credibility, and compatibility within the nonprofit housing network.
    • Diversification and renewal of an existing nonprofit.
  • Disadvantages include: 
    • Political baggage attributed to the parent non-profit.
    • Difficulty in adjusting leadership and board structure to accommodate the need for a CLT to be accountable to leaseholders and the community.
    • Divided loyalties and lingering control.
• Local businesses and banks (typically businesses concerned about the ability of lower-income employees to secure affordable housing.)
  • Advantages include: 
    • Early capacity and sponsorship.
    • Provision of starter homes for working families.
    • Leveraging private dollars for public funds.
  • Disadvantages include: 
    • Control and power concentrated at the business.
    • Failure to embrace the CLT model where it contrasts with traditional business models.
    • A tendency to target higher on the income scale (toward working families and above the structurally unemployed).

3. Identify Beneficiaries

The CLT must decide early on who its target beneficiaries are, as this will determine the type and tenure of housing, the amount of subsidy the CLT will need to provide to make housing affordable to the targeted beneficiary, the types of funds the CLT can access, and design of the resale formula, marketing plan, selection criteria, and organizing strategy.

When determining beneficiaries, an assessment of community need revolves around three main decision points:

• Where on the income scale to begin.
• Whether future sales should target lower on the income scale (increasing affordability) or at the same level (to maintain affordability).
• Whether other factors beyond income (families, disability, age, geography of residence or work) be factored into a decision.

Targeting higher incomes will mean challenges with nonprofit incorporation and securing means-tested public funding, greater resistance in lower-income neighborhoods, and less risk of default and maintenance issues resulting in lower administrative costs.

Maintaining affordability may mean a better equity share for sellers; expanding affordability may speed the rate at which a CLT can expand and meet its mission, as resources that would go into subsidy on subsequent rounds of sale can be used instead to acquire new properties.

Advantages of taking other factors beside income into account can include: neighborhood development objectives; broadening appeal; and tailoring developments to meet the unique needs of specific targeted groups. 

Risks include: losing out on public funding targeted toward low-income persons; running afoul of equal-protection housing laws; and perpetuating patterns of discrimination based on income and color.

4. Delineate Service Area

CLT’s are place-based organizations and must define the geography within which they will operate and serve. A CLT can operate at the scale of a neighborhood, a city, and metropolitan area, or a state.

• Advantages of operating over a large geography include: 
  • Mobility for low-income people.
  • Establishing a ”fair share” of affordable housing in the suburbs.
  • Securing lower-cost land for development outside of the urban core.
  • A wider pool of applicants allowing increased selectivity.
  • Opportunity to build a broader constituency.
  • Increased opportunities for collaboration and funding.
  • Opportunity to participate in regional smart growth planning and development.
• Disadvantages of going large include:
  • Increased management costs.
  • Loss of accountability.
  • Perception as absentee landlord.
  • Competition from other organizations operating locally.
  • NIMBY-ism (“Not in my backyard”).
  • Contributing to sprawl.
  • Less community development and organizing.

5. Organize

Key constituencies of CLTs include grassroots community advocates, nonprofits, government agencies, housing professionals, public officials, and private lenders and donors.

The three key organizing principles for a CLT include:

• Community organizing: Campaigning at the grassroots level within a neighborhood.
  
  • Advantages include: 
    • Early awareness and acceptance.
    • Recruitment, marketing, and fundraising.
  • Disadvantages include: 
    • Time consumption.
    • Engendering high expectations in the community.
    • Opening up for criticism before the CLT is established.
• Core group organizing: Approaching influential institutions and individuals to engender support.
  • Advantages include: 
    • Faster support and development.
    • Credibility.
    • Borrowing capacity.
  • Disadvantages include: 
    • The burden of elitism.
    • Borrowed baggage.
    • Increased market risk.
• Resource organizing: A few advocates secure resources (funds and/or ands) from donors to seed the fund and staff the CLT, then staff commences community or core group organizing.
  • Advantages include: 
    • Acceptability.
    • Early staffing.
    • Leveraging resources.
      
  • Disadvantages include:
    • Potential guilt by association with a donor who has earlier been perceived to have wronged or neglected a community.
    • Building projects before the organization has time to develop.
    • Too much money at once risking misuse of funds by forcing development into a single direction (possibly a bad one) quickly.

6. Develop or Improve Land

Some options for CLT land development include:

• CLT-Initiated Projects: CLT acts as developer. 
  • Issues include: the role of the CLT, conflicts, capacity, and resources.

• Buyer-Initiated Acquisition: CLT purchases land and building from the seller and executes a ground lease with the buyer. 
  • Issues include: pre-qualification for homebuyers; source and amount of subsidies; neighborhood targeting; types of housing accepted; and inspection and maintenance.

• Developer-Initiated Projects: Developer approaches CLT and assumes risk during construction. 
  • Issues include: protections for CLT and evaluation of projects.

• Stewardship Projects with Partners Doing all Development: CLT makes parcels available to developer partners, taking an active role in land assembly and stewardship but not developing. 
  • Issues include: sources of funding for the CLT of developer fees are foregone; CLT’s role in ensuring quality development; and partnerships.

• Municipality-Initiated Projects: Municipality conveys land to CLT for a specific purpose (typically for the CLT to develop affordable housing). 
  • Issues include: cost of land; allocation of risks; and any reversion clauses.

• Municipally Mandated Units (Inclusionary Zoning): CLT monitors and enforces inclusionary requirements on behalf of the municipality. 
  • Issues include: compensation for services to the municipality and responsibility for units not on CLT-land.

• Public Housing Authority PHA Divested Property: Land is conveyed from the PHA to the CLT to ensure continued affordability. 
  • Issues include: CLT’s role in managing existing tenants; price of land; and post-conveyance services to residents.

7. Secure Funding

CLT’s need funding to pay for a variety of functions related to land acquisition, construction, and subsidies. 

Sources of Project Funding include the following.

• Federal Programs: U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)
  • HOME Investment Partnerships Program (HOME) and the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) Program
    • These may require special designation of CLT as a Community Housing Development Organization (CHDO) by their local Participating Jurisdiction (PJ). HUD Funds for organizational planning and development are also available.

• Federal Tax Credits: Low Income Housing Tax Credits (LIHTC) and Historic Preservation Tax Credits
• Federal Home Loan Bank
• Private Lending Institutions
• State Housing Finance Agencies
• Institute for Community Economics’ Revolving Loan Fund
• Housing Trust Funds
• Tax Increment Financing
• Municipal Real Estate
• Private Developer Exactions
• Pension Funds
• Private Foundations
• Private Land Donations
• Development Fees
• Lease Fees

Sources of Operational Funding:

• CDBG & HOME
• Private Institutions
• Private Donors
• Grassroots Fundraising
• Development Fees, Rental Income, & Lease Fees

Project funding issues include: avoidance of subsidy erosion over time; a CLT seeks to retain the subsidy in the housing stock; acquiring grants to subsidize both land costs and building construction; and strong partnerships with local lending institutions. 

Issues in securing operational funding include: competition with other nonprofits; surviving foundation fads; and staffing levels.

It takes about three years for a CLT to establish itself within a community, which may seem like a lot of work and time, but CLTs offer a lasting, systemic solution for affordable housing.

##

This how-to is based on the publication, Starting a Community Land Trust: Organizational and Operational Choices, by John Emmeus Davis. It was originally published October 16, 2013 and was significantly updated by Jennifer Foley on March 26, 2024.

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A roster of member-owners that fluctuates but currently numbers eight, operates the bookstore. They staff the space on a rotating basis during twice-weekly business hours on Wednesday evenings and Saturday mornings. Book Suey is located in Bank Suey, a corner building in downtown Hamtramck named in honor of its former incarnations (a bank in the 1920s, then more recently a Chinese takeout spot) that has become a community space.

Shareable spoke with co-founding member-owners Eric Anderson and Maria Montoya to learn more about the project’s origin and operations, as well as what the member-owners see for the future.

Shareable: How did the cooperative bookstore Book Suey get started?

Maria Montoya (MM): A group of us were working for an education nonprofit that was closing and were thinking about what to do next. Eric looked into what it would take to operate a bookstore. One day he came to work with the American Booksellers Association Guide to owning a bookstore. He got us all coffee, and we [realized] we could really start a cooperative bookstore.

At first, it was kind of like a funny thing we’d talk about while drinking rosé in the summer. But pretty soon other friends got involved. One of the first things was to find a space that would not need to be open full-time. We began a pop-up book shop in Bank Suey [that was open in conjunction with] mission-aligned community events.

What have been some of the biggest challenges operating the store?

MM: It’s challenging having such a diverse group of folks that you’re constantly making decisions with because we’re so different. Because we’re not open full-time or operating at full capacity, we’re still learning, going into our second year, what’s going to work for us as a group. Working as a cooperative group impacts our book choices, the speakers that we’re bringing in, all of the things that we decide to do, even being open on Wednesday and Saturday, the events that we attend and participate in, etc. But that’s what makes us special. We’re constantly thinking and challenging ourselves about: “Why do we do this? Why do we not have this?” I think that’s what also makes us different from a regular bookstore.

We are starting to have customers who would love to see us open more, love to see us attend events. But some of us have full-time jobs, some have very young kids. How do we continue to grow our hours and ability to be open when we’re not paid? Everybody’s working a certain number of shifts a month. The minute we decide to add another four-hour shift it’s a big commitment for everybody.

Since Michigan has no official cooperative business entity, how did you go about setting up the legal structure for the co-op?

Eric Anderson (EA): It is written into Michigan law [that] corporations [can] become co-ops. But it doesn’t really work for smaller businesses that just want to be a different type of co-op without having to deal with the complex corporate law.

So we reached out to the Center for Community-based Enterprise (C2BE). Ultimately we didn’t need their services to help us plan out of the business. But we did use their templates. They had just finished up a handbook for an LLC functioning as a worker-owned cooperative. [It had] articles of organization templates we drew from.

What are some of the requirements for Book Suey member-owners?

EA: Our requirements are partially based on international cooperative principles. We require a financial contribution, the contribution of time, and general positive energy and passion for literacy, books, and deeper thinking. Being open and honest with each other about our own time, our capacity, our interests, and what we can contribute reasonably are very important. We all have lots of things going on in our lives. A lot of us have day jobs.

We define work as voluntary participation in tasks that benefit the business. We have to do things that are vital to the business. Not everybody is like, “Oh yeah, I just love doing the dishes. I love taking out the trash.” So it is important for everybody to learn all the different aspects of the business. We’re not going to force everybody to do financial accounting. We’re not going to force everybody to do marketing. That’s the benefit of the co-op is that we have different interests and different skills and different strengths.

Although you’ve shown a profit, so far all of the labor is unpaid, and you’ve had a deep discount on rent. Is the vision for Book Suey to serve more as a community development organization or as a business that financially supports its member-owners?

EA: We see a bookstore more as a vehicle for deeper conversations and for promoting literacy. The business aspect of things — we just see that as a way of bringing people together and creating a space to come in and talk and relax and hopefully slow down and think deeper about things. So that’s what we are trying to do.

Traditionally in worker-owned cooperatives, the benefit they’ve defined is a financial benefit or living wage for worker-owners or worker members. At least right now, that’s not a priority for Book Suey. And that won’t be a priority unless we all of a sudden have five or six new member-owners join and shift the direction.

We are proud of the work that our team has done to identify some small grant opportunities to be able to pay writers who have come in and shared their work with people. That’s more important for us, to be able to financially contribute to the literary arts scene and writers and political artists.

What future goals or aspirations do you have for Book Suey?

MM: My hope for the future is that when you come to Hamtramck, this is a place where people can sit and have a conversation. They don’t have to necessarily make a purchase. If they’re looking for community, looking to go to a place where people are thinking and talking about events in the world and also books, [I hope] this is a place that comes to mind.

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

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Brooklyn, New York-based crowdfunding platform ioby's nonprofit model is unique in the civic crowdfunding space. Since launching in 2010, the platform has grown steadily and established projects in several cities. This spring, with the help of foundation funding, ioby is opening offices in Cleveland and Detroit staffed with community organizers. Plans are also underway to open offices in Pittsburgh and Washington, DC this year.

We spoke with ioby founder Erin Barnes to find out why the nonprofit model works well for civic crowdfunding.

Shareable: How was the decision made to incorporate ioby as a nonprofit?

Erin Barnes: The very first crowdfunding platform in the world was DonorsChoose. It incorporated in 1999 as a 501(c)3. When founder Charles Best told me about it, he said it started when he was a social studies teacher working in the Bronx and knew that the norm was that teachers bought their own school supplies when they're teaching in lower income school districts, and so he started this platform.

Really if you think about where the internet was in 2000, he was really ahead of his time. Facebook hadn't been invented yet. There was really no multi-user login sites. This was pre-blogs, right? He was really thinking about this as a solution to a funding issue. I think he just happened to use the internet as a tool for donation collection. They're the very first crowdfunding platform, but they, at the time, called it online-micro philanthropy.

Then in 2004, Kiva launched as a nonprofit also. They're incorporated as 501(c)3 but they do their disbursements through micro-finance institutions.

When ioby started, we were actually following in the footsteps of these two great organizations that we had admired for a long time and wanted to apply the same type of framework but to solve a different type of social problem. For us, the idea of becoming a nonprofit seemed like it was the one that had the most proven track record and the one that fit our mission-driven framework.

How has that decision impacted the organization's growth positively? Have there been things you've been able to do that you wouldn't have been able to do as a private organization?

I would say one of major of advantages of us being a 501(c)3 is that we're able to extend the 501(c)3 status through fiscal sponsorship to support grassroots work that's often operating in not-incorporated groups.

This was really part of our founding initiative. The US Forest Service had done all this research in 2007 on the grassroots groups that stewarded open green space in New York City. They inventoried these groups, and they found that about seventy percent of them are volunteer-run and more than half had annual budgets of less than a thousand dollars.

Our interest was in supporting this civic vanguard in this grassroots, mobilized network of people who just were responding to the urge to protect and care for open spaces and public spaces in cities. By being able to extend our 501(c)3 status through fiscal sponsorship, we're allowing those groups a couple different things.

One is their donors can write off their donations to those projects. The other is the groups don't have to feel forced to incorporate because they can use ioby as a fiscal sponsor up to a certain point so they don't have to have that urge to incorporate. They can stay unincorporated for longer periods of time or possibly even consider incorporating in a different way.

Then I guess the third part is, and I think that this varies depending on groups, so I would say some groups have said that being able to operate under ioby's fiscal umbrella has, in some ways, legitimized their work in the eye's of some of their potential donors or supporters. It's about people's perceptions of where they're putting their funding or who they're throwing their weight behind.

Have there been any negatives about being a nonprofit? If so, how do you overcome them?

I think the main part is that since we've founded ioby, we've grown up in a world where crowdfunding is a much more popular tool than it was when we were envisioning it. So as a nonprofit, we don't have the same access to capital that some of our other for-profit platforms in the field do, and so I feel like it's been harder for us to grow and scale up. At the same time I think, because we don't have the financial stakeholders at the center of our work, we're able to be more intentional about actually building a platform that's responsive to users' needs and actual community needs.

What other revenue sources have you been able to access as a nonprofit? 

I think we've had the most amazing foundation partners that you could possibly imagine. The funders who've supported us have been just incredibly supportive and smart and really willing to try something new with ioby. We're definitely like an out-of-the-box solution, and so we've had incredible funding partners from some of our earliest New York City-based funders, like the Mertz Gilmore Foundation and the Overbrook Foundation who've been just incredible visionaries in their field, to today where we have support from great, great people inside the Kresge Foundation and the Ford Foundation, the Knight Foundation. I think in a lot of ways those philanthropic dollars also come with a lot of experience in the field and a focus on the same types of equity issues that ioby's focused on.

Tell me a little bit about the expansion. You're launching offices and staff in Detroit and Cleveland this spring and Pittsburgh and Washington, DC, later this year. Why is it important to have boots on the group in these cities?

That's a great question, and I think the answer is different for every single one of those cities. In each city we've done a what we call our phase zero research where we listen to leaders at the neighborhood scale and understand more about what the actual needs are in the community. Depending on the place, a lot of the reason why we might opt for having a staff person on the ground usually is about building trust in communities where there's long histories of disinvestment and being able to play a role face-to-face in communities where there might be issues of a digital divide.

The other part of it, too, is, I think, in a lot of places, ioby plays much more of a role than just the simple transactions of providing funding and other support, like one-on-one to each group. But ioby also plays, I think, an important role in these cities to act as a convener, connecting different ioby leaders peer-to-peer to build a stronger network inside of the communities. That's a huge part of what we're planning to do in Detroit and Cleveland.

What is the plan to carry on this work after the foundation grants run out?

We actually really want to leave that reliance on foundation support. That's another reason why we decided to follow in the footsteps of the DonorsChoose business model for the last six years or so. They've been entirely self-sustained by earned income through their platform. When we founded ioby, we actually founded it in the same business model, in the hopes that our independence from foundation support would help us weather the tides, the ebbs and flows in funding cycles and key areas of focus. When we started ioby in 2008 there were some really difficult financial times for everyone in philanthropy. There was a lot of reduced funding options. I think ioby's designed to be a place where we can fill in the gaps of different funding ebbs and flows, and so it's even more important for us to be separate from other more traditional sources of funding in that way.

How specifically are you hoping to achieve that?

If you choose a project on ioby that you want to support, you'll notice that through the checkout process you'll get a little box that asks if you want to chip in a gratuity to ioby that goes on to support us. Right now 60 percent of donors to projects opt-in to support ioby. Our vision is that with a certain volume of projects and donors opting in to support us, we'll be able to fund our operations based on that high volume of tiny, tiny gratuity and support ioby in the long run.

Besides being a nonprofit, what's unique about ioby in the world of civic crowdfunding platforms?

Well, I think one of the biggest things is that we're completely invested in actually seeing these projects through to implementation. We want to use ioby as a tool to disrupt the way that decisions are made for communities especially in communities that there are a disproportionate number of problems and have fewer resources to address them. So we're really interested in putting residents at the center of decision-making by using scale small neighbor funded projects as a tool for bringing the attention of projects, doing demonstration projects, and making real, quick, fast change in a way that's really visible to the rest of the community.

When we're working with groups, we provide hands-on training and support to any leader that wants or needs it, being accessible to every group that works with us. We also connect leaders to practitioners and experts in the field who can help support them around implementation. A group might have a great vision to activate a vacant lot in their neighborhood and raise the funds to do so, and then realize that they might want to test the soil for lead. Or they might realize that they actually don't know who the property owner is or not know exactly how to get a permit to do their work, and so ioby works to connect those leaders with the person in their city who can help them find those answers.

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But not all public spaces are created equal. From emotional cues to physical attributes to public safety, creating quality public spaces that have the capacity to encourage serendipitous encounters, idea exchange and, ultimately, the synthesis of new ideas requires inspired design.

That's the impetus behind Geneva "artivist" Dan Acher's Happy City Lab project.  His project is "committed to the transformation of everyday life through interactive installations and events that generate powerful and participatory experiences."

Acher's projects are designed to surprise and delight, and ultimately, to get peple out of thier own boxes and interacting with the wider world. Past projects have included outdoor cinema picnics, installation of outdoor pop-up dance floors along commuter routes, a "lost piano" staged in the middle of a vacant field designed to bring people together, and "Play Me, I'm Yours!," an installation of 60 pianos on the streets of Geneva designed to inspire the inner performer of everyday citizens as they go about their daily lives. Acher's Neighborhood Exchange Boxes facilitated community interaction through the sharing and reuse of goods.

Happy City Lab's most recent installation is Street Light Orchestra, which premiered at Geneva World Music Day. The outdoor music and light installation allows passersby to stroll among virtual orchestra sections represented by various lights, pulsating to the rhythm and beat of classical works of music.

Acher writes about the piece:

Strangers smile easily at each other in this highly sensory environment, while others lean back and close their eyes or even start to dance. This musical and visual installation can really bring to life an underused urban area or create a captivating space in a festival or street party.

Words are inadequate. Check out this video to get a better idea of what it's all about:

STREET LIGHT ORCHESTRA – Happy City Lab from Happy City Lab on Vimeo.

The post Street Light Orchestra Creates an Urban Commons of Music and Light appeared first on Shareable.

Cowbird is a project launched in 2011 by artist and computer scientist Jonathan Harris in an effort to “deepen the web,” according to the Wall Street Journal. The website is working to create a digital archive of shared human consciousness. The website bills itself as a “public library of human experience, offering a simple set of storytelling tools — for free, and without ads.” Users own their content, selecting from any of the six Creative Commons licenses for their work.

Stories are tagged by a wide array of topics, and the archive is searchable. One can search everything related to “1979” or by an array of roles, everything from “writer” to “wanderer” to “yogi.” The site has all of the functionality of a social networking site; items can be shared, commented on and “loved.” But it differentiates itself by pointing out that where “Social networks try to be timely; Cowbird tries to be timeless.”

So far, the site has stories by 54,849 authors from 185 countries, who have told 84,304 stories on 28,121 topics. The site focuses on text, audio and images (no video). And it has established production partnerships with some hard-hitting media organizations, including National Geographic, Transom and NPR.

Stories on Cowbird run the gamut, of, well, human experience.  One story recounts the experience of a woman organizing black, female, domestic worker, bus-riders in Oakland, California, protesting curtailment of bus service in 1950. Another recounts a week teaching yoga at a conference in Mexico, witnessing the sunrise. Yet another tells of the bond between father and son.

In the last several weeks, devotees of Detroit social justice activist and teacher Grace Lee Boggs, who passed away on Oct. 5, have been using the tool to commemorate Boggs’ legacy through their stories. So far, 16 people have “sprouted” a “seed” planted by local independent multimedia journalist Zak Rosen on the site, asking “What did Grace Lee Boggs teach you?”

The site is supported through optional “citizen” donations of $5/month. You can get started telling your story at Cowbird.com.

The post Cowbird Builds a ‘Public Library of Human Experience’ appeared first on Shareable.

Ten schools were initially selected to participate in the Kickstarting Making it in Schools pilot project, which aimed to raise funds to design and implement projects in topics including applied mathematics, energy, literacy and entrepreneurship.Staff at participating schools also took part in professional development facilitated by The Children's Museum of Pittsburgh focusing on networks, building community through crowdfunding, research and evaluation and taking projects to scale.

The funding will enable a diversity of maker projects and integrate with school curricula. "Makers Explore the Six Days of Creation" at the Yeshiva Schools of Pittsburgh raised $5,146 from 46 backers to " reimagine the teaching of Genesis and the Hebrew language through the integration of hands-on learning experiences with new tools and materials." A "Kiski-area Upper Elementary Makerspace", which raised $19,020 from 53 backers, looks to " integrate woodworking, fabrication, and interdisciplinary DIY learning between the humanities and STEM for suburban fifth and sixth graders." And a "Kickstart Making at Burgettstown Area School District" project, which raised $6.137 with 53 backers, seeks to "bring hands-on learning experiences, tools, and materials to rural students who don’t have access to maker resources."

According to techopedia.com, the maker movement is "a trend in which individuals or groups of individuals create and market products that are recreated and assembled using unused, discarded or broken electronic, plastic, silicon or virtually any raw material and/or product from a computer-related device."  In a school context, educators teach concepts through a hands-on process where students tinker, find their own answers and deliver a product.

The maker movement has been gaining traction in schools in recent years according to a 2013 Center for Digital Education article, which notes that educators see makerspaces as a way to engage students via hands-on projects past the lower elementary period. Others see it as an antidote to increased academic mandates and testing. Projects like The Maker Education Initiative are working to "create more opportunities for all young people to develop confidence, creativity, and interest in science, technology, engineering, math, art, and learning as a whole through making."  

Want to start a makerspace in your community's school? Here are some tips to get started, and here's a list of 3 key qualities for a school makerspace.

The post Collaborative Kickstarter Campaign Raises $102,770 for 7 School Makerspaces appeared first on Shareable.

A Chinese electric vehicle (EV) manufacturer has a novel approach to making a dent in China's smog problem. Kandi, a publicly traded company on the NASDAQ exchange, is building networks of urban EV car share "vending machines" — garages that can dispense up to 300 fully charged electric shared cars — in China's most polluted cities to address the problem at scale.

China's urban smog problem is notorious. According to a 2015 study conducted by the University of California Berkeley, 38 percent of the population breathes toxic air on a daily basis, and 1.6 million die annually from smog. That's about 4,000 smog-related deaths per day.

And although the study points the finger at coal burning for electricity as the culprit, automobiles are widely believed to be a significant contributor to smog in major cities. In May, 2014, the Chinese government announced plans to remove 6 million vehicles from the road to combat smog, and has been subsidizing the EV industry in recent years.

Can electric vehicles alone make a difference? Tesla is looking to build its electric cars in China, and expects Chinese EV sales to exceed those in the United States by 2021. And manufacturing of electric cars in China is spiking. But with China's rapidly expanding urban population, and attendant problems like "nightmarish"  urban gridlock, it seems unlikely that single-owner electric vehicles will prove a panacea for China's urban woes.

But by building networks of EV car share "vending machines" in major smog- and traffic-choked cities, Kandi is leveraging sharing to address the issue head-on by reducing the number of cars on the road. In addition to selling vehicles to private owners, Kandi is constructing garages to deliver fully charged vehicles to users on an hourly basis for approximately $3-$4 per hour. Vehicles are also available for longer-term leases for $130-$160 per month, according to tharawat. The vehicles can go uo to 75 miles on a single charge, and can travel up to 50 miles per hour. Kandi's multilevel garages can store as many as 300 cars.

Shenzen-based analyst Guotal Junan told therawat that the business model is strong because it eliminates the need for individual owners to charge cars.

The automaker expects to expand into 15 Chinese cities by the end of 2014, according to Bloomberg Business.

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Over the summer, a crowdsourced Dutch upstart called The Things Network covered the city of Amsterdam with its' own wireless network called LoRaWAN. The project was entirely crowdsourced by citizens and was implemented over a period of six weeks.

Short for Long Range Wide-area network, this community-owned LoRaWAN created a low-power, low-bandwidth network ideal for allowing objects to communicate with one another. In short, it's an open source network for the long-touted Internet of Things (IoT).

The Things Network group claims it can build an IoT network for 20% the cost of other products on the market. And the group pledges to keep both the network’s hardware and software open source.

Now, The Things Network has launched a Kickstarter campaign to "make the products more easily available to our community, backers and everyone else around the world who supports our vision and would like to make their hometown a smart city."

In the Kickstarter video, The Things Network initiator Wienke Geizeman says "In the old world, it was up to large corporations to build such things. We built the network from the ground-up, funded by its users." He says the group's mission is to create an IoT network that is created by the people and is free and open for everyone to use.

Backers are asked to help build the network across the globe. Through the campaign, they can purchase various combinations of LoRaWAN Things Gateways (which serves as the main building block of the network, functioning as a router between the things and the internet), the Things Uno (an Arduino Uno with LoRaWAN connectivity) and Things Node (a small box full of LoRaWAN-compatible sensors operable within 10 km of a Gateway.)

For $6,625, backers will receive a "City starting pack" including 10 Gateways, 40 Unos and 40 Nodes, "combined with a kick-off workshop and advice on the placement and implications from one of our community members on location! (travel and stay not included)." 

For $1,656, backers receive a "large hackerspace / small university" kit – two gateways and 30 Unos, enough to cover a small campus or large area. And for , backers receive a Gateway, Uno and Node.

Users can identify the number of people they might potentially impact with a gateway by typing an address into an app on The Things Network's website. 

With a few weeks to go, much of the goal has already been met. The deadline for reaching their $165,630  goal is Nov. 20. Check out their Kickstarter campaign here.

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In most suburban communities across the United States, much of the urban landscape is stratified. Not only are Americans separated by race and income; increasingly, they are separated by age.

The result is stronger generational divides than we've perhaps ever seen in human history. Outside of a visit to their grandmothers, many suburban kids may rarely see an elderly person these days. And vice-versa.

But one suburban Boston community is bucking the trend. According to the the Atlantic's CityLab, the city of Swampscott, Massachusetts saw a pairing of needs–and efficiencies–when planning its senior center and high school.

“There was so much overlap, and it just seemed to make sense,” architect Philip Poinelli tells reporter Amy Crawford. The city saw shared need for things like pottery studios, arts centers and walking space. So instead of building two separate buildings on two separate parcels of land, they innovated. The Swampcott Senior Center and Swampscott High School share land and facilities, reducing the financial burden on the city.

But perhaps most importantly, the students and seniors interact. That interaction, according to the article, has been largely informal.  Sports teams consult with elderly men's groups on strategy. Elderly women teach high-schoolers to knit. But the potential is there for more. And the potential for casual interaction exists as well — for young people to recognize that elderly people are a valuable part of society, and for the elderly to be reinvigorated by interacting with youth.

According to urban planning gurus Andres Duany, Elizabeth Plater Zyberck and Jeff Speck, this separation was achieved by a strict policy of separating land uses in suburban development since the 1950s. One of the effects of this was limiting interaction between the generations. In their authoritative history of suburbanization, SUBURBAN NATION: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream, they write:

"It should not be surprising that in contemporary suburbia, with its strict separation of land uses, has inadvertently segregated the elderly from the rest of society. Prior to 1950, there were few, if any, retirement communities in the United States; they did not exist because they weren't needed.The elderly would almost always stay in their old neighborhoods after retiring."

This state of affairs has prompted efforts by urban planners and advocates to make easier for the elderly to "age in place" and remain a part of–and a resource for–their communities.

The National Aging in Place Council is working towards "creating a system for aging in place in America." And programs like the Intergenerational Urban Institute at the University of Massachusetts at Worcester conduct outreach programs to engage the elderly with university students, often as part of future urban planners' education. Multigenerational urban developments, like this townhome development in Kentucky and this cohousing development in Maine are on the rise. As are senior villages, local networks of seniors who pool their buying power for services, socialize, and age in place together.

Perhaps gone are the days when 3-4 generations might live together under one roof. But perhaps more cities can be inspired by Swampscott's vision to pair like needs with disparate populations—and bridge the generational divide.

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It's no secret that the United States prison system is a failure. Dismal statistics abound about the growing prison population. Despite having only 5 percent of the world's population, the United States incarcerates a quarter of the world's prisoners, according to the Economist.

With that massive population comes a litany of woes: overcrowding, egregious racial disparity in incarceration rates, and less money spent on education and public infrastructure. The total direct monetary cost to taxpayers is estimated at $39 billion, money that could be spent on badly needed public education and infrastructure.

But of all the statistics, the recidivism rate is perhaps the most bleak. According to the National Institute of Justice, 76.6 percent of released prisoners are rearrested within five years in the United States.

Compare that with the recidivism rate of prisoners who have participated in the world's first prisoner-organized-and-owned cooperative in Puerto Rico: Cooperativa de Servicios ARIGOS. Only six percent of participants were rearrested in the past ten years. The general recidivism rate in Puerto Rico is 50 percent.

The cooperative was established by prisoners who were looking for a market for their crafts, according to PolicyLink. The group successfully lobbied then governor of Puerto Rico, Sila Maria Calderon, to change legislation to allow those convicted of crimes to participate in cooperatives.

Each prisoner gets a voice and a vote in all decisions made by the cooperative. Their efforts bring in revenue for the prison, but more importantly, they build skills, a sense of personal investment and self-respect. Prisoners can earn more in the cooperative than they can working for the prison, that benefits their lives and allows them to help support their families while in prison. And the skills they gain give them foothold for life outside of bars.

Some have likened the dominant paradigm of prison labor in the United States to "corporate slavery." Prisoners are released back into society with few skills and little confidence or vision in the possibility of investing in themselves and their communities. The results are clear in high recidivism and the overall growing incarceration rate.

Roberto Luis Rodriguez Rosario, one of the cooperative owners in Puerto Rico, tells PolicyLink:

"We've learned how to run a business, and some former inmates now have their own small businesses outside as a result. If you can change the way people think in prison, you can do anything. It is a model for social change."

For more on Rosario's experience with the coop, check out the recent interview here from the Sustainable Economies Law Center.

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