Financing the Cooperative City

»Rotaprint archi­tec­tur­al mon­u­ment. There is no prof­it to be made here«—so a ban­ner of the ExRo­taprint ini­tia­tive from 2007. The rea­son: a fight of the non-prof­it GmbH ExRo­taprint for the rights of use of land and build­ings that has been going on for years, repeat­ed­ly bro­ken promis­es and dubi­ous nego­ti­a­tions between the own­er of the land—the Liegen­schafts­fond Berlin—and inter­na­tion­al real estate com­pa­nies despite already promised and almost com­plet­ed han­dover. After long nego­ti­a­tions and mas­sive resis­tance the vic­to­ry comes for the gGmbH. With the help of Stiftung trias and Stiftung Edith Mary­on, the site is pur­chased in late sum­mer 2007 and a 99-year ground lease agree­ment is signed with ExRo­taprint gGmbH. This makes the gGmbH the own­er of the build­ings and sole­ly respon­si­ble for the project devel­op­ment. The pos­si­ble spec­u­la­tive spi­ral has been inter­rupt­ed. Since then, the entire com­plex has been man­aged and run accord­ing to non-prof­it prin­ci­ples with the aim of secur­ing het­ero­ge­neous uses and afford­able rents in the long term. The project is described as a “social sculp­ture”, which is at the same time firm­ly anchored in the neigh­bor­hood and active­ly engaged in urban the­o­ry dis­course in order to con­tin­u­ous­ly expand the basis of its work. © Mar­tin Eberle

The book and action research project Fund­ing the Coop­er­a­tive City. Com­mu­ni­ty Finance and the Econ­o­my of Civic Spaces describes numer­ous case stud­ies from across Europe, which tell of how local com­mu­ni­ty finance can be set up. A wide vari­ety of groups that have devel­oped new mod­els for devel­op­ing and oper­at­ing non-com­mer­cial spaces for their neigh­bor­hoods are pre­sent­ed and dis­cussed. None of this is easy, as many inter­views and dis­cus­sion notes reveal. But it is pos­si­ble: through the for­ma­tion of sol­i­dar­i­ty net­works, neigh­bor­ly com­mit­ment, a will­ing­ness to exper­i­ment, and admin­is­tra­tive and often finan­cial sup­port from the respec­tive communities.


Project

Open Her­itage


Actors

Lev­ente Polyák, Daniela Pat­ti, founders, Eutropi­an GmbH; Yil­maz Vuru­cu, Baha­nur Nasya, Xsen­trikarts, Eutropi­an; Andrea Giu­liano, Jorge Mos­quera, Sophie Bod, Ste­fano Pat­ti, Eleono­ra Rugiero, Julia Baudi­er, Eutropi­an team


Year

Since 2018


Loca­tions

Var­i­ous

Färgfab­riken is an exhi­bi­tion space for art, archi­tec­ture and urban plan­ning in Stock­holm, which has exist­ed since 1995 and is the result of a col­lab­o­ra­tion between the Asso­ci­a­tion of Swedish Archi­tects (Sven­s­ka Arkitek­ters Riks­för­bund), Alcro-Beck­ers, ColArt and a group of artists and inde­pen­dent archi­tects. © Yil­maz Vuru­cu, xsentrikarts
Casci­na Roc­cafran­ca, Turin. The for­mer farm was pur­chased with the help of Euro­pean funds and trans­formed into a mul­ti­func­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty cen­ter, man­aged by both pub­lic and civ­il soci­ety actors. What makes this insti­tu­tion spe­cial is the close col­lab­o­ra­tion that has devel­oped between the munic­i­pal­i­ty of Turin and mem­bers of the non-prof­it asso­ci­a­tions and groups rep­re­sent­ed in Casci­na. © Casci­na Roccafranca
Stará Tržni­ca, Bratisla­va. The Old Mar­ket Hall in the cen­ter of Bratisla­va had stood emp­ty for years. This changed in 2013, when a non-prof­it civ­il soci­ety asso­ci­a­tion took over the build­ing from the munic­i­pal­i­ty. Togeth­er with exter­nal experts, a mul­ti-func­tion­al pro­gram was devel­oped for the hall. Today, in addi­tion to a week­ly mar­ket, cul­tur­al events, con­certs and oth­er events are also held here, where­by the prof­its do not go into the pock­ets of the oper­a­tors, but into the ren­o­va­tion and preser­va­tion of the build­ing. © Boris Nemeth
ExRo­taprint © Eutropian

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A Different Kind of City Kitchen

The kitchen of Urban Space 100 finances a vari­ety of urban projects ini­ti­at­ed by civ­il soci­ety, such as the ren­o­va­tion of cul­tur­al her­itage, street music days, com­put­er work­shops for chil­dren or recy­cling sta­tions for plas­tics. © Teple Misto

When Yuriy Fylyuk and his friends moved from Kyiv to Ivano-Frankivsk in the sum­mer of 2008, they found a place with scarci­ties of all sorts. Out of this, Teple Mis­to or Warm City emerged—a net­work that today includes around six­ty local com­pa­nies. A restau­rant became one of the plat­forms for the group’s activ­i­ties and serves as a place for meet­ing as well as exchange. One hun­dred peo­ple par­tic­i­pate as co-financiers in the Urban Space 100 project. Since 2015, parts of the restaurant’s prof­its have gone into a pot that finances and sup­ports ini­tia­tives, small and larg­er projects. The mon­ey col­lect­ed in this way has already been used to restore his­toric build­ing entrances, pro­cure com­put­ers for med­ical facil­i­ties, and orga­nize sport­ing events and festivals.


Project

Urban Space 100


Actors

Yuriy Fylyuk and Wifty-two oth­er busi­ness­men, found­ing Teple Mis­to; Yuriy Fylyuk and six friends, devel­op­ing the idea of Urban Space 100; Teple Mis­to, man­ag­ing Pro­stir 100; 100 co-founders, Winanc­ing Pro­stir 100; Pro­stir 100 (NGO), allo­cat­ing grants; Restoran 100, restau­rant oper­a­tor; 23 Restoran, restau­rant man­age­ment company


Year

Since 2014, restau­rant opening


Loca­tion

Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine

The Urban Space 100 at 19 Mykhaila Hru­shevsko­ho Street in Ivano-Frankivsk—a com­bi­na­tion of restau­rant, radio sta­tion and com­mu­ni­ty center—has been around since 2014. The idea for this place was gen­er­at­ed by the Teple Mis­to Plat­form, which was respon­si­ble for the pub­lic rela­tions work for the project and was also look­ing for the founders: 100 peo­ple, all of whom want­ed to play an active role in shap­ing their liv­ing envi­ron­ment. They do this by invest­ing 80% of the prof­its from the restau­rant in social­ly com­mit­ted and non-prof­it projects. On four dates a year, the mem­bers select projects that should be fur­ther sup­port­ed. © Teple Misto
© Ste­fan Marx

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