Le but de Commons Josaphat, une plate-forme d’habitants de quartier, de militants et d’associations, est d'en faire un quartier en bien commun afin que la ville puisse être plus durable, plus participative et plus équitable. Commons Josaphat a élaboré une proposition d'aménagement qui porte sur l’organisation de l’habitat, le travail, la vie dans ce quartier, qu'il a présenté à la Région Bruxelloise, propriétaire du terrain, et auprès des deux communes impliquées. Cette initiative est une expérience vivante de tentative de négociation avec la puissance publique de l'aménagement urbain en commun.
Commons Josaphat is responsible for piloting a potential urban commons project taking place in a public terrain of 24 hectares. The terrain was previously set to become an area for the European Union Community, but the project fell through. The terrain is now unused, suffering from regulatory slippage, and is at risk of becoming a private development without any consideration of the neighboring communities. Commons Josaphat has provided communities and municipalities legal tools (such as a community land trust) and financial models of urban agriculture for commons-based activities that would benefit the communities as a whole. However, the main objective moving forward is to officialize the space as a community-based terrain through a collective decree. Once that is achieved, the terrain will be used as a collective space for neighboring communities using shared added value (investments brought back and collectively distributed to the community), shared decision making (decisions made together by all stakeholders), participatory budgeting, equal redistribution, and a local open source economy based on peer-production and commons. Such economic activities would include a base in locally-produced urban agriculture, energy production through energy neutral building (via a community-owned corporation), information technology that allows for peer production, and local community-based markets and stores.
This project is of major interest for the Charters of the Urban Commons project for several reasons. Similar to Falkirk, the initiative is based on halting a project that would only provide for private developers and not for the communities around it, and this is somewhat unfair. It is important for these unused lands to be beneficial to communities and Commons Josaphat is at the fore of reclaiming such lands for its communities in a rights-based and fair way. Commons Josaphat has procured a 'community land trust' which is one of the major conceptual themes of the atlas project. We have similar experiences to Commons Josaphat already in the atlas project, and establishing links between them is a quintessential asset of our project. In addition, the project is also based on establishing a local community-based social economy, which is a key theme in commons. In establishing a commons in this space, we have an interest in studying all the processes and experiences that Commons Josaphat has undergone to make this initiative more pronounced and well-rounded. The use of participatory budgeting and open source information technology will be a reoccurring theme in urban commons throughout the world, and we have a responsibility of linking such projects together to forge a transfer of knowledge, information, experiences, and recommendations that will make commons much more important in tomorrow's economy.
