Wind of Renewal /Anemos Ananeosis will organise a discussion with Levente Polyak (urban planner, researcher and policy adviser) on”Funding Cooperative City”, the importance of self-organised, locally rooted, inclusive and resilient community networks and civic spaces. It is a journey from Lisbon, Madrid and Rome, via Liverpool, Rotterdam and Berlin, through Warsaw, Bratislava and Budapest, Funding the Cooperative City highlights different strategies of fundraising and investment
When: Wednesday 27.3.2019, on 19.00, (registration 18.30)
Where: WELCOMMON HOSTEL, Kapodistriou 4, Αthens 10682
The discussion will be in Greek and English and is part of “Green and Social Innovation”, a series of public events organised by Wind of Renewal in cooperation with Heinrich Böll Stiftung, Greece
Registration: windofrenewal@gmail.com (name, last name, email, organization)
Funding the Cooperative City is a book based on years of research to explore experiments in community-led urban development in European cities. Situated in the post-welfare transition of European societies within the context defined by austerity measures, unemployment, the financialisation of real estate and the gradual withdrawal of public administrations from social services, this book aims at highlighting the importance of self-organised, locally rooted, inclusive and resilient community networks and civic spaces. In a journey from Lisbon, Madrid and Rome, via Liverpool, Rotterdam and Berlin, through Warsaw, Bratislava and Budapest, Funding the Cooperative City highlights different strategies of fundraising and investment; self-organisation, resistance and cooperation with institutions; and explores the ways citizen initiatives, cooperatives, non-profit companies, community land trusts, crowdfunding platforms, ethical banks and anti-speculation foundations step out of the regular dynamisms of real estate development and arrange new mechanisms to access, purchase, renovate or construct buildings for communities.
Levente Polyak is urban planner, researcher and policy adviser. He has worked on urban regeneration programmes for the New York, Paris, Rome, Vienna and Budapest municipalities. He taught at «Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design Budapest» (MOME) and Budapest University of Technology and Economics) (BUTE (Budapest) and (TU Wien), was visiting fellow at Columbia University and the ENSA Paris-Malaquais and holds a PhD in Sociology from the Central European University. He is editor of Cooperative City, co-founder of Eutropian Research & Action (Vienna-Rome) and member of KÉK- Contemporary Architecture Centre (Budapest). He has been working as expert in URBACT networks and Urban Innovative Actions projects. In the past years, he has been researching new organisational and economic models of community-led urban development projects and methodologies of civic ecosystem-building, co-authoring the books Vacant City, Civil Város and Funding the Cooperative City.
