D-CENT event: Network democracy for a better city

Artikkelikuva: D-CENT event: Network democracy for a better city
D-CENT’s event Network Democracy for a better city was organised in the 5th of May in Barcelona. The event attracted around 170 high-level policy makers, academics, activists, civic society organisations, and hackers gathered together to debate. 
 
The programme (see in English here / Spanish here) included four panels and 24 speakers. Joonas Pekkanen from Forum Virium Helsinki was speaking in one of the panels, titled “Experiments of democratic participation in Cities, A European perspective”. Forum Virium Helsinki is one of the D-CENT partners running the project’s dissemination and piloting in Helsinki.
 
The event explored how politics and political participation can be reinvented with concrete proposals to devolve greater control and power to citizens. It also presented network democracy tools and ideas for real participatory cities of the XXI century.
 
 
The intensive day was full of interesting presentations and discussions, including panels both in Spanish and English. The Twitter hashtag #DemocraticCity was lively with comments, pics, remarks and discussion in both languages. Some of the tweets are shared below, also have a look of the Storify roundup.
 
 
The programme was streamed and translated live, the links to the recordings can be found under each panel session. The clips include translations.
 
The event was hosted by D-CENT, Open University of Catalunya (one of the D-CENT partners) and Tecnopolitica.
 
Panel #1: Democratic-common Cities vs Smart-private Cities
 
 
The panel discussed about data ownership and privacy, cognitive capitalism, how to build democratic smart cities. Speakers (from left): Francesca Bria, Carlo Vercellone, Gemma Galdón, Evgeny Morozov and Arnau Monterde, chair of the panel. Xabier Barandiaran joined via video conference.
 
“Cities have played an essential role in changing the social order in Europe.” – Evgeny Morozov
 
Watch clips from the panel:
 
Presentations:
Carlo Vercellone
Gemma Galdon

 
Panel #2: Citizen movements’ new generation campaigns in Spain

 

 
The panel included representatives from Podemos, Ahora Madrid, Barcelona En Comú, Zaragoza en Común, Kuorum.org and Labodemo. It discussed different forms and levels of participation, initiatives by Podemos, Barcelona En Comú’s collaborative process to make up the party programme, and how the Spanish 15-M movement has changed the whole landscape in Spain in terms of participation.
 
The speakers (from the left): Pablo Soto, Matias Nso, Miguel Ardanuy, Miguel Aguilera, Javier Toret and Miguel Arana (chair).
 
Watch clips from the panel:
 
 
Panel #3: Experiments of democratic participation in Cities, A European perspective
 
 
The panelists presented democratic participation experiments in Reykjavik, Helsinki, Germany and Estonia. Speakers (from the left): Marcelo Branco, Sören Becker, Robert Bjarnason, Hille Hinsberg, Joonas Pekkanen, Fabrizio Sestini (chair).
 
“Representative democracy isn’t real democracy. We have to move beyond it with new forms of decision-making.” – Marcelo Branco
 
Watch clips from the panel:
 
Panel #4: New political movements for real democracy in Europe
 
 
The fourth panel of the day presented new political movements in Europe, like 5SM Italy, Syriza Greece, Podemos Spain, Pirate Party Iceland and Barcelona En Comú in Spain. Speakers (from the left): Andreas Karitzis, Birgitta Jónsdóttir and Gala Pin. Other panelists were Daniel Ripa, Silvana Denicolo and Pablo Gerbaudo (chair).
 
“E-participation enables people to get over institutions & go their own way, with or without the institutions.”  – Daniel Ripa
 
Watch clips from the panel:
 
Presentations:
Fabrizio Sestini
Hille Hinsberg
Robert Bjarnason
Sören Becker
 

 
D-CENT also did a bunch of new interviews. The interviews will be edited soon and published in the website and Vimeo. In the meantime, check the past interviews here.
 
D-CENT pose from Forum Virium Helsinki, Finland:
 

 
D-CENT is a Europe-wide project creating privacy-aware tools and applications for direct democracy and economic empowerment. Together with the citizens and developers, it is creating a decentralised social networking platform for large-scale collaboration and decision-making. D-CENT partners come from seven countries spread across Europe. Forum Virium Helsinki is one of the partners, running the project’s dissemination and piloting in Helsinki.
 
 

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