Developing Digital Commons for Cities

There is a little-known struggle going on right now over how a new series of “top level domains” (TLDs) on the Internet shall be used by cities of the world. TLDs are the suffixes at the end of Web addresses, such as .com, .org and .edu. The international body that oversees TLDs is expected to announce a new series of TLDs in 2012 that would give cities their own TLDs (e.g. .nyc or .paris). The new TLDs could make it easier for people in the same metropolitan areas to find each other and interconnect on the Internet and in physical spaces.

The question is, who shall have authority to manage the city-based TLDs, and under what terms? Very few people understand that the anticipated city TLDs represent a world-changing urban infrastructure that could well be squandered through short-sighted privatization. For example, New York City’s IT department has control over the TLDs, and they are currently planning to sell them off. So, for example, the address www.restaurants.nyc or www.bronx.nyc could be privately owned by the highest bidder.

Imagine if these TLDs were used to promote the economic, social, or cultural life of a city, and were treated as critical infrastructure of the same order as roads and bridges. For example, what if neighborhoods or regions of a city could have their own name connected with the TLD, as in Brooklyn.nyc? That website, operated as a commons, could be a portal into the businesses, civic spaces, and resources of that neighborhood. The website www.brooklynlibraries.nyc could give you a listing of all of the libraries in Brooklyn, and www.brooklynrestaurants.nyc could give you a list of all restaurants, without having to use Google and getting 50 million answers.

In essence, localities could claim their identities on the Internet, which would have enormous ramifications for the governance of real spaces in neighborhoods and cities. Fortunately, we have a pioneer to emulate in this regard – the City of Linz, Austria, which has long been at the forefront of civic-minded uses of the Internet and digital technologies. It pioneered free wifi hotspots in dozens of places throughout the city and provides free email service to residents for non-commercial purposes.

A few months ago, Linz announced that the city would create a regional information commons. Linz Open Commons is an attempt to build a technological and policy infrastructure to enable easy, cheap sharing of information – from government-wide uses of open source software to open street maps and open data platforms, to open educational resources and the use of Creative Commons licenses. The city sees this initiative not just as a civic initiative, but as an economic development initiative.

The commons doesn’t try to roll everything up into standardized, commoditized, fungible units that can then be centrally controlled – the way that global markets and governments aspire to do. Rather, the commons seeks to re-embed market activity within a social community so that resource management can become socially responsive and accountable. It is about making the management of ecological resources more sustainable.

All of these capacities of commons hold a great deal of promise in rejuvenating cities. But first we need to teach ourselves to see through the prism of the commons and imagine the possibilities.

This article is an excerpt from my original blog post, which is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license.  Read my full post >>