What you'll find in here:What is Urbánika?The Why?The vision (what you help build)When and Where?What we need and ways to contributeWhat is Urbánika?An Immersive Urban Commons SchoolUrbánika teaches about the intersection of Web 3.0 and regenerative urban governance. 🧐 Wait...what does that even mean?We are immersive because teaching regenerative urban governance -aka urban commoning practices, is a convivial process. We offer it through an IRL experience taking a group of neighbors sharing a street or block, and guiding them in solving their coordination failures through urban commoning and the use of web3.🧠The Why?Urbánika is the third general iteration of urban commoning exercises and learnings that Humberto Besso Oberto Huerta and other great activists have gone together in the quest of solving local problems that the government nor private companies were able to offer.If you want to have a quick read about the three iterations, check out this Twitter thread.Back to web3...If you are into blockchain you may have already envisioned dozens or hundreds of applications that could optimize the way local governance is carried out. But thinking that the people in power will adopt something that will bring more public scrutinity and distribute decision-making back to the citizens, is näive.So, if governments are not going to adopt better practices, who will?Well, after several internal testings within the Urbánika project we found out that the only people that currently acknowledge their NEED to improve their coordination game are CONDOMINIUMS.🏘️Why condominiums (condos)?Condos have the requirement to coordinate in providing and maintaining their own security, parks, streets, drainage, street lights, etc, because they are considered private and thus, out of the public administration.So they pay a monthly fee to keep things up.So what?Well, the only way that neighbors know to keep things up is through an administrative board. This mechanism happens to output the same negative effects that (almost every) local public administration:Non-transparent use of common resources,Corruption and incompetence,Privatizing or giving away shared resources,Not true representativity due to looking for their own benefit instead of for the common one,... Do I need to continue?You might be getting the big picture now...People living in condos are generally unhappy with the way their fees are managed, that's why there's a growing market of software solutions and even professional condo managers offering their services.That's where Urb´ánika comes...❤️‍🔥The VisionDecentralize city management.We envision a future where a city is ran by its neighborhoods, and the neighborhoods by their blocks, and each block by the houses forming it.That could lead to one day be possible to live in a State that is ran by its Municipality DAOs, and each Municipality by its City DAOs, and so on...Obviously, this requires a cultural, economical, and political shift, it requires an ontological shift. So if you'd like to make it possible support us.Let's get into the details.⏳When and Where?We've gone through several internal iterations:2022, Propaganda machine for the commons (video-series explaining the commons in an entertaining way)2023, Gamified courses about postcapitalism and web3 (video courses, learning capsules in the form of 1-min videos and twitter threads)Now, IRL immersive experience teaching neighborhood coordination, commoning, and web3 using a school bus as the setting.Example of one of our 1-min long videos made in collaboration with David BollierTake the course we created with David Bollier. It currently holds 15 videos divided in 5 levels. There are two things we are working on at the moment:🎓The Web3 Neighborhood Governance constructive research,🚌The Climate Positive bus🎓The Web3 Neighborhood Governance constructive researchWe have outlined a scientific research approach to carry out the DAOification process of neighborhoods. With it, we have applied to several research grants:🐖Summer of Protocols: https://forum.summerofprotocols.com/t/improving-decision-making-protocols-within-neighborhoods/564⛓Ethereum Foundation Academic Fellowship: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-utxdiJ03zqRhujTNquLwFMolvYFHe-NhhESWugzmn4/edit#heading=h.s8nha0y6sckp🎯 Research goalsUnderstand how a neighborhood can become a DAO, and,Co-produce interfaces and experiences together with the actors involved in the neighborhood governance.Together, these two goals seek to ease the adoption of DAOs as a cyber-physical environment for collaborative and coordinated action.The research follows a constructive approach, which means we are creating artifacts that can be tested by us and by others to advance the DAO and Smart City knowledge fields.🗺 Where will this research happen?This applied research will be carried out first in México within three cities: Querétaro, Monterrey, and Chetumal. These cities will take us a year of work, after it, the research journey will be extended to a four-year period covering different cities in LatAm.From carrying out the first year of research an open knowledge methodology for DAOifying urban communities will be delivered. This methodology will be available under a Creative Commons license within our dedicated Github repository.The repository will include the open source interfaces and the insights each neighborhood provided. We have been invited to write about this research journey within the Handbook of Blockchain in Public Governance, which will be launched in 2025.💻 Which tech stack are we including within the neighborhood governance workshops?Decentralized Identity (Smart Wallets for DID creation with Candide, and DID managers like Gitcoin Passport, Holonym)Attestations (EAS, POAPS, and Hypercerts)On-chain delegation (Hats protocol)eForum and decentralized project management (Charmverse and DeWork)Fundraising and allocation (Giveth, Gitcoin, and SAFE)Additional to the cyber-physical peer governance facilitation we are providing workshops on the commons and SolarPunk retrofitting (implementing eco technologies and DePIN iniatiatives), movie nights, and serious games that bring up awareness like Game Changers: the game and CommonsPoly.🏆 Research team.The research team is currently composed of a post-doctoral advisor in Public governance, a PhD in Economics, a Master in the Science & Arts of eGovernance and public sector innovation, an Architect specialized in Urbanism, and two Fron-End engineers. We are excited about the team and the potential research outcomes which will definitely lead to enriching both the DAO and Smart cities knowledge fields.🚌 Climate-positive busWhat's the bus for? It aims at two goals:1) Become a climate tech showroom to immerse public and private decision makers into adopting regenerative technologies and practices, and,2) Facilitate the emergence of self-managed, regenerative, and smart cities.The bus is so massive that it attracts people and its setup facilitates a learning and playing environment where everything is possible.What will the bus contain?Biofilter. A closed cycle within the bus will allow us to reuse the same water again and again throughout the whole year with only an 8% of annual loss. The biofilter will allow us to even drink the water we use for washing our clothes! The system is being designed by Hombres de Maiz and 9 Viento Arquitectos.Self-contained dry toilet. A waterless toilet that mechanically mixes the human waste with composting material (ash, soil, leaves, and fungus). When the composting bag is full, it is taken out and poured in a composting container where a few months later will be ready to regenerate the soil. The toilet is this one but adapted with a series of systems to improve comfort. The final design will be uploaded as a Creative Commons license so others can replicate it.Rain water harvesting. In combination with the biofilter, the water harvesting from Isla Urbana will provoke conversations around how many things in the city are designed to pollute and waste, and how simple it is to change.Solar panels. Gifted to us by Helios. These panels will power up all the energy and allow us to talk about retrofitting opportunities for energy intensive buildings and infrastructure.Wind turbine. This one will power the bus at night and when it is cloudy. The goal is to widespread the use of wind turbines as a complimentary source of energy, which is cheaper than solar panels.Plastic to diesel. A smaller design of the PetGas machine is underway. The goal is to show that gasoline, diesel, and other commercial products can come from plastic waste. Seeing the machine that generates the diesel the bus uses will help municipalities and transport collectives to understand an attractive way of implementing circular economy.Plastic to furniture. We are aiming to make some of the bus furniture from recycled plastic. The first iteration are the bus' glasses. Thanks to the Nouns Amigos community we got the funds to build a giant pair of Noggles (Nouns goggles). The ReFi Tulum team leads several SolarPunk awareness dynamics, one of these is engaging tourists and locals to recover plastics from the beaches to later show them in what "waste" can be turned into, such as in our Noggles. Once we receive the glasses we will assess which other pieces of furniture will be made using this method. With this we aim to show that circular economy has many appliances that also look great.The bus is under transformation by CIMEX, at our github you can check out all the plans and renders so if you have a similar crazy idea, you can save thousands of dollars and several hundreds of hours in research and experimentation.Here's the current render:In the next few weeks we will update the render and photos with the biofilter, self-contained dry toilet, and rain water harvesting. And in the next few months we will also add the plastic to diesel generator. What we need and ways to contributeIf you are passionate about self-management, urban planning, peer-governance, urban regeneration, marketing, PR, commons-related meme making, video editing, please send us a DM through Twitter.com/0xUrbanika or to humberto.besso@protonmail.comYou can help with your time to accelerate the transition ahead.If you don't have the time to contribute, but you have some coins you can spare, please, please support us.We've achieved all the above thanks to supporters like you.💖 Please support us with three quick things:A heart ♥ on the project,Donating to it,and sharing it wherever you can.These things will already be doing world-impact.