This third session of the lab.metadecidim tries to lay the foundations for a participatory action research oriented to explore models of democratic governance (supported by Decidim) for different metropolitan territorial scales.

 

The city is built on the basis of multiple units and scales of collective organization: the building and its community, the street and its neighborhood, the neighborhood and its people, the district and its inhabitants, the city and its citizens. These are traditional units of metropolitan organization from a vital, territorial and administrative perspective. The city is multiple not only in its structural scales but also in the temporary ones: the city has different times, its structures change. In the current sociopolitical context in Barcelona, ​​marked by processes of financialization of the territory, unbridled tourist pressure, hyper-technologicalization of life, emergence of new forms of production and calls for sustainability, the construction of autonomy and social self-organization is outlined as a key step to go beyond the smart city model towards a fair and democratic city. In this context, new city scales such as the super-masses appear as a potential space for experimentation with new forms of life and collective action in a democratic key.

 

Exploring the possibilities of connection between the governance of different territorial scales and new democratic infrastructure such as Decidim is a challenge that requires intensive and multifaceted research. According to the logic of the Decidim project, this research must be participatory. Therefore, from the Directorate of Research, Development and Innovation in Democracy and the LABmetadecidim we want to launch Decidim.territori, a research process that serves to define openly, through the collective construction of knowledge and the articulation of public debate, new models of territorial governance and, beyond that, the socio-technical structures that will make it possible to embody it. The decidim.territori research project is oriented to processively and participatively build both the Decidim functionalities appropriate for the challenge of the governance of local territorial scales and to help map and articulate the collective subjects called to exercise it. The process of knowledge thus becomes a process of recognition, construction and collective action. This third session of the LABMetadecidim wants to be a starting point.