By Transformative Cities
The 2030 Agenda is about transforming the current unsustainable model into one that respects people and the planet.
The Transformative Cities Atlas of Utopias showcases inspiring community-led transformation in water, energy and housing. It features 32 communities from 19 countries who responded to TNI’s Transformative Cities initiative which seeks to learn from cities working on radical solutions to our world’s systemic economic, social and ecological crises.
The project is by no means a comprehensive mapping of transformative practices, but it nevertheless showcases inspiring stories of communities challenging entrenched power and boldly developing alternatives. These range from small villages in Bolivia to international cities like Paris that have defeated multinational corporations and hostile national governments and delivered democratic, people-powered solutions on water, energy and housing.
The cases show how public solutions based on principles of cooperation and solidarity rather than competition and private profit have been more successful in meeting people’s basic needs – and perhaps just as importantly in creating a spirit of confidence and empowerment that strengthen communities for many other challenges. These initiatives demonstrate in practice that another world is possible, and is already happening.
Our goal long-term is to learn from and with the communities on what delivers radical transformation at local level in terms of power relations and social and ecological justice.
“Utopia lies at the horizon. When I draw nearer by two steps, it retreats two steps. If I proceed ten steps forward, it swiftly slips ten steps ahead. No matter how far I go, I can never reach it. What, then, is the purpose of utopia? It is to cause us to advance”. Eduardo Galeano
Transformative Cities is an opportunity for progressive local governments, municipalist coalitions, social movements and civil society organizations to popularize and share their experiences of tackling and finding solutions to our planet’s systemic economic, social, political and ecological crisis.
The initiative draws on the emerging wave of transformative political practices taking place at municipal level worldwide, by launching a unique award process that will ensure that the lessons and inspiration of these cities becomes viral.