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Public workshop tools in the forms of games and symbols using colour-coded T-shirts or devising rubber stamp games to illustrate how different currencies and markets can operate within a community and to understand the practicalities involved in community currency creation.
For residents to try out a prototype, amp is set up as peconome.
peconome has 3 components:
pecobanque which connects to the
Credit cooperatif Banque in Nantes using €s
pecocoop the starting cooperative market
at Maison Radieuse (using €s within cooperative markets)
pecos the complementary currency for trading
in the complementary markets at Maison Radieuse. The pecos currency is linked to a time value of
60 minutes = 10 pecos.
To participate in the prototype resident families may register and monitor their own accounts online. All trading is cashless through inter-account transfers.
am prototype developed using drupal
Try out the prototype:
amp demo site if you are a member of the public
[no longer on server]
amp prototype
Modelling a participatory social currency prototype based on research at Maison Radieuse and other residential developments as prototypes of high density habitats.
The working prototype for research may be viewed as a kind of new inhabitant that sees beyond the 'naked eye' for an understanding of potential interactions within high density neighbourhoods.
amp social currency concepts
In these brief 10 minute video sketches, residents from different apartments at Maison Radieuse give us an introduction to the ideas and the practical problems around initiatives through different associational activities.
Maison Radieuse marché
The vegetable and fruit market is now an integral part of the life of Maison Radieuse. Here Abdel Karim Boucham describes how the farmers market came together after the first ecos workshops in 2006. At the time, the market grew from the links with the vegetable allotments and seed exchanges along with various attempts on how best to manage it in coordination with local farmers. Given its sucess in such a short time, Abdel discusses the dilemmas in how best to advance the philosophy behind the market without compromise.
Rainwater Harvesting
The roof at Maison Radieuse hosts a range of resources including a nursery school by Zenakis.
With a surface area of about 1800 sq metres, the roof also has the potential to supply 40 to 60 cubic metres of water per annum through recovery of rainwater. Dominique Leroy explains some of the possibilities for this recovery using collection tanks located in the lifts.
Compostri
The communal composting initiated as an independent association Compostri after ecos 2007 based on voluntary use. Resident bring their organic waste to the compostri every Saturday. Yannick Métriau speaks briefly about the practicalities involved. With the high level of use, Compostri now plans to replace the 3 cubic metre prototype composting shed with one 5 times as large.
The social economy is seen as separate processes brought together by residents through associational groups. There are 2 parts:
1 making the components of a potential economy by initiating, evolving and then instituting social activites:
creating new social realities in the daily life of Maison Radieuse.
2 optimise potential interconnections between the activities and associations.
How these 2 strands evolve is not predictable but what matters is that through them the nature of the cultural life of what is Maison Radieuse changes with new self-made social institutions.
a proposed working social map:
As a form of social currency, ecosXchange is based on the 2 realities of today's markets:
1 the Individual consumer
2 the Global Market
ecosXchange mediates between the two, critically creating a localised new subject in-between.
Maison Radieuse is Le Corbusier's Unité building in Rezé, Nantes.
The building consists of:
290 apartments housing a 1000 residents of which:
50% are socially housed in council apartments
25% are tenants in privately owned apartments
25% are owner-occupiers.
A breakdown of Maison Radieuse' social composition would be: craftsman, small business owners 2%; professional classes 10% ; intermediate professions, employees, working class professions 63% ; retired persons 10% ; unemployed 15%.
Maison Radieuse
3 ideas about what it does 
[opens in pop up window]
The concept of ecosXchange is planted as a virtual resident in a living context, a piece of evolving software whose programme consists of different operating elements - similar to the way that computer programmes apply themselves to virtual environments. The programme applies itself in 3 modules:
Currency Producer
this creates the currency i.e. underwrites the value of the currency and the amount to be put into circulation. The resources that reduce ecological footprint have actual economic value drawn out of the economic savings made. This VALUE is released as 'shares' or points equitably within the community but tradable only for services and goods that further the aims of ecosXchange through reduction of collective ecological footprint.
Currency Circulator
a software circulates the share value created by the producer. The circulation is the way of linking segregated social exchanges. The medium of circulation would be cell phones and internet drawing on accounts assigned to each apartment cell.
Currency Node
this is a social resource, a kind of 'bank' that stores and monitors the complementary exchange.
ecosXchange: an idea for a complementary cultural currency presented at ecos a convention on eco-creation at Le Corbusier's Unité d'Habitation in Rezé, Nantes August 2006.
ecosXchange