Just Urban Economies

Projects

Bronx Cooperative Development Initiative

The Just Urban Economies Program accelerates social

innovation in and from marginalized communities in the

The United States by:

1. Co-creating a reference model for operationalizing

economic democracy in New York City (DO);

2. Building a network of practitioners across the United

States for experimentation, learning, co-creation,

coordination, leveraging Colab's international

networks [LINK]

3. Using community-driven learning and communications

to identify what works in the field, develop popular

education tools, and build a structural analysis of

economic democracy (THINK)

1. REFERENCE MODEL (DO):

A model for how to operationalize economic

democracy and self-determination among

marginalized communities in the New York City

region

Working with local stakeholders as a core partner of the

Bronx Cooperative Development Initiative, JUE is co-

developing six infrastructure projects necessary to build an

ecosystem for economic democracy in the Bronx. We are

building this economic development model that creates

shared wealth, ownership and governance for low-income

people of color as a living example for others who seek to

transform the economy.

2. NETWORKS (LINK):

A series of interconnected networks for coordination

and shared analysis among people and

organizations across the United States to facilitate

learning, diffusion of ideas, and movement building.

JUE is building multiple, overlapping networks of

practitioners and marginalized communities working toward

economic democracy and self-determination as beachheads

of resistance. We support the Mel King Community Fellowship program, including a cohort of legislators of color

from the Bronx and Central Brooklyn and a transnational

practitioners' cohort, as well as the Economic Democracy

3. LEARNING AND COMMUNICATIONS (THINK):

Documentation, evaluation, structural analysis, and

communication of lessons learned from economic

democracy experiments within and beyond our

networks

To develop more sophisticated strategy for and

implementation of responses to oppression, JUE uses

participatory methods to document and evaluate our

reference model and to assist members of our networks to do

the same with their models. We convert these learnings into

accessible media and popular education tools, to

disseminate ideas across our networks, and connect to

existing knowledge on regional planning and development,

gentrification and displacement, network building, and other

processes in urban political economy.