Catalyst hub

Catalyst hubs are community-serving buildings that serve as catalysts for a regenerative culture and economy in the neighborhood - designed, governed and owned by local communities. The intention is to establish a living example with one building that can then seed other buildings as catalyst hubs, then entire blocks, and eventually a neighborhood, while networked with other initiatives in other neighborhoods around the world.

Examples

• Commongrounds in Traverse City, cofounded by cohort Kate Redman, a $15 million, 50,000 s.f. new mixed-use 4-story building with 500 community members and tenant owners.

Societal Benefits

The Societal Benefits of Cooperative Ownership
Extractive (Institutional) Ownership	Generative (Cooperative) Ownership
Financial Purpose: Maximizing profits in the short term	Living Purpose: Creating the conditions for life over long term
Absentee Membership: Ownership disconnected from life of enterprise	Rooted Membership: Ownership in human hands
Governance by Markets: Control by capital markets on autopilot	Living Purpose: Creating the conditions for life over long term
Institutional Finance: Capital as master	Community Finance: Capital as friend
Commodity Networks: Trading focused solely on price and profits	Ethical Networks: Collective support for ecologial and social norms

Adapted from Owning Our Future: The Emerging Ownership Revolution, by Marjorie Kelly

Personal Benefits

The Personal Benefits of Cooperative Ownership
Finance-As-Partner Ownership	Cooperative- As-Partner Ownership
Financial Partners: Partners based on who has money	Purpose Partners: Partners based on who shares purpose
Personal Risk: Revenue responsibility held solely by partners	Shared Risk: Revenue responsibility shared by community
Limited Support: Assistance limited to financial partner network	Extended Support: Assistance extended to cooperative community
Fragile Ownership: Partner’s project interest can change overnight	Resilient Ownership: Shared accountability in maintaining core mission
Limited Equity Growth: Limited by growth capacity of financial partners	Robust Equity Growth: Accelerated by increase in community value

Adapted from Owning Our Future: The Emerging Ownership Revolution, by Marjorie Kelly

Examples

Commongrounds is a 50,000 s.f. innovation hub cooperative in Traverse City, Michigan, which serves as both a pilot project and learning laboratory. It is presently the only project of its kind in the country - a mixed-use community building that is owned and governed as a cooperative.

Cooperative development and governance systems

Prosocial

Prosocial - A perspective, practical purpose, research effort and community toward the welfare of others and society as a whole. This might be an attitude, a behavior (e.g. helping, sharing, donating, cooperating, volunteering), or an institution. It might be directed toward family and friends or the social acceptance of all people. Ultimately, Prosocial is an entire worldview.

Co-creation

Co-creation systems - Systems, models, tools for co-creation, designed, governed and owned by participants with a shared purpose, such as campaign teams and local communities.

Self organization

Self organizing systems - Processes where some form of overall order arises from local interactions between parts of an initially disordered system. The resulting organization is wholly decentralized, distributed over all the components of the system. As such, the organization is typically robust and able to survive or self-repair substantial perturbation.

Partnerism

Partnerism - An economic system that, unlike Capitalism & Socialism, recognizes the economic value of care and adequately rewards it in both the market & non-market sectors. Like Capitalism and Socialism, Partnerism is an economic ideology that promotes a set of values, assumptions, and beliefs. First coined by Riane Eisler in The Real Wealth of Nations, Partnerism as an ideology promotes and rewards caring for one another, nature, and our collective future.

Sensemaking

Sensemaking - A process by which a large population of people are able to give meaning to their collective experiences, referred to as story-based or narrative-based assessment, and 'the first form of scalable ethnography'.

Place-Based Catalyst Hubs

Commongrounds

Commongrounds - A new 4-story, 50,000 s.f. $16 million development in Traverse City, Michigan cooperatively owned by nearly 600 members. It will feature a food incubator, coffeeshop, distillery, childcare center, cowering space for impact organizations and businesses, performing arts and events space, artist-in-residence space, and 24 workforce rental units. Construction began in Fall 2020, with tenants scheduled to move in by 2022.

Temple of Mother Earth

Temple of Mother Earth - An international plant medicine healing center created out of the need for more welcoming places for people of color. The founding Temple is based in a predominantly BIPOC neighborhood in Southeast Washington DC, offering multi-faceted healing modalities with a primary focus on sacred plant medicines. It is a safe container of spiritual resources and space holders to support everyone in its community as they step powerfully into their sovereignty.

DC Arts + Wellness Co-Creation Hub

DC Arts + Wellness Co-Creation Hub - An arts and wellness real estate cooperative based on arts, wellness, nature and indigenous values hosting community events, plant medicine ceremonies, workshops and creative, educational experiences. It will be located in a DC neighborhood to be determined with a groundbreaking goal of 2022, with a projected ownership of 1000 members.

Catalyst Hub Tulum

Catalyst Hub Tulum - A regenerative community building in downtown Tulum that is collectively developed, governed, financed, owned and programmed by the local community. It is organized as a DAO (decentralized autonomous organization) to provide a living, working, gathering place for those in Tulum to catalyze regenerative change based on the values of caring and nature.

Catalyst Hub Liechtenstein

Catalyst Hub Liechtenstein - A regenerative community building in downtown Lichtenstein that is collectively developed, governed, financed, owned and programmed by the local community. It is organized as a DAO (decentralized autonomous organization) to provide a living, working, gathering place for those in Tulum to catalyze regenerative change based on the values of caring and nature.

Regional Place-Based Cooperative Programs

Regenerate Idaho

Regenerate Idaho - An initiative in Idaho supporting community development that is collectively developed, governed, financed, owned and programmed by the local community. It is organized as a DAO (decentralized autonomous organization) to support the co-creation of living, working, gathering places in Idaho based on the values of caring, creativity and regeneration.

Mutualistic Communication + Governance

Partnerism

Partnerism - A socio-economic system that values and rewards caring for one another, nature, and our collective future. Partnerism is based on Cultural Transformation Theory, which proposes that societies used to follow a mutualistic, caring “partnership model” of civilization, giving way to today's current “dominator model” of civilization, but with growing evidence that we are returning to the partnership model.

Prosocial

Prosocial is an orientation toward the welfare of others and society as a whole. This might be an attitude, a behavior, or an institution. It might be directed toward family and friends or the social acceptance of all people. Ultimately, Prosocial is an entire worldview.

Regeneration

Regenerative Systems

Regenerative Systems - An overview of regenerative systems and their applications.

Self Organization

Systems

Self Organization Systems - A list of self-organizing systems.

Sensemaking

Sensemaking - A primer on the process by which people give meaning to their collective experiences.

Co-Creation

Co-Creation Systems - Systems, models, tools for co-creation

Regenerative Currency

SEEDS

• SEEDS - An overview of the SEEDS ecosystem.
• SEEDS Neighborhubs - A peer onboarding program for SEEDS members, learning and growing together
• Partnerism in SEEDS - A course on Partnerism, an economic and cultural system based on nature and caring, as an alternative to domination culture.
• Regenerative Civics Incubator & Alliance - a program to pilot regenerative operating systems to place-based regenerative development projects.
• SEEDS Changemakers Program - An ambassador program to onboard changemakers to SEEDS Citizens.
• SEEDS Changemaker Guide - A Changemaker's guide to participating in the SEEDS ecosystem.
• SEEDS Changemakers Onboarding Pilot - An experimental program to onboard 100 changemakers without personal invites into SEEDS via the SEEDS Changemakers Program.
• SEEDS Glossary - A glossary of key terms in the SEEDS ecosystem.
• DAO/DHO Platform - A governance, operations, and tokenomics platform for Decentralized Autonomous/Human Organizations (DAO/DHOs).
• SEEDS Roadmap - An overview of the future of SEEDS.
• SEEDS FAQ - Frequently asked questions.
• SEEDS Gratitude - An overview of the innovative gratitude system in SEEDS.
• Leading from the Emerging Future: From Ego-System to Eco-System Economies - A framework for ecosystem building based on Theory
• Regenerative Communication - A holistic human-centric approach to communication.

Regenerative Urban Planning and Development

• Form-based Codes Institute - The organization that supports regenerative urban planning operating systems known as form-based codes.
• Form-based Codes - Form-based codes are a planning and development code that prioritizes physical form (rather than separation of uses) as the organizing principle for regenerative development. The SmartCode is one example of a form-based code.
• SmartCode - A regenerative urban planning and development operating system and form-based code.
• SmartCode documents - SmartCode documents.
• Charter for New Urbanism - A set of principles and guide for regenerative community planning and development.

Development phases

1. Phase I: Develop Core Team and Vision
   1. Define and pre-develop the mission, vision and founding support team
   2. Seed the idea, enable emergence of partners
   3. Develop project access
   4. Develop cooperative governance and financing agreements
   5. Develop interim staff

1. Phase II: Develop Founding Membership and Vision
   1. Develop 15/150 founding membership
   2. Launch publicly
   3. Support visions from the membership
   4. Launch successive series of campaigns
   5. Conduct feasibility studies

1. Phase III: Property Acquisition
   1. Secure down payment for property acquisition
   2. Secure tenant partners
   3. Secure finance partners
   4. Finalize financing

1. Phase IV Optional: Construction/Renovation
   1. If necessary: Secure development and construction team
   2. If necessary: Secure development and construction loan

1. Phase V: Ongoing Management and Emergence
   1. Financial accountability
   2. Restorative practice
   3. Self organization
   4. Crowdsourced placemaking

Resources

• Be The Change Cooperative - A cooperative of local communities co-creating regenerative community buildings governed and owned by local neighborhoods through a shared platform.
• Catalyst hub cooperatives - A similar model to innovation hub cooperatives, supported by Be The Change Cooperative.
• Collective Impact Lab blog - A collection of articles on projects and systems related to innovation hubs, including The Rise of Mutual Stakeholding
• Glossary of terms related to Innovation Hubs