The Commons Index as a Bridge to a New Ownership Model – Shaping Urban, Rural, and Living Values Together

Whitepaper July 2025

1. Starting Point: Cities and Countryside Under Pressure – The Search for Resilient Ownership

In the face of multiple crises – climate change, resource scarcity, and social fragmentation – traditional ownership and administrative models are no longer sufficient. Commons such as soil, forests, streams, trees, biodiversity areas, social spaces, and cultural infrastructures are increasingly under pressure. Both urban and rural areas require new responses to questions of shared responsibility, appreciation, and sustainable use.

This whitepaper outlines the connection between the "Living Values approach" and the "Commons Index" with a future-ready ownership model – one in which commons own themselves and governance is reimagined. Social and ecological values are addressed equally.

2. The Commons Index: Valuing Socio-Ecological Living Assets Without Market Logic

The Commons Index is a platform innovation that makes social and ecological services – such as cooling capacity, social integration, water retention, biodiversity contributions, neighborhood care, or educational impact – visible and accessible.

Functions:

• Economically and politically compatible indicators for urban and rural areas
• Basis for compensation models and matching funds (Valuation Adjustment Mechanisms)
• Digital twin structures for each site or area, supported by APIs, heatmaps, and geodata

Phases 1–3 (2025–2040):

• Visualization (Phase 1)
• Co-financing & Governance (Phase 2)
• Integration into spatial planning, credit logic & provisioning systems (Phase 3)

3. A New Ownership Model: Commons Own Themselves – In Cities and Countryside

Inspired by models such as Greenland, Community Land Trusts (UK/USA), commons, or Indigenous territories, we propose a new form of ownership:

Core idea: Homes, tools, infrastructures can still be owned – but the foundations of life (land, water, biodiversity, cultural spaces, social places) belong to no one – or to all. They are held, managed, and passed on through trust structures.

Structural elements:

• Commons Trusts or public-interest funds as new legal entities
• Use instead of ownership: time-limited contracts tied to care and transparency
• Protection against speculation through inalienability
• Platform-supported administration, monitoring, and governance

4. Connecting Index, Ownership Model, and AI-Supported Infrastructure for Moral Decision Spaces

A key implementation element of this whitepaper lies in its technological integration with the "Ceremonies for More-than-Human Cities" project.

Concrete interfaces:

Multispecies-Based Identities & NFC Infrastructure: Touch-based identity cards (e.g., tree, bee, mushroom) enable creative role assignment within the commons. These identities can serve as profiles for care responsibilities, governance votes, or time credits within the Commons Index.

Agentic Avatars & Disposable Language Models: Local, privacy-preserving AI agents help to process governance questions, care contracts, or participation options through dialogue. The ceremonial deletion of data (disposability) fosters trust and serves as a model for transparent, time-bound data use in the commons context.

NFT Artifacts & Collective Art: The collective NFTs developed in the project can serve as visible evidence of commons contributions and as reward systems for participation. They connect symbolic, emotional, and financial value.

Civic Sensor Infrastructures: NFC reader technology enables decentralized monitoring of commons use, care, and social integration. Decisions can thus be made data-driven but context-sensitive – a central element of the Commons Index.

Future outlook:

The technological framework from "Ceremonies for More-than-Human Cities" provides a practical prototype for technically, culturally, and institutionally embedding the Commons Index. It demonstrates how new ownership models can be sensually experienced, digitally supported, and democratically legitimized – in an urban–rural logic that links non-human life, social justice, and digital sovereignty.

5. Institutional Implementation & Scalability

Sponsorship:

A combination of cooperative (e.g., StadtLandWerte eG), educational and data platform (e.g., Nextlearning e.V.), and Commons Trust

Governance:

• Polycentric: Community council, expert committees, public sector, investors, rural and urban actors
• Rulebook via platform logic, digitalized contract & steering models

Contract Models (Examples):

• Standard Care Contract (VAM-ready): Defines care contributions, intervals, quality indicators, and compensation logic.
• Usage Agreement for Community Spaces: Valid for 5 years, renewal conditional on fulfilling transparency and care duties, linked to index score.
• Matching Agreement between Municipality and Operational Entity: Includes exit conditions, governance duties, and public-private co-investment rules.

Governance Design (Examples):

• Annual Review Cycle: Joint assessment of land performance, care quality, and governance by community council and public partners.
• Local Commons Committees: Veto rights for new projects, proposal rights for innovation budgets.
• Dynamic Rule Toolkit: Contract elements can be voted on, amended, or retired through community processes.

Communication Strategy (Key Messages):

• Our model is neither rigid ownership nor chaotic sharing – it is a scientifically grounded system combining clear rules (crystals) with local adaptations (mud).
• The platform provides reliability for administrations & investors – while enabling co-creation & fairness for communities.
• Ownership is not abolished, but reorganized – based on the real life-values that sustain us now and in the future.

Financing:

• ESG investments, public-interest bonds, funding programs (EU Green Deal, rural development, biodiversity)
• Memberships, care credits, time banks, license fees

Scalability:

• Modularization through domain-driven design & portfolio map canvas
• Commons registry as a scalable product system for urban and rural contexts
• Integration into various municipal, peri-urban & rural contexts (2030–2045)

6. Benchmarking and Unique Selling Proposition (USP)

International and national reference initiatives:

Our Unique Selling Proposition (USP):

• Combination of valuation, governance, ownership, and platform in one modular system
• Broad definition of public-interest values: social AND ecological, urban AND rural
• Politically compatible AND technologically scalable (heatmaps, APIs, digital twins)
• Democratic ownership logic without private ownership of commons
• Transition-ready: compatible with existing institutions, funding programs, planning systems

7. Conclusion: From Valuation to Sovereignty – Commons as the Backbone of a Just Provisioning Economy

The Commons Index makes the invisible visible. Commons Trusts give these values a future. Together, they form the foundation of an ownership model built not on exclusion, but on relationship, care, and fair distribution. In the long term, this creates a new backbone for public-interest urban–rural economies – resilient to crises, open to participation, and capable of transformation.

Next Steps:

• Pilot partnerships on municipal and regional levels (starting 2026)
• Legal blueprint for Commons Trust structure (by 2027)
• Development of a Commons cadaster for urban & rural areas and integration into planning frameworks (by 2030)