Based out of La Cité-des-Hospitalières, Value Collective [Pilot] took place throughout 2022: establishing a network of partners, developing operational protocols, and prototyping its programs.

In November, in partnership with Concordia’s Next-Generation Cities Institute, Value Collective is shortlisted for the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC)’s Housing Supply Challenge. This innovation challenge invited applicants to identify a barrier to the development of affordable housing and propose a solution to address it. Concerned by the financialization of housing, Value Collective proposes a rent-free residency program in the context of a living lab for alternative economic practices.

In July, the transitional urbanism project Hospitalières en transition is launched at la Cité-des-Hospitalières (CdH). Phase 1 invites community initiatives to propose short-term occupancies of 1-30 days in a repurposed convent. To do justice to CdH’s unique vocational heritage, 7 directives are outlined to guide the selection process: reconciliation, female leadership, healing and reconnection, teaching, hospitality, creativity, and the common good. Given its open-ended yet purposeful nature, the team feels Value Collective had the potential to relate to most, if not all, of the directives. The convent’s unique communal residential architecture also seemed ideal for the residency program. 

Value Collective is accepted for a week-long occupation in August, comprising 3 structured workshops and 2 semi-structured “open houses,” including presentations to contextualize the activities.
See a recap of the week here.

Shortly after forming a team for C40, Thomas, Gabriel, and Maddy are contacted by Professor Marie-Sophie Banville of Excess and the City. Along with another former classmate, Christine White, the group is offered a fellowship to continue developing their class projects with funding and support from The Office of Rules and Norms. In addition to Value Collective, projects include Thomas’s Concrete Capital, Gabriel’s Highest and Best Use, and Christine’s Statements of Sounds and Emotions. The four form the collective Shock Value, presenting their projects as a series of interventions critiquing the financialization of cities. 

See Shock Value’s work here.

Design for Change was a user experience (UX) hackathon organized by Wilfrid Laurier University. Participants had 30 days to develop a response to the following question: “How might we create social transformation that shifts users towards greener behavior and sustainable practices?” 

Maddy enters the hackathon with Value Collective as the focus, hypothesizing that the desire to respond to impending ecological collapse far outweighs the range and depth of actual opportunities to do so; the problem is not a lack of interest, nor a lack of ideas, but rather a lack of capability due to systemic constraints. To better understand her intended users, Maddy develops an interview method to determine the motivating factors, enabling conditions, and systemic constraints experienced by people undertaking personal projects/voluntary work, and conducts 5 in-depth interviews. 

The resulting data influences Value Collective’s structure and offerings, leading to the establishment of 5 ‘pillars’ to guide Value Collective’s development. Each corresponds to a foundational premise and productive question. See the 5 pillars here.

This research also forms the basis of 6 personas created to represent Value Collective’s potential users. 
See the Personas here.

In November 2020, the C40 Students Reinventing Cities competition is launched. Maddy, Thomas Heinrich, Gabriel Townsend Darriau and Maya Jain form a team to explore and solidify an urban design philosophy with like-minded peers and to continue developing Value Collective. Their proposal, Futurs Possibles, includes Value Collective as a measure for bottom-up urban development.

Futurs Possibles advocates for the integration of systems thinking into cities’ ways of working and creating. It includes 6 guiding principles that are interrelated, complementary and non-exhaustive. The principles underpin a series of processes to bring to life the enabling, supportive and incentivizing qualities of a citizen-steered city-backed development process. To illustrate the futures made possible by their proposed philosophies and policies, the team composed a series of short stories. 
Read the English submission here.

Value Collective first emerges in a final paper for the experimental seminar Excess and the City, offered by The Office of Rules and Norms at Concordia University in the winter of 2020. The course invited artistic engagement with a systemic analysis of the housing crisis. 

For her final paper, student Maddy Capozzi proposes Value Collective in a fictional news article before delving into an argument for more diversity in economic thinking and practice.
Read the paper here.