Local Micro-Economies
Urban Array empowers communities to invest in themselves.
Capitalism’s historical focus on money and property takes ‘capital’ is its basis. ‘Commerce,’ on the other hand, has its roots in ‘community’: community trade, cooperation and growth. What divested neighborhoods need most is a renewed focus on sustainable businesses created, owned and serving the community itself.
Starting with places that have been ignored or depleted by the traditional economic system, UA’s strategy is to build on what a community already has and to deploy our network to create what they want. Neighborhoods that see themselves as resourceful and capable are more likely to utilize the gifts and skills of their residents to solve local issues. While outside help and resources may still be drawn upon, they are used actively, not passively, with community members setting the agenda by investing in themselves to propel forward their own initiatives.
Each neighborhood makes up a node within the broader network. If a particular node acquires a high degree of expertise or specialization within a field, SEAMS allows for those ideas to be shared, growing past the physical confines of a neighborhood. When the best and most impactful practices are discovered, they are available as frameworks on SEAMS and may then be taught and used in other communities.
Our digital asset RRAY and the SEAMS tool kit allow for locally-recognized means of exchange, as well as increased working opportunities, social cohesion and financial stability. By matching supply with demand, UA facilitates community exchange and hyperlocal liquidity. Our platform allows value to ‘percolate up’ from the community itself, rather than to ‘trickle down’ from outside sources, a true grassroots movement.
Global Ecosystem
Conventional power structures have proven themselves unable to adequately address the problems our world currently faces. We cannot continue to sink time, energy and resources into the same systems that brought us here in the first place.
While there have been recent societal shifts toward sharing and equity, the struggle has been in enacting these principles in a way that makes substantial and sustainable change.
UA provides action frameworks and coordination to create a global ecosystem of innovative local micro-economies based on participatory action.
Scaling Up: A Worldwide Network
The skills inventory allows us to connect individuals and communities around the world without having to go through exploitative and time-consuming middlemen and hierarchies.
The resource inventory provides global accounting of all the assets the network creates, controls and maintains, providing a true picture of what the expenditure of these resources means in terms of the overall network. It allows us to distribute and deploy resources to where they are necessary.
The analyses, project management guidance and collaborative tools of SEAMS allow community members to direct their learning, teaching, time and energy toward global issues such as education, political engagement, urban and rural development, health and environmental protection.
Shared Knowledge Base
The knowledgebase is an open-source database of neighborhood, community and network skills, talents and abilities. It facilitates the development of projects that can benefit a wide range of different communities with an even wider range of wants and needs.
The initiative frameworks will allow a network of millions to work together quickly and effectively to deploy resources.
We don’t have time to reinvent the wheel. UA’s open-source collaborative development of frameworks allows for real-time testing, experimentation and quick iteration so that the next group to do a particular project has a more efficient model. Each individual experience creates new data. As more data is entered, the more tailored and complete project frameworks will become, and so the organic reach of the network will grow.
UA’s platform allows communities to access and implement tested models to restructure themselves for economic and environmental sustainability. It provides the means for individuals to contribute labor and knowledge to projects both locally and remotely, and to add their experiences to the ever-growing virtual archive of initiative frameworks.
