As a rule, regions are organized vertically and from top to bottom, hierarchically. In these terms, we are, in essence, obedient and well-behaved citizens, with responsible participation whenever representative democracy calls us. But the regions can now, in full digital and algorithmic society, be organized in another way, in a more lateral, collaborative, cooperative, community way, in a way that some authors already call the “CO Society”.
In the digital society in which we live, we have been, for some years now, facing a real bifurcation, others will say a great illusion.
On the one hand, we have technology-based companies that are moving vigorously towards hypercapitalism, extracting extraordinary profits and profits from the economy of digital networks, on the other, we have technology-based companies, certainly more modest, that make a very worthwhile path towards economy of sharing idle resources, the economy of common goods, the social and solidarity economy, the cooperative and mutualist-based economy, that is, a diversity of collaborative ways of organizing local and regional society, but on a much more open, extensive and cosmopolitan than hitherto.
In other words, we can look at the Algarve's regional economy and visualize a capillary network of social and business relationships, within which the different segments of the Algarve economy cohabit with each other and in close collaboration with the more conventional economy of market, employment and salary .
Thus, we may have or visualize, in the near future, a regional economy composed as follows:
– Firstly, a market economy of goods and services, organized in the more conventional way of “economy of employment and wages”, the still dominant segment,
– Second, a sharing economy (sharing economy) and exchange of idle and underutilized resources, which can generate an income supplement for participating families; the Algarve can have its own collaborative platform for this purpose,
– Thirdly, a circular economy that aims to organize the participation of citizens in a 4R program of reduction, recycling, reuse and repair of residual resources, and which can also generate a supplementary income for the participants; the Algarve may also have its own collaborative platform for this purpose,
– Fourth, an economy on-demand for the self-employed and the freelancers, which subscribe to a technological platform for this purpose and obtain an income for their service provision; also here a collaborative platform can be created,
– Fifthly, a cooperative and/or group economy, for example, in creative, artistic and cultural activities and which, through a collaborative platform, can manage the intermittent work of these activities, as well as the artistic and cultural residences created for the purpose,
– Finally, a social and solidarity economy can also function through a platform for managing solidarity banks and volunteer work time.
These different segments or modalities of organizing the regional economy help us a lot to understand and structure two fundamental orientations that will be decisive for the regional policy of the near future:
– Firstly, the prominent place of a regional collaborative platform as a “regulatory body” for the different segments of the Algarve economy.
In fact, the regional platform will help us organize relations with the market, employment and wage economy, which is still dominant, but which, due to its growing seasonality and fractionation, will quickly lead us to pluriactivity and multi-income; now, precisely, the instrument “collaborative regional platform” can put some order in these flows and help to regulate the two economies, the employment economy (salary) and the various complementary economies (income from other activities);
– Second, the regional collaborative platform as the “sponsor agent” of new collaborative and business initiatives.
The platform can proactively help us to promote and corporately sponsor new initiatives in the region, not only managing shared services and some infrastructure of a collaborative nature, but also sponsoring participatory management and financing instruments and establishing the necessary bridges with other collaborative networks companies that operate in the same spheres of action.
Final Notes
In summary, the “Algarve Sharing” regional collaborative platform can be very important in several initiatives that are clearly useful for the region's economy.
For example, in the collective management of occasion markets, regional handbags, collective brands, regional commons, group farming and niche markets, contracts of institutional food, time banks, microgeneration energy networks, short commercialization circuits, a regional microcredit network, social and complementary currencies, participatory financing, spaces of co-working, of scientific, artistic and cultural residencies, among other examples, always in a P2P inter-peer logic (peer to peer), of communion and sharing of common interests with the Algarve civil society.
Now that the AAA Euroregion has been formed (Alentejo, Algarve, Andalusia), this is also an excellent opportunity to relaunch cross-border cooperation on a collaborative and shared basis. The regional collaborative platform can, of course, extend to the territory of the Euroregion.
The organization of a dynamic and attractive regional labor market will be one of the critical factors for the Algarve in the near future.
In this matter, the region is, as we know, increasingly at the mercy of the tourist market and its seasonality.
As we said, “useful work” is not limited to the “conventional employment” market, however, this available capacity does not seem to have an answer in the framework of action of regional institutions as we know them today.
Nevertheless, the seasonality of the regional labor market can also be an opportunity to arouse interest in the collaborative activities of the sharing economy.
In this sense, and despite observing a deficit of imagination in terms of political representation and participation, nothing prevents the citizens of the Algarve from organizing, in an innovative way, around cooperative and collaborative structures of pluriactivity and multi-income, with a view to producing new forms of territorial collective intelligence.
In the middle of the digital age, in the time of technological platforms, of apps and start-ups, we are obliged to provide concrete proof of this collective territorial intelligence.
Some European countries give us good examples in this regard. Let's move forward then.
In early 2017, here is a suggestion for all civil society organizations in the Algarve. Why not a Collaborative Platform for the Algarve? Due to its importance, we will return to the subject.
Author António Covas is a full professor at the University of Algarve and a PhD in European Affairs from the Free University of Brussels
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