22 Jan 06: Every page here is thus far a working draft. Please comment & help us improve. Team work!

Programs & Organizations (Help us complete)	Our Cooperative Blog (Dig in here)
Land Cafe? What's this? An informal, shared, public interest, knowledge-building consortium -- supported by The Commons as an independent Open Society project, specifically to serve and bring together people and groups around the world who are concerned to find practical ways for our societies to come to grips with the troubling but important issues of value capture and land tax reform in an age in which important public services remain substantially under-funded.	Hmm. How does it work? An independent interactive action program for new thinking and collaborative problem-solving to take on the arduous challenges of advancing this shared agenda of rationalizing our tax systems -- a platform mediated by low cost IP technologies, made freely available to all, based on open networking and aggressive international outreach, supporting structured information exchanges and collaborative peer action on the matters which are of main concern to us.
An Idea Factory? Yep. The Factory offers a shared work space and free, public, flexible repository for documents and reports (see Files) and key links to other programs and sites (see Links), and creative discussion space for people and groups who feel that we need to do a lot better in these two important areas of society. We welcome diversity of background, culture and views -- and stay open 24/7. Check it out!	Bottom Line: Implementation and Follow-up At once the most important and, for now at least, the weakest part of this cooperative effort. The reason for this is quite simply that this indeed is one of the prime objectives of this project, and we are hopeful that in the weeks and months ahead we shall begin to have a credible and useful 'first stop shop' inventory of those projects and programs that are showing the way. And others that may be running into trouble.
Leading programs already working on it This is an inventory in process. We are working with our 101 original members to make sure that (a) we are providing direct one click access from here to the leading sources of thought and action, and at the same time taking contact with them to explore how we might better work together. Nobody owns this land and it is for us all to learn to work better with each other.	Why a cooperative blog? Probably the best answer to this is for you simply to click here and check out what we have set out to do together with this wide-open member-driven forum. The contributors work untrammeled as their own editors. The only thing we ask of them is to stay on focus: advancing the agenda is specific places and specific ways in the short term. After all, in the long run . . .
Value Capture: The nose of the camel Some here think that in addition to the places and opportunities that are opening up or clearly candidates for a major overhaul of their tax base along the lines pursued here, the most likely starting place from an international perspective is in terms of value capture projects. Have a look and tell us what you think.	Latest world news The internet gives unprecedented opportunities to stay abreast of latest land tax and value capture news world wide. This handy tool provides one click overviews of latest developments, automatically updated by Google on a real time basis. Check it out with your morning coffee and get ready to rethink your thinking.
Wikipedia in action This is how we and others who share our interests and concerns can define and make ourselves known to the world in 2006. Wikipedia - The first place a journalist, researcher, student, political assistant or concerned citizen is going to look to find out what this is all about. It is our job too to make sure that this entry is accurate and complete. Let's put it to work.	The Commons Pioneering new concepts for activists, community groups, entrepreneurs and business; increasing the uncomfort zone for hesitant administrators and politicians; and through our long term world wide collaborative efforts, energy and personal choices, placing them and ourselves firmly on the path to a more sustainable and more just world.

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The Commons has had international visitors since 3 July 1995.
Last updated on 21 January 2006