Sharing within a city in crisis: two ICTs-supported P2P economic networks in Thessaloniki, Northern Greece

摘要

The paper focuses on two emerging networks of sharing economy in Greece's second largest city, Thessaloniki: Trapeza Chronou, a time bank, and 'KOI.NO', a community-currency network, both supported by open platform information and communications technology (ICTs). These two networks are approached as tactics that have the potential to generate socioeconomic change through bottom-up participation and ICTs-supported citizen engagement. Both initiatives utilise open source ICTs to facilitate urban economic networking as means for enhancing local resilience, social inclusion and community self-management. Based on semi-structured interviews with network members and participant observation of the case studies, the paper discusses: a) the socio-economic and technical characteristic; b) the structure and governance of these networks; c) evaluates their potential as pathways to radical socioeconomic change.