Urban Learning Commons

Educational and learning resources are treated as critical common-pool resources much like clean water, health oceans and fertile land, necessary for sustainability in an innovation-driven economy.

Explore how this evolves in the 2020 Forecast in Eco-Schools and Learning Commons.

Real World Application

The market values learning
Learning becomes a key customer filter that shapes decisions in the market across income categories, expanding markets adjacent to public education. Leveraging networking tools, open knowledge repositories, and peer-to-peer production methods (rather than hierarchical production systems), learners and educators will increasingly experiment with sharing and exchanging learning resources across market boundaries growing a more integrated learning economy. Models for organizing learning experiences over time will diversify and extend beyond those found today in private, parochial, home schooling, and charter schools.


Communities create common-pool resources
Common-pool resources (e.g. grazing land and fisheries), are non-excludable and subtractable—that means everyone has access to them and individual users can deplete or damage the resources if it they are not managed properly. Elinor Ostrom’s pioneering work shows there are principles for creating institutions for collective action that maintain and nurture successful commons. Innovative communities, like the eLearning city in Espoo, Finland, treat their educational resources as a commons—a resource maintained by the community that sustains the community’s innovative drive. How would public educational and learning resources (teachers, facilities, students, funding) change if they were treated as common-pool resources?