Bucharest 2021 on the Edge? Join in on the #Futurespotters experiment!

Bucharest is running for the title of European Capital of Culture 2021. Aside from coming up with a cultural strategy for the next ten years, the bid is really about looking at why, how and where potential for lasting change can come from. There are reasons why over at EdgeRyders global community we are so excited about the future here, and Bucharest embodies them all.

Romania ever at the “edge”

• in its modern history, before the nation state formed only a century ago in 1918, the main 3 current state regions (broadly defined) were torn between different empires and subjected to very different cultural models — in the East, the Russian occupation; in South-East, the Ottoman Empire, and in the West half, or Transylvania, the Austrian-Hungarian empire. Suffice it to say, the Romanian people were never leading, they always found themselves in the “suppressed” or “ensclaved” role. As one travels across the country and meets people across north and south, or east and west, contrasts are evident. I will say no more because depending on who you ask, you can hear different anecdotes :)
• politically and geographically, it is at the edge of West — being a late arrival in NATO in 2004 and in the EU in 2007 — and also remains edge of East — as it’s a Balkan and Balkanized country. Admittedly, Bucharest exhibits a little bit of all these paradoxes. I won’t go into communist and post-communist eras, since the story is much known.
• from a development perspective, Romania is again inconsistent. Throughout the last century the population was deeply traditional and ruralized. To give you an idea, around the 1st World War literacy rate was under 40%, incomparable to that of 80% in nearby Hungary. In the Human Development Index report in 2013, Romania sat closer to Ukraine and Russia than West. It ranked 54th out of 187 countries, with largest inequality manifest in income and gender (less than 10 percent female seats in Parliament). It currently ranks 39th. And yet digitally, the young generation is fully up to speed. It is a sought after country for outsourcing programming, with a growing IT industry, and programmers are the ones hitting it off, at least currently. The average Internet peak connection is among the fastest in Europe and the world (58.7 mbps according to a source), and very affordable. Simply write “Internet connection romania” in your search engine and you can see the many reasons for that — essentially a mix between a history of small local operators and limited infrastructure bottlenecks leading to a high demand. Following this, heavy file sharing and come as naturals, and with them high tech literacy among the elite.

Where could the future come from?

Because of all this and more, it can be seen as a scene where mostly everyone lives on an edge: she learns to get by one way or another, e.g. for good or bad, plenty of legal loopholes, struggles with bare hands if she wants to get anything done, albeit with a lot of perseverance and iron nerves. The fact of the matter is that people many times can get things done, with or without resources or higher support (think United Estonia kind of pull, before anyone notices you’re up there). It’s the reason why I see it as a lot of potential for open collaboration, if incentives are aligned, and at least some spaces to dig deeper into:

First, I think there is so much ground unexplored in the gaps brought by speedy digitization, which enables fast Western cultural imports but lacks (1) widespread adoption and (2) meaningful interaction with new media, especially at the level of communities that suffer from lack of cohesiveness already. I’m thinking intergenerational, rural-urban, maybe even social gaps that could be higher than in your usual Western society where differences exist too. I would be very interested to explore meaning and purpose in the IT-driven economy (young start-uppers) and digital creative economy (freelancers, social innovators and many more).

Another area which I see having huge potential is lifestyle sustainability due to abundance of know how. There is also a lot of maneuver space in the downshifting/ eco living/ DIY movements, because we don’t have to go “green”, we only have to go back to the roots. And these roots are not far away historically, since our parents and grandparents socialized in the communist era are trying to find meaning in between free market individualism and socialist collectivism. Just ten years ago, you would find local produce in any market, sold directly by farmers. Not even speaking about quality or value for money, these relationships have been perverted. You now have to look so hard to find that genuine kind lady that’s selling homemade goodies packed in durable raffia bags.

The irony is that this older generation still knows a lot about sustainability and stewarding the earth, even if it doesn’t operate with today’s definitions. In the countryside as I was growing up, peasants/farmers were literally living by via bartering, with very little cash. There is a lot to learn, and already some initiatives go back to simple lessons, whether in the social economy, permaculture, or upcycling. A recent article sums up thoughtfully what we can vaguely think of as “the new wave” — one that is deeply social:

Dar cel mai important lucru în acest „nou val” constă, cred, în valența terapeutică a realismului său optimist. Realism, deoarece privește în față realitatea, toată realitatea și doar realitatea — mă rog, atît cît așa ceva este posibil în mod realist… Optimist, deoarece o face cu seninătate și nu privește nici mizerabilist, nici triumfalist, această realitate, ci cu înțelegere și speranță. (Vintila Mihailescu)

With the Edgeryders global community and non-profit we are trying to discover initiatives in Bucharest bridging these gaps and helping re-align values, connect them in the bigger picture of networked change — one driven by innovative citizens. The initiative is called #Futurespotters and suspects change is already under way, we only need to connect it in a stronger narrative. Whether it’s a new wave or not, future makers are still operating at the margins, in isolation, and with little resources. They and us deserve more support, which is why we are becoming part of the global change, in p2p collaboration. Got a project that you would like to show case as part of a global change? Join us at #Futurespotters open workshop on July 9–10, we’re very curious to meet you and support your project: