Open Jazdów is the community of the Warsaw settlement of wooden Finnish houses, offering a social, cultural and ecological public program. Public consultation run in 2014 revealed the need for a development of a co-governance formula for the settlement. Inhabitants of the Jazdów made it clear they would like to keep the community open and accessible to all citizens of Warsaw and expressed willingness to look for ways to co-govern the settlement. Therefore the aim of the project is to develop long-term methods for co-governing the settlement. By working together with the city we would like to ensure the settlement’s development goes beyond infrastructure investments, and includes important social issues such as climate change, cultural participation, and the the problem of minorities’ discrimination.

We will address these needs through workshops for the inhabitants of the settlement in order to draft a mutual vision of the governance model between different groups within the community. The consultations will involve experts specializing in urban common spaces, community building and legal aid in order to guarantee our goals are within reach and our solutions meet the most current regulations. During the second stage of our project we will conduct at least five workshop sessions with civic servants and administration officials working for the city of Warsaw in order to design a formula for a long-term collaboration between the people living in the Jazdów Settlement and the city. We will monitor introduction of the ideas and the model. We will create a publication describing our project and organize a nationwide conference focused on city co-governance in order to share our accomplishments and begin a widespread debate on that particular model of urban communities development.