Why Ycity
Ycity is about creating space for youth action across borders A space based on the youth’s dreams and personal participation. Here you can read about the ideas behind Ycity.
The idea with Ycity is to create a new ideal of democracy based on active participation and local change in a global context and perform it in practice. We create projects, whose ideas and actions will spread to the rest of the society. Ycity’s ideal of democracy is founded on 4 aspects:
- From influence to participation
- From national to glocal anchoring of the democracy
- From enforced community to individuality in communities
- From oppionion to action
From influence to participation
Democracy has to be actions performed by us all. Democracy does not take place in a vote cabinet and cannot just be leaved to the politicians or reduced to influencing the politicians. Ycity creates space for actions and challenges the citizens to develope and perform the city directly as they want. In Ycity the cititzens are active participants in the democracy and by that Ycity stimulates an active participation in the societies, they return to.
From national to glocal anchoring of the democracy
Ycity has the underlying basis that the society’s challenges have to be tackled in a global context on a local basis – glocal change. The national anchoring of democracy has to be substituted with a glocal anchoring. This means that Ycity is a city of young people from different countries, creates transnational communities and creates awareness about global issues. Ycity’s citizens take part in developing the political institutions and give them inputs, so they will be able to match the different global challenges of the society.
From enforced community to individuality in communities
In the traditional communities there has been a focus on the similarity. In Ycity there is a focus on the diversity, a focus on creating a space to individuality in communities. It is a city characterised by the diversity - where you meet people, that doesn’t look like you and don’t have the same opinion as you. It’s an urban community defined by the complexity and not by the common cultural background. Ycity is furthermore based on the assumption that identity, e.g. a European, cannot be given to people. Identity has to be seen more complex as an ongoing process, an action. Communities are not established by symbols and constitutions, but through the meeting between humans.
From opinion to action
The traditional ideals of democracy are based on opinions. The goal is to find a common opinion through consensus or by voting. But the problem with the opinion is that the challenges of the society are not tackled by having an opinion. The challenges of the society are tackled by action. Of course action to a certain extent is based on the opinion, but the ideal must always be to get to the action, the reflective action. Another problem with the opinion is that it is not including. In a complex world we cannot find common opinions and values. On the contrary there is a better chance to find common actions, which not are decided through consensus or voting, but through »the better difference«. This principle of decisions-processes seeks to find ways of combination in different actions, without forcing the individuals to make compromises.
Ycity is based on actions through dialogue, »the better difference«. Only through dialogue the citizens can realize them self and have free options contemporary with being a part of a community, where you have to accept different values, opinions and actions.
