Sharing Cities

= concept, and also 3 books so far with same title

see also our entry: Activating the Urban Commons Through Sharing Cities, for info on a more recent book, with dozens of cases of commons-based policy solutions

Books

The First Book

* Book: Sharing Cities. A Case for Truly Smart and Sustainable Cities. By Duncan McLaren and Julian Agyeman. MIT Press eBooks, 2015

URL = https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/sharing-cities

"The future of humanity is urban, and the nature of urban space enables, and necessitates, sharing—of resources, goods and services, experiences. Yet traditional forms of sharing have been undermined in modern cities by social fragmentation and commercialization of the public realm. In Sharing Cities, Duncan McLaren and Julian Agyeman argue that the intersection of cities’ highly networked physical space with new digital technologies and new mediated forms of sharing offers cities the opportunity to connect smart technology to justice, solidarity, and sustainability. McLaren and Agyeman explore the opportunities and risks for sustainability, solidarity, and justice in the changing nature of sharing.

McLaren and Agyeman propose a new “sharing paradigm,” which goes beyond the faddish “sharing economy”—seen in such ventures as Uber and TaskRabbit—to envision models of sharing that are not always commercial but also communal, encouraging trust and collaboration. Detailed case studies of San Francisco, Seoul, Copenhagen, Medellín, Amsterdam, and Bengaluru (formerly Bangalore) contextualize the authors’ discussions of collaborative consumption and production; the shared public realm, both physical and virtual; the design of sharing to enhance equity and justice; and the prospects for scaling up the sharing paradigm though city governance. They show how sharing could shift values and norms, enable civic engagement and political activism, and rebuild a shared urban commons. Their case for sharing and solidarity offers a powerful alternative for urban futures to conventional “race-to-the-bottom” narratives of competition, enclosure, and division." (https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/sharing-cities)

About the Authors

Duncan McLaren, former Chief Executive of Friends of the Earth Scotland, is Director of McLaren Environmental Research and Consultancy.

Julian Agyeman is Professor of Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning at Tufts University. He is the coeditor of Just Sustainabilities: Development in an Unequal World (MIT Press) and other books.

The Second Book

For details, see our entry here: Activating the Urban Commons Through Sharing Cities

* Book: Sharing Cities: Activating the Urban Commons. by Shareable. Shareable, 2017

URL = https://www.shareable.net/sharing-cities

The Third Book (report)

* Sharing Cities: A Worldwide Cities Overview on Platform Economy Policies with a focus on Barcelona. By Mayo Fuster Morell (ed.) et al. Dimmons Research Group, 2018.

URL = http://www.share.barcelona/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/SharingCities_book.pdf

The Concept

Principles

From Neal Gorenflo:

● People first, all together. Ordinary people in solidarity as the central actors in the drama of the city. In other words, a city of, by and for all people no matter their race, class, gender, or abilities.

● Pragmatic, community-based solutions addressing common needs over following rigid, imported ideologies.

● Transformation over transaction – solutions that meet needs while building residents' collaborative capacities are preferable to ones that reduce provisioning to a purely economic transaction. Investing in collaborative capacity can produce other vital social goods, lead to new collaborations, and help put a community on a positive, long-term trajectory.

● Experimentation, learning, and iteration by the community over application of static, "one-size-fits-all" solutions.

● Heterodoxy and diversity: we need many types of people, processes, and spheres of value creation to seize opportunities and meet challenges.

● Use value over exchange value and access over ownership in resource management.

● Recognition of multiple types of properties (public, private, and community) and currencies (fiat, local, and reputation).

● Local control, global cooperation – many democratic, local centers of power that cooperate globally. Commons that cooperate at every scale are stronger commons.

● Impact through replication rather than scale – documenting local solutions so they can be replicated and adapted by others elsewhere. The creation of global, commons-based platforms with a federated structure rather single, massivelyscaled solutions.

● Seize local opportunities for change that are open today. Many commons projects need little if any funding or permission to start. While political change is necessary, it's unwise to depend solely on it – or wait passively for it. Having said that, a completely independent, parallel economy is not possible. Political struggle for the commons is eventually necessary."

(https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Activating_the_Urban_Commons_Through_Sharing_Cities)

Source, the Book: Sharing Cities: Activating the Urban Commons. by Shareable. Shareable, 2017

Examples

Sharing City Seoul

Neal Gorenflo:

"Mayor Park Won-soon of Seoul, South Korea, launched Sharing City Seoul, at least partly inspired by San Francisco’s SEWG. In contrast to SEWG, Sharing City Seoul (described in more detail in Chapter 4) had more substance. It was launched as a substantial package of policies and programs with the goal to mainstream sharing in Seoul, and in the process, address Seoul’s most pressing problems including unemployment, pollution, and social isolation. It had funding, a multiyear implementation strategy, numerous citizen-stakeholders, and the city’s 60-person innovation department behind it.

However, Sharing City Seoul’s importance to the sharing cities movement goes far beyond its instructive details. It is Mayor Park’s signature program for a mega-city of 10 million people. Moreover, Seoul is part of a small cadre of the world’s largest, most modern cities that are defining what a city is in the 21st century. In this context, Mayor Park decided to tell a new story about what a city can be, a story that diverged significantly from the usual talk of cities as competitors in a ruthless global market. Instead, he focused attention on a practical, interpersonal action – sharing – that ordinary residents can engage in to help each other and the city as a whole. Unlike some efforts, it’s a genuine extension of Mayor Park’s career as a human rights lawyer, social justice activist, and social entrepreneur – someone who clearly saw the great human and environmental toll his city has suffered in catapulting itself from a backwater to one of the world’s most modern cities, in one generation.

For these reasons, Sharing City Seoul became the single biggest catalyst of the global sharing cities movement and earned Mayor Park the prestigious Gothenburg Award for Sustainable Development in 2016. Its impact has been immense." (https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Activating_the_Urban_Commons_Through_Sharing_Cities)

Actors

Sharing Cities Eu Consortium

Neal Gorenflo:

"In Europe, the London-based SharingCities.eu consortium is working with London, Milan, Lisbon, Warsaw, Burgas, Bordeaux, and other sharing cities projects, though with a strong techno-commercial bent. Netherlands-based ShareNL has long worked with Amsterdam (the first European sharing city) and is now reaching out to many more cities in Europe and beyond through their newly-formed Sharing City Alliance. Last year, the Paris-based nongovernmental organization OuiShare co-hosted Sharing Lille, a multifaceted festival attended by over 1,000 people meant to foster more sharing in Lille, France. The 2017 theme of the organization’s flagship Paris event – OuiShare Fest – is cities. In addition, its far-flung members are working with numerous cities on sharing projects through its network in Europe and South America." (https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Activating_the_Urban_Commons_Through_Sharing_Cities)

Sharing Economy Association of Japan

Neal Gorenflo:

"In Asia, the Sharing Economy Association of Japan (SEAJ) is currently developing sharing cities programs with 26 rural municipalities in Japan. Last year, five Japanese cities – Chiba, Yuzawa, Taku, Hamamatsu, and Shimabara – unveiled plans, developed with SEAJ, to foster more sharing. And, of course, the movement has taken off in South Korea. On Nov. 6, 2016, at Seoul Sharing Festival, which I attended as a member of Mayor Park’s Sharing Economy International Advisory Group, seven Korean cities – Seoul, Jeonju, Suwon, Seongnam, Siheung, Gwangju, and Don-gu – signed a joint declaration announcing their plans to develop their sharing cities programs together." (https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Activating_the_Urban_Commons_Through_Sharing_Cities)