Date: January 2019
Author(s): Inspire.com
Why did we select this article?
The article provides a clear overview on the relationship between the concepts of community and sharing economy, and how the latter has influenced the resurgence of city living with its massive impact on society, economy and the environment. The sharing economy and its success was surely due to business and peer 2 peer transactions, but also thanks to the ability to create a sense of community enrichment and creating a better quality of life; leading to new forms of cooperation.
Key findings
The transition to shared spaces in cities finds its roots to the need for optimize the use of resources and space, in order to make cities more liveable and more sustainable at the same time. Some forms of shared spaces are:
- Communal gardens and multi-purpose outdoor space. Fueled partially by the farm to table movement, more community gardens have sprung up in big cities. These allow people to get hands-on with their food and connect with their their neighbors who care for the gardens. Communal gardens are often started in lower-income neighborhoods because the land is cheaper.
- Co-working spaces. Instead of trying to compete for space at a crowded coffee shop, freelancers and small businesses have leveraged co-working spaces in cities where rents are high, but clients are plentiful.
- Diversifying peer-to-peer services. Following the success of Airbnb, Lyft and Uber, other peer-to-peer services have surfaced across multiple industries. Turo is a service that functions a lot like Airbnb, but for cars. This allows consumers to bypass the traditional car rental service to rent directly from a private party.
- Co-living spaces. WeLive is an apartment complex in Arlington, Virginia that makes up for the lack of square footage in the individual units by offering large communal spaces. In addition to a shared living room for movie nights, there’s a yoga studio and professional-grade communal kitchens.
Taking Sharing Further: Budget Transparency & Connected Communities
Another way that cities are starting to become more sharing-focused is through the city budgeting process. Cities can set aside specific funds within their larger budgets so that local residents can vote on how that money should be used in their cities. It opens up the gates of transparency and gives power back to the people who are directly affected by city policies. It all ties back to this theme of working together in cooperation within a city instead of operating in isolation.
We’re in this together as a society: why shouldn’t everyone work towards a future that is connected, shared and sustainable? The more we work together, with technology as a means to do so, the brighter that future will be.
Source: https://www.helloinspire.com/blog/smart-tech/shared-economy-enabling-community-enrichment
