Sharing and the City

In cities around the globe we observe an increasing interest in the sharing of goods, services, spaces and skills. There is a hope that sharing can help address urban sustainability challenges. Sharing includes a variety of bottom-up initiatives, public-private-people partnerships, business start-ups and local government schemes, all of which try to better use the idling capacity of our material world. Sharing initiatives are not new. But now we see more examples of sharing between strangers, which is enabled by digital technology. And as a result of economic, environmental and social crises, sharing enters our everyday lives at accelerating speeds.

Advocates of sharing promise that it will reduce environmental impact by using existing assets more optimally. They also argue that sharing of urban assets generates income and can improve social cohesion by bringing people together. But some opponents warn that there is too little evidence for such statements. They argue that the expected environmental benefits have not been delivered, and that economic and social gains are not evenly distributed among the players. We also know very little about how the sharing organisations emerge, how they evolve, and what kind of processes can help realise their sustainability potential in cities.

The few available studies, including our previous research, show that different cities support sharing organisations in different ways. This affects not only the sustainability profile of these organisations, but also what type of sharing organisations that are established, which ones succeed and which ones that fail. Sharing is a global phenomenon and it seems to be here to stay.  But we still lack knowledge on how city governments can engage with sharing and how they can strengthen its sustainability potential. There is therefore an urgent need to analyse the role that cities play in sharing.

The “Sharing and the City” project aims to examine, test and advance knowledge on the role of city governments in the initiation, implementation and institutionalisation of the sharing organisations across cities in Europe. The research will explore case studies from cities with vibrant sharing scenes that offer diverse contexts which influence the development of sharing. Using a combination of methods including case studies, interviews, participant observation, mobile labs and workshops, the research will provide a systematic, integrative and comparative analysis of the city’s role in sharing, as well as deliver policy recommendations. This will open new horizons for research and avenues for fostering sustainability in society.