Cities are the largest, most effective, and truly natural amalgamation of humans. Unlike nation states, cities are organic commons, which have evolved to circulate value and resources to its many members. Once again, Shareable shows how we can retrieve the very best features of urban life — consciously, constructively, and creatively.
— Douglas Rushkoff, author of “Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus: How Growth Became the Enemy of Prosperity” and host of the Team Human podcast
If you’re like me, you’re frequently asked to back up your ideas with real-world examples. Here’s a fantastic resource to do just that. Created by many of the world’s leading sharing researchers and practitioners, it’s a highly accessible collection of the most exciting and innovative cases of sharing and commoning now underway around the world. With excellent framing essays, “Sharing Cities” is indispensable for anyone interested in sharing, new economics, and system change. Make a space for it on your bookshelf.
— Juliet Schor, professor of Sociology at Boston College and author of “Plenitude: The New Economics of True Wealth”
Seoul Metropolitan Government (SMG) has promoted sharing city policies and projects since its declaration in 2012 as a sharing city. However, learning from other cities has not been easy. This book, containing over 130 case studies and model policies from around the world, will help us and other officials, enterprises, and citizens striving to create sharing cities. The SMG hopes this book will spread around the world and help the sharing cities movement thrive.
— Mayor Park Won-soon, Seoul, South Korea
In “Sharing Cities: Activating the Urban Commons,” Shareable has crowdsourced a groundbreaking international compendium of sharing policies and practices that both inspire us with their vision and creativity, and call upon us to share much more, more widely, and more often. The diversity of sharing is impressive: from food to finance, from work to waste, each case is a tried and tested community-based solution. This is the essential roadmap to what is possible.
— Julian Agyeman, professor of Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning at Tufts University and co-author of “Sharing Cities: A Case for Truly Smart and Sustainable Cities”
This is the book that urban commoners have been waiting for. The commons is not an utopia, but a concrete series of solutions to the challenges of the day, especially in the context of state and market failure. With the market state in deep crisis, cities offer a way forward, they can share successful commons-based solutions for housing, transportation, food, jobs, and help these practical solutions replicate across the globe. This is an inspiring snapshot of what we can already do, right now.
— Michel Bauwens, founder of the Foundation for Peer-to-Peer Alternatives
“Sharing Cities: Activating the Urban Commons” is a practical reference guide for community-driven solutions to key urban challenges such as affordable housing, sustainable mobility, and more. It showcases a real sharing economy that is spreading globally around the world in a pattern of people-powered “rhizomatic growth.” Rhizomes are plants that are connected at the roots like bamboo. While you don’t see the connectivity on the surface, it enables plants to share resources and keep every plant healthy. This is a metaphor for why sharing cities are the future and why nonprofits need to participate.
— Beth Kanter, trainer, speaker, and co-author of “The Happy, Healthy Nonprofit”
There’s a lot of facile talk lately about the sharing economy, but this book is about the real deal. It’s not about multibillion dollar companies optimizing capital utilization, but about people-to-people approaches to actually sharing, forging community, and building common wealth. More than 100 case studies and model policies provide an exciting glimpse and practical roadmap into the possibilities of cities as platforms — for growing the common wealth.
— Gil Philip Friend, chief sustainability officer at the City of Palo Alto, California, and inaugural member of the Sustainability Hall of Fame
Optimistic, collaboratively created, with anticipation of ongoing evolution, this book provides examples of concrete forays into the new sustainable, equitable, and just economy we must and are building in cities.
— Robin Chase, co-founder and former CEO of Zipcar, author of “Peers, Inc.”
In this impressive collection of case studies from around the world, “Sharing Cities” showcases the enormous potential of urban commons to make cities more liveable, affordable, and convivial. A more hopeful future is already arriving! Now let’s expand the infrastructures, policies, and projects to catalyze an even bigger surge of creative, bottom-up energies.
— David Bollier, director of the Reinventing the Commons Program at the Schumacher Center for a New Economics
What if we shape a new urban lifestyle based on sharing? What cities are using sharing in urban development? “Sharing Cities” answers these questions with over 130 case studies from around the world that show a more rewarding and sustainable lifestyle is possible through sharing. The sharing solutions in this guidebook address common urban issues and offers a compelling vision of a true sharing economy.
— Yuji Ueda and Daisuke Shigematsu, co-founders of the Sharing Economy Association, Japan
Cities are where we see signals of the future first, and what cities do today is likely to shape regions, nations, and the globe for the decades to come. “Sharing Cities’” collection of commons-based solutions from around the world provides a compelling vision of a more resilient, equitable, and convivial future city that’s well within reach. It’s essential reading for urban change agents and policymakers everywhere.
— Marina Gorbis, executive director of the Institute of the Future, author of “The Nature of the Future”
“Sharing Cities” is an awesome and inspiring collection that only a collaborative effort can bring about! It inspires us to heal the planet and ourselves through more sharing and commoning. It shows that there is no one blueprint, no one model, no one perfect enabling policy, but a diverse collection of well-designed policies and projects can help the urban common thrive.
— Silke Helfrich, commons activists, co-editor of “The Wealth of the Commons”
With today’s triple crises of sustainability, democracy, and equity, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed and just sit on the couch waiting for some magic leader or invention for the answer. No need to wait any longer! “Sharing Cities” shows that the answer is us. It lays out a vision, with concrete examples, of how we can ease pressure on the planet, increase access to the things people need, and strengthen our democracy through sharing. Sharing may sound simple, but it’s truly revolutionary in its potential to build a more healthy and just future for all. Read this book and let’s get started building a better world.
— Annie Leonard, executive director, Greenpeace USA and author of “The Story of Stuff”
By far the best single guide to the exploding commons revolution: Practical and revolutionary; immediate and far-seeing; a truly indispensable and fast-moving handbook on the change that is building community from the ground-up worldwide.
— Gar Alperovitz, co-founder of The Democracy Collaborative and author of “What Then Must We Do? Straight Talk About the Next American Revolution”
Shareable’s new book starts with a pivotal question, “How can we turn cities from impersonal engines of destruction into intimate communities of transformation?” Not only will you get answers, but you’ll also get a better understanding of the systemic change required to transform our cities. It features the most creative commons-based solutions from around the world and shows that people-driven innovation is not a fad. Reading the cases gave me hope, and it will likely do the same for city innovators everywhere. Now let’s make sure that all city officials and policymakers around the world get a copy of this book!
— Antonin Léonard, co-founder of OuiShare
There’s long been a common dream of sustainable, equitable, convivial communities where people’s strong connections with one another translate into great places for everyone to live. But now — in bits and pieces around the planet — it’s becoming a reality. “Sharing Cities” is your handy guidebook to the exciting possibilities now surfacing. From an urban orchard in Boston to enabling legislation for sharing in Seoul to a bazaar governed by the principles of the commons in Hyderabad, India — this book will fortify your optimism with practical evidence.
— Jay Walljasper, author of “All That We Share: A Field Guide to the Commons”
“Sharing Cities” is a practical guide for those seeking to transform cities for the common good. This is not a book about big corporations in the so-called “sharing economy” — it’s a book about the explosion of bottom-up, creative, collective action to change society by reviving the urban commons. The book’s case studies and model policies show an inspiring yet pragmatic way forward that people everywhere need to know about.
— Gabriel Metcalf, co-founder of City CarShare, author of “Democratic by Design”
Hundreds of cases, hundreds of stories of unique human beings whose strength is changing many people’s lives in many cities around the world. One simple belief threads them together — that the urban commons will be a game changer in the 21st century.
— Christian Iaione, Professor of Urban Law and Policy, Co-Director of LabGov