Urban Choose an Implemented Innovation
Name
Institution
The Sharing City: Unleashing Spare Capacity
A Description of Innovation
The sharing city innovation is based on the concept of unleashing spare capacity in the urban area. Linear consumption was the norm of the day since the first Industrial Revolution, whereby an economical model utilized involved take, make, consume, and dispose. The model leads to intensive consumption of materials and energy, which significantly impacted resources and emissions. To reduce the resource and emissions, specifically within urban areas, the circular economy’s adoption was implemented. The circular economy involves the idea of a sharing economy, whereby the consumption of all products and related services is utilized to the maximum through sharing and recycling. According to Bostman and Rogers (2010), the sharing city innovation based on sharing economy enables collaborative consumption that is now an emerging socioeconomic ground shell, enabling people to come together to share, barter, lend, or swap.
The sharing city innovation creates growth and prosperity that had been unthinkable in previous years by enabling people to access products and services without involving actual ownership relations. Cities are now moving towards shared facilities, products, and clustered services, with more sharing companies and websites being introduced worldwide. For instance, Airbnb enables the sharing space by facilitating renting of unused private homes, enables public-private sharing of space by co-locating schools and recreational facilities, and enables the reuse, recycling, and up-cycling process to be achieved effectively (Charles, 2017). Other examples of websites utilized in the sharing city innovation include Zipcar, which reduces the amount of wasted capacity in commutes by providing web-facilitated car-sharing clubs. Streetbank is another website that facilitates sharing of other products among city residents, especially those no longer required for use instead of disposing (Smart Prosperity, 2016). Therefore, adopting the sharing city innovation across the globe in both cities and other urban and rural areas will see the world reduce a high percentage of resource use and manage the devastating impact of emission.
Relation of Innovation to Course Material
The principle of sharing is important in a society. The social aspects associated with physical, social, and recreational infrastructure in cities is essential in ensuring the individuals within the city have access to various products and services. The essential products or services tend to be limited in most cities due to differences in the residents’ socioeconomic power. With the high rate of urbanization, the lack of addressing the differences that exist among residents in cities may result in a high population of the city without enough resources creating other problems (Długosz, 2014). As a city grows, it becomes difficult for it to meet all the basic needs of its residents, which might cause a strain on the cities’ environment and natural resources. The sharing city will ensure the city regains the socioeconomic balance. It reduces the need for extra infrastructures, production of extra products, or provision of multiple services, enabling more to be achieved with less or limited resource use within moderate costs.
Innovation is essential in a city setting due to its sharing dimensions. The dimensions include the exchange of goods and services, such as banking activities. Sharing ideas, interaction, and physical clustering through the public realm dimension cover both the city’s political and cultural factors to enhance development. The infrastructure dimension offers the opportunity to share public and private infrastructures in the city, including healthcare and childcare. The other dimension is the environmental resources, which enable the city to solve problems associated with basic resources such as land, multi-purpose streets, and public spaces (Agyeman et al., 2013). Therefore, the sharing city can boost city development and improve its residents’ lives by balancing and enabling the sharing of materials, products, services, wellbeing, and capacity.
City/ Region That Has Implemented the Innovation
Various cities have already implemented the city sharing innovation based on different aspects. One of the cities to have implemented the innovation is San Francisco in California, USA. With a population of over 825,000, San Francisco has been described as a model for sharing economy policy (Długosz, 2014). The model played a significant role in implementing the sharing city innovation, which covered all aspects, including products, services, wellbeing, materials, and capacity. San Francisco became the first city in the United States to start a compressive analysis of the sharing economy policy to boost its development, innovation, and emerging policy when it formed the Sharing Economic Working Group in 2012.
One example of successful sharing in San Francisco is Airbnb, which emerged in 2007, and Uber, which originated in 2009. Under the sharing city innovation in San Francisco, the initiatives include transportation, with companies such as SideCar, Bay Area Bike Share, and Metropolitan Transportation Commission being present on the market. Housing initiatives are also conducted under San Francisco sharing innovation, with San Francisco Community Land Trust (SFCLT) being one of the most successful housing initiatives (Luna, 2010). Other initiatives under the innovation in the city include food, and jobs, and skills.
References
Agyeman, J., Mclaren, D., & Schaefer-Borrego, A. (2013). Briefing: Sharing Cities. Friends of the Earth, 1-32.
Bostman, R., & Rogers R. (2010). What’s mine is yours: The Rise of Collaborative Consumption. New York: Harperbusiness
Charles, A. (2017). 4 innovations for thriving cities. GreeenBiz. Retrieved from https://www.greenbiz.com/article/4-innovations-thriving-cities
Długosz, P. (2014). The Rise of the Sharing City: Examining Origins and Futures of Urban Sharing. Thesis for: MSc Environmental Management and Policy, IIIEE, Lund University. doi: 10.13140/RG.2.2.18890.77763
Gottdiener, M., Hutchinson, R., & Michael, R. (2014). The New UrbanSociology, 5th ed. Westview Press, ISBN 9780813349565
Luna, M. (2010). How to Start a Housing Co-op. Shareable.
Smart Prosperity. (2016). The world’s top 10 urban innovations. Retrieved from https://medium.com/new-thinking/the-world-s-top-10-urban-innovations-5704363d8861
World Economic Forum. (2015). Top Ten Urban Innovations. Retrieved from http://www3.weforum.org/docs/Top_10_Emerging_Urban_Innovations_report_2010_20.10.pdf
