Sharing Cities A case for truly smart and sustainable cities

Duncan McLaren Julian Agyeman @mclaren_erc @julian_agyeman

Lecture given at Sustainability Science Centre, University of Copenhagen 14th December 2015 Sharing cities: an outline

• Historic forms of sharing • The of San Francisco • The sharing paradigm and flavors of sharing • Civic sharing in Seoul, ‘Sharing City’ • Inclusion in the public realm in Medellín • Diversity in Amsterdam • The counter-culture of Christiania, Copenhagen • The politics of the urban commons • Smart but stupid in Masdar • Principles and recommendations for Sharing Cities

The scope of sharing

• We share things (cars, tools), services (sites for meeting, sleeping), activities and experiences (political activity, leisure)

• Which can be material or virtual - tangible or intangible

• Enabling consumption (digital music), or production (community gardens)

• Sharing can be simultaneous (public space) or sequential (recycling materials) – rivalrous (solo use excludes another e.g. car share) or non-rivalrous (open source software)

• Distribution of shares: sharing in parts or sharing in turns

• We share with other private individuals, in collective groups and as citizens The Rituals, Pleasures Together and Politics of Cooperation

The evolution of a sharing species

Mark Pagel, Wired for Culture: The Natural History of Human Cooperaon. London: Allen Lane, 2012.

Peter Richerson and Robert Boyd, Not by Genes Alone: How Culture Transformed Human Evoluon University of Chicago Press, 2005.

Marn Nowak with Roger Highfield, Supercooperators: Altruism, Evoluon, and Why We Need Each Other to Succeed. Free Press, 2012

Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gins, A Cooperave Species: Human Reciprocity and Its Evoluon. Princeton University Press, 2013.

Declining social capital and its impacts: Putnam, Robert D. Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000

Senne, Richard. Together: The Rituals, Pleasures and Polics of Cooperaon. London: Penguin, 2013.

Wilkinson, Richard, and Kate Picke. The Spirit Level: Why Equality Is Beer for Everyone. London: Allen Lane, 2009 Harper Business, 2010

Criques of the commercial sharing economy (see for example): Morozov, Evgeny. “Don’t Believe the Hype, the ‘Sharing Economy’ Masks a Failing Economy.” , September 28, 2014. Yglesias, Mahew. “There Is No ‘Sharing Economy,’” Slate, December 26, 2013.

Cooperave models of sharing: Orsi, Janelle, Yassi Eskandari-Qajar, Eve Weissman, Molly Hall, Ari Mann, and Mira Luna. Policies for Shareable Cies: A Sharing Economy Policy Primer for Urban Leaders. Oakland, CA: Shareable and the Sustainable Economies Law Center, 2013. Schor, Juliet. “Debang the Sharing Economy.” Great Transion Iniave. October 2014. “a new lens through which to understand … urban sustainability” - Brent Toderian, former Director of City Planning, Vancouver.

“a remarkably comprehensive overview of many dimensions of the sharing movement and the sharing economy. … Every mayor, city policy-maker, and cizen change-maker should read this” - Janelle Orsi, SELC, San Francisco.

“If you want to understand the possibilies and challenges of the sharing paradigm to transform the way cies are designed, read this book” - Rachel Botsman. Published by MIT Press December 2015

Understood as offering new ways to create and use collective commons of physical and virtual resources, spaces, infrastructures and services, the sharing paradigm makes it clear that sharing is much more than simply a novel way of allocating access to conventional goods and services A tale of two discourses: the sharing ‘economy’ vs the sharing paradigm

Sharing ‘Economy’ Sharing ‘Paradigm’ Economic activity Social, cultural, political activity Economy underpins society Society underpins economy Environment as source of Environment as fundamental resources arena of evolution Autonomous individuals Interdependent and vulnerable people Transactional Relational Market-based ‘solutions’ Political and behavioural ‘solutions’

On Care Ethics, see Virginia Held, 2006. The Ethics of Care: personal, political, and global. OUP. Sharing(domain(( Concepts( Examples(

Material(( Industrial+ecology+ Circular+economy,+recovery+and+ recycling,+scrapyards++ tangible) Production( Collaborative+ Fab8labs,+community+energy,+job8sharing,+ facility( production+ open8sourcing,++

Product( Redistribution+ Flea+markets,+charity+shops,+Freecycle,+ markets++ swapping+and+gifting+platforms+

Service( Product+service+ Ride8sharing,+media+streaming,+fashion+ systems+ and+toy+rental,+libraries++

Experience(( Collaborative+ Errand+networks,+peer+to+peer+travel,+ lifestyles++ ,+skillsharing++

Capability( Collective+ The+internet,+safe+streets,+participative+ commons+ politics,+SOLEs,+citizen’s+incomes++ +++++++Intangible*

! The Sharing Spectrum (Source: McLaren and Agyeman, 2015; capabilities concept after Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum)

Seoul’s Sharing City project aims to “share lives among dispersed people, recover trust and relationships, and shape a warm city in terms of people’s heart.” Kim Tae Kyoon, Social Innovation Director, Seoul

“Medellín constructed avant-garde public buildings in areas that were the most run-down, provided house paint to cizens living in poor districts, and cleaned up and improved the streets – all in the belief that if you treat people with dignity, they will value their surroundings and take pride in their communies.” Joseph Sglitz

Interculturalism and contact theory: Gordon W. Allport, The Nature of Prejudice (Cambridge, MA: Addison- Wesley, 1954) Thomas Pegrew and Linda Tropp, “A meta-analyc test of intergroup contact theory” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 90(5) 2006 Oliver Christ et al “Contextual effect of posive intergroup contact on outgroup prejudice.” PNAS, 111(11) 2014 Empathy: Krznaric, Roman. Empathy: A Handbook for Revoluon. London: Random House, 2013. Riin, Jeremy. The Empathic Civilizaon: The Race to Global Consciousness in a World in Crisis. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2010. Piracy: Kester Brewin, Muny! Why We Love Pirates and How They Can Save Us. London: Vaux / Kester Brewin, 2012.

Community land-tling: Jota Samper, “Granng of Land Tenure in Medellin, Colombia’s Informal Selements: Is Legalizaon the Best Alternave in a Landscape of Violence?” Informal Selements Research, 30 January 2014. Available at hp://informalselements.blogspot.se/2011/01/v- behaviorurldefaultvmlo.html.

Co-producon of water and sewerage connecons: Salim Alimuddin, Arif Hasan, and Asiya Sadiq, “The Work of the Anjuman Samaji Behbood and the Larger Faisalabad Context, Pakistan.” IIED Working Paper 7 on Poverty Reducon in Urban Areas. 2001. Available at hp://pubs.iied.org/9073IIED.html Squats should “be recognized and supported for what they are: vibrant social centers at the very heart of the ‘commons’, acvely including the excluded.” Miguel Marnez, “Squang for Jusce, Bringing Life to the City.” ROARMAG, May 13, 2014. Christiania pic “The Danes are proud of [Chrisania today] … Christiania pic Aer all, these are people who built their own homes, who stood up to the government and criminal elements for decades, who took in the poor and disadvantaged, who were eco-friendly and racially diverse before anyone else, and who sent the world a strong image about the creavity and tolerance of Denmark. Tom Freston, “You Are Now Leaving the European Union.” Vanity Fair, 12 Sept 2013. MLP?

On MLP see: Frank Geels,Processes and paerns in transions and system innovaons: refining the co-evoluonary mul-level perspecve, Technology Forecasng and Social Change 72 (2007): 681– 696), Figure from: Rob Roggema, et al Incremental Change, transion or transformaon? Opmising change pathways for climate adaptaon in spaal planning” Sustainability 4(10) (2012), 2525–2549. Three strategies for transformation

Revolution Subversion Re-invention

Challenge conventional Using its own tools to Designing alternative approaches and power redesign system rules systems in any spaces directly. Implies mass and relationships. left (relatively) mobilisation around a Requires uncomfortable untouched by the common cause. collaboration and conventional system. alliances. Difficult to mainstream.

“Smash the system” “Flip the system” “Ignore the system”

See also: Erik Olin Wright, Envisaging Real Utopias. Verso, 2010. Three strategies for transformation RevolutionSharing can be a Subversionsubversive Re-invention, boom-up - simultaneously counter-cultural and intercultural - reinvenon of consumpon as a collaborave, shared, identy- Challenge conventional Using its own tools to Designing alternative approaches and power redesign system rules systems in any spaces directly.redefining, process of co- Implies mass and relationships. left (relatively) mobilisation around a Requires uncomfortable untouched by the commonproducon of services and cause. collaboration and conventional system. alliances. Difficult to mainstream. products supplying fundamental “Smashneeds the system” “Flip the system” “Ignore the system”

See also: Erik Olin Wright, Envisaging Real Utopias. Verso, 2010. On Occupy, anarchism and network polics:

David Graeber, The Democracy Project - A History. A Crisis. A Movement. Penguin, 2013.

Manuel Castells, Networks of Outrage and Hope. Polity Press, 2012.

On values shis: Dan M. Kahan, “The Logic of Reciprocity: Trust, Collecve Acon, and Law” John M. Olin Center for Studies in Law, Economics, and Public Policy Working Paper 281: 31 (2002).

Zipcar: Fleura Bardhi and Giana Eckhart, “Access-Based Consumpon: the case of car-sharing.” Journal of Consumer Research 39 ?(2012): 881–898

Couchsurfing: Paolo Pariga and Bogdan State, “Disenchanng the World? The Impact of Technology on Relaonships.” SocInfo 2014, LNCS 8851: 166–182

Freecycle and : Rachel Botsman and Roo Rogers, What’s Mine Is Yours: The Rise of Collaborave Consumpon. London: Harper Business, 2010.

See also: Yochai Benkler, “Sharing Nicely. On shareable goods and the emergence of sharing as a modality of economic producon.” Yale Law Journal 114(2) (2004): 273–358

Smart city criques: Adam Greenwood, Against the Smart City. Verso 2013. Richard Senne, “No One Likes a City That’s Too Smart.” The Guardian, 4 December 2012 Hug March and Ribera-Fumaz, “Smart Contradicons: The Polics of Making Barcelona a Self-Sufficient City.” European Urban and Regional Studies, 20 November 2014 Michele Provoost, “From Welfare City to Neoliberal Utopia.” Strelka talk, 2013. Available at hp://vimeo.com/64392842 Five rules to guide them all

• Build trust • Stimulate intrinsic motivations • Empower users • Protect civil liberties and privacy • Design for justice and inclusion Breaking the limits of the sharing ‘economy’: new targets for regulations, finance and norms

Sharing ‘Economy’ Sharing ‘Paradigm’ Lending Club, Credit Unions TaskRabbit, Taskrunner Repair Cafes Grooveshark, Sofar Sounds Public art and graffiti MOOCs SOLEs i-Citizen, Apps for Democracy Occupy and Avaaz , Public transit, bikesharing Feastly Foodbanks , Couchsurfing Squatting, co-housing Wikipedia, Linux Cooperatives and Unions

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Find us on Twier: Julian is at @JulianAgyeman Duncan at @mclaren_erc

Purchase Sharing Cies at: hps://mitpress.mit.edu/books/sharing-cies