The no straight lines city innovation | SMLXL - Engagement Marketing and Communication principles from Alan Moore

The no straight lines of city innovation

November 3rd, 2009

Shareable cities – what is a shareable city

Cities are shared spaces. That’s why we gather, in part, to share basic infrastructure, to socialize, to satisfy our human instinct to congregate, to make culture together. The call for a Shareable City simultaneously inspires us to imagine a transformed urban culture but also to notice the invisible ways we already share life all the time. Perhaps you’ve “borrowed” that proverbial “cup of sugar” from your neighbor? Helped an elder cross a street? Stopped to help a lost traveler get their bearings?

In fact, we cooperate automatically all day long, and a great deal of that invisible mutual aid takes the form of sharing information. Our social connections are often solidified through the sharing of food and drink. Sharing just comes naturally.

To pose the question, “What is a Shareable City?” implies that something’s been lost along the way. As cities and the lives within them have modernized, we’ve become more atomized and individualized. Concomitantly the remaining social wealth held in common—schools, libraries, parks— are unrelentingly pressured towards privatization. We’ve lived through a sustained period of history in which the pendulum has swung away from sharing and towards selling. Service providers have replaced extended families, fast food joints the dining room table.

And yet the Shareable City is resilient because sharers abound, and every act of sharing is an affirmative act of transformation. Instead of looking at the world in terms of what it owes her, the city sharer is excited to provide, to nurture, to enrich city life in general. Friends who share kitchen appliances, or teach each other to fix a sewing machine, or a bicycle, or even a car, are expanding a web of practical and pleasurable connections. These acts build familiarity and trust, two crucial ingredients for the deeper changes to come.

The economics of happiness

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