April 2, 2012

• A Share-able Economy

  My husband is looking at returning to school and I am looking at obtaining my Master’s degree. Neither of us are crazy about the thought of more student loans, so we are planning to self pay through it. Looking at expenses, time and effort, we have both agreed it makes more sense to focus on classes and reduce our workload. We have a mortgage, two cars, insurance, and two grown daughters that need as much financial support as they did in their teens. 

  Trying to wrap our heads around how to accomplish all of this, he asked me if I was willing to go back to living like a 20 year old. Sacrificing our privacy by getting a roomate, sacrificing our freedom by sharing a car. I not only said no, I said hell no. I would rather work all day and night to complete school without giving up my lifestyle. But then I started looking at articles about poverty and hope, and a shareable economy, and felt a little ashamed of my selfishness and pride.

  We already share our resources and talents. I have a lady that does my hair for free and I watch her kids for her from time to time. My daughter had her car repaired for free because she babysits for a man who knows a mechanic. He pays the mechanic in his trade, she pays him with babysitting. I support a friend’s computer and remove all the viruses and garbage he downloads and he brings me vegetables from their garden. These “sharing” activities avoid everyone cost and nobody is taxed for them. 

  Now city governments are getting involved. Many cities are adopting shareable economy policies to encourage sustainable economic growth and job creation. Here are the 20 policies that municipalities are encouraged to adopt and promote:

  1. Car sharing and parking sharing – This includes making off street parking only accessible to car sharers, increasing the cost to park on the street, and allowing people to lease their residential parking places.

  2. Carpooling and ride sharing - One partial remedy has been offered by the rise of online rideshare matchmaking sites like Craigslist, 511.org, Zimride, and GoLoco. Cities can offer other incentives by creating free carpool lanes, designated taxi stands, and encouraging public transportation.

  
  

  3. Bike sharing – Bicycling is the fastest growing transportation trend in urban America. Bicycling can be encouraged by cities by increasing biking infrastructure, offering free or reduced helmets, and  commuter choice programs. “Bike-sharing is transit. Workers who use bike-sharing services around the U.S. should benefit from the Commuter Choice Program which allows employers to give their employees tax-free money towards commuting”

  
  

  4.Share-able commercial spaces – Especially now, there is a surplus of vacant commercial spaces. Cities can meet needs of both the empty space and people who need a space by incentivising the facilitation of community owned commercial spaces, allowing temporary use permits, and creating disincentives for wasting commercial space and holding it  vacant. 

  5. Shareable Housing – Zoning to condense housing units, shared parking, and encourage collaboratively developed communities can offer affordable housing and communities while also preserving green space and our carbon footprint. 

  6. Home sharing – This includes removing restrictions to activities such as using your home as a community meeting place, selling your garden vegetables, and offering child care without a permit. 

  7. Neighborhood sharing – Shared pods and sheds for storage, neighborhood emergency preparedness, and community gardens are all part of sharing neighborhoods.

  

  8. Recreational and green spaces – Allowing basketball hoops in driveways, creating more pocket parks, depaving excess parking lots and creating community walls that encourage murals are all ways cities can encourage public (free) recreational spaces. 

  9. Shareable work spaces - Shared workspaces and workshops like The Hub, pariSOMA, TechShop, and3rd Ward enrich a city by giving workers, entrepreneurs, and creative people access to space and equipment for their special projects or day-to-day work. These spaces are ultimate breeding grounds for sharing and collaboration.

  10. Shareable rooftops – We should harness rooftop spaces to collect solar energy, grow plants, or create sunny social spaces. Rooftops also make first contact with a large amount of rainwater, which makes them prime candidates for the collection and management of water.

  
  

  11. Urban agriculture - Sharing is a critical component of urban food growing. First, food growing is labor intensive and requires that community members collaborate and share skills and knowledge. Sharing is also critical to land access; the people who will suffer the most from a food crisis are the urban poor who have less access to resources and tillable land. Much of the land that could be cultivated is owned by middle- or upper-class urban residents, private vacant lot owners, and government entities.

  12. Food sharing – Removing restrictions on places and venues that food can be shared and offered charitably is one step in sharing food. Removing laws that require commercial kitchens for anyone who is creating food to share or sell would reduce costs and barriers so people could (legally) cook and serve food for large groups and distribution in parks and other public venues would be possible. More than 15 percent of households in America are “food insecure”, and restrictions on sharing and distribution hinder our ways of closing the food gap.

  
  

  13 -Public Libraries – Libraries have always been the epitome of sharing, and the budgets for libraries get cut every year. Libraries offer shared learning, workspaces, even economic development. (http://www.ipsr.ku.edu/resrep/pdf/m260.pdf) 

  
  

  14. Worry-Free Sharing – This includes ways the laws and policies can change to encourage sharing, such as removing insurance restrictions for sharing cars and federal regulations regarding food sharing. 

  15. Cooperative Enterprise

  16. Shareable Exchange and Financial Platforms

  17. Democracy and Decision-Making

  18. The Shareable City Employee

  19.  Making Sharing Part of the Culture of the City

  20. Energy

   

  The last five listed are complicated and have less specific ideas, each city government is integrating them in their own ways. The fact is, our economic recovery has been weak and our poverty and unemployment rate has caused us to become more creative with our lifestyles. Necessity is the mother of invention, and these ideals go against the grain of the individualistic American culture. I think they are long overdue, and I am thrilled to see so many cities being progressive and adopting these principles. 

  I am a poor hippie at heart. 

   

  • 11:56 am
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