This article was taken from the August 2014 issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online.
Look around you: idle assets are everywhere. From parked cars to empty buildings, vacant shops to derelict land, unused skills to leftover minutes on our mobile plans and, of course, storage warehouses jammed with stuff long forgotten by its owners. Idling capacity -- the untapped value in under-utilised commercial, personal and urban assets such as these -- is pervasive. It's in our homes, supply chains and cities. We usually don't notice it, or if we do, we believe it's normal.
Take how London's residents typically use their cars: 4.6 million trips are taken with just the driver in the car, and there are 1.4 million passenger trips every day. That adds up to a staggering 12.4 million unoccupied seats daily -- with similar scenarios playing out in cities around the world. It is estimated that 78 per cent of all journeys taken in the billion cars around the world are solo rides.
Property is another prime example of market mismatch, where needs and haves are out of sync. Housing charity Shelter recently reported that there are 279,000 long-term privately owned empty homes in England. In Philadelphia, about 40,000 publicly and privately owned empty properties cost the city more than $20 million (£11.8m) a year to maintain minimally. Leaving this real estate idle also contributed to a $3 billion decline in property values. Philadelphia is no different from other cities around the world where residents -- including artists, entrepreneurs and young people -- could use this space to perform, convene and create.
Such mismatches and inefficiencies are asking to be disrupted across almost all sectors. Fast-growing companies such as Airbnb, Lyft, BlaBlaCar and Liftshare take an asset that was previously underutilised -- whether it's a spare seat in a car or a room in a house - and put it into a market of shared use. By doing so, they unlock wealth that was there all along, but which was "stuck" or invisible before.
A massive opportunity exists to apply this lens to our urban landscapes and create "shareable cities": places where sharing assets is encouraged, incentivised and easy. Cities where residents can efficiently share all kinds of assets -- from spaces to cars, skills, time and even utilities -- and local government works to make these exchanges as safe and frictionless as possible. For city leaders and policymakers this is a fresh way to boost the local economy, build social fabric and create a more efficient use of resources -- a civic trifecta.
In the UK, we are starting to see successful examples emerging that reimagine the use of city resources. Take somewhereto_, a space-matching platform that helps young people find idle spaces such as dance studios, art galleries, gyms and shops in which to do the things they love. In the process it has unlocked more than 37,000m<sup>2</sup> of previously unused space with an estimated rental value of more than £2 million -- money and benefit that was simply "lost" before.
OpportunitySpace in the US takes a different approach and achieves similar results by working directly with local governments to map city-owned spaces. It recently helped Louisville in Kentucky unlock more than $8 million in 450 idle properties, underlining the invisible wealth of real estate in the city.
The opportunities for shareable cities to match needs with haves extend much further than space and transport. In the UK, GoodGym enables fitness enthusiasts to "get fit by doing good" -- taking on physical tasks that benefit the community such as jogging to work on a community project, doing one-off errands to help vulnerable people, or visiting an isolated older person. It has partnered with local councils across the country and helped reshape social care delivery in more efficient, connected ways.
Seoul in South Korea has taken the shareable-cities concept to heart more than any other city in the world. The government has made almost 800 public facilities available for shared use, which residents have tapped into more than 17,000 times. Mayor Park Won-Soon has passed legislation specifically to promote collaborative consumption, and the municipal government has launched nearly a dozen sharing-based initiatives in the past 18 months, including tool libraries, home sharing and ShareHub, an online portal. Other cities are starting to engage: San Francisco has the Sharing Economy Working Group. Amsterdam has partnered with ShareNL, the country's sharing network. And in January, 10 Downing Street hosted a forum that signalled its interest in the area and has led to early stages of policy analysis and reform.
The idea of shareable cities could help rewrite the next chapter in urban history. We'll be able to see abundance and opportunity, instead of scarcity, in the invisible wealth in idle assets all around us.
April Rinne is an expert on the sharing economy and cities. Most recently she was CSO at the Collaborative Lab.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
