Sharing As Our Future?

Remember as little kids our parents taught us that sharing was a good thing?  Sharing has its benefits, as we all know, and I’m sure we have all talked about shared housing in our classes. One of the hottest trends right now is car sharing.

There is an organization that is devoted to shareablity. The website,  Shareable “is an award-winning nonprofit news, action and connection hub for the sharing transformation. What’s the sharing transformation? It’s a movement of movements emerging from the grassroots up to solve today’s biggest challenges, which old, top-down institutions are failing to address.”

It appears that Seoul, South Korea has taken sharing to an entirely new dimension as they are the “sharing city.” Sharing City Seoul: A Model for the World reports on Seoul’s Sharing City initiative, started in 2012.   The story Is Seoul the Next Great Sharing City? explains that city leaders determined  to position “it… to be a model city for sharing. A new, city-funded project called Sharing City, Seoul aims to bring the sharing economy to all Seoul citizens by expanding sharing infrastructure, promoting existing sharing enterprises, incubating sharing economy startups, utilizing idle public resources, and providing more access to data and digital works.” The laudable goals of becoming the model sharing city include “to create jobs and increase incomes, address environmental issues, reduce unnecessary consumption and waste, and recover trust-based relationships between people.”

How does this connect to elder law? The Next Great Sharing story explains that part of the sharing initiative includes shared housing, “connecting senior citizens who have extra rooms with students who need a room.”  There is also information about shared meals and other initiatives. Think how the sharing model could help eliminate isolation amongst elders! 

Is it working? The Model story from June of 2014 provides an update: Housing and Inter-generational Connection: To address the housing crisis and reduce the social isolation of seniors, a program was created to match young people with idle rooms in seniors’ houses. There have been 28 matches to date.”

There is also a working group on a sharing economy movement in San Francisco. There are policies  for a shareable community available for city leaders (request here).

Thanks to my dear friend and colleague, Professor Mark Bauer, for sharing the article with me.