|
Want to make some money by driving others
<br />around in your car, or are you a rider who wants
<br />to be driven? Just about everyone has heard of
<br />Uber, the leader in this form of ride sharing, which
<br />includes other services such as Lyft and now
<br />Shuddle for ferrying children around and Sidecar
<br />for both people and packages. Wireless communi-
<br />cations, the Internet, and smartphones have made
<br />such ride -sharing and delivery services possible.
<br />This is a big deal. Lyft and Uber are worth $2.5
<br />billion and $5o billion (more than FedEx and 405
<br />companies in the S&P 500) respectively (Dugan
<br />2015; Tam and de la Merced 2015). And want to
<br />be a driver but don't have a car? You can rent one
<br />from Breeze just for that purpose.
<br />GOODS AND SERVICES PEER TO PEER
<br />Beyond transportation, the sharing economy
<br />extends to relationships between people and
<br />service providers. There is peer-to-peer or collab-
<br />orative consumption through services like Task -
<br />Rabbit and Skillshare which provide help, paid or
<br />bartered, or sometimes free. Instacart will grocery
<br />shop for you and claims it will deliver to your door
<br />in an hour. You can be a shopper and delivery
<br />person for them, making up to $25 an hour.
<br />NeighborGoods lets you share all those
<br />things you have but use so little, from leaf blow-
<br />ers, to pressure washers, to ... well, take a look
<br />in your garage, that place where you used to
<br />parkyour car. If you live in Austin, Texas; Den-
<br />ver; Kansas City, Missouri; Minneapolis; or San
<br />Francisco, Zaarly seeks to create a marketplace
<br />to help freelance home -service workers connect
<br />with home owners.
<br />There seems no end to the sharing. Fon,
<br />touting over 7 million members, lets you share
<br />your home WiFi in exchange for access. The
<br />Lending Club connects borrowers and inves-
<br />tors, enabling, so they say, better rates than
<br />credit cards and more return for lenders than
<br />what banks offer. Over $11 billion has been
<br />borrowed since it started in July 2007, with
<br />investors earning a median of 8.1 percent.
<br />Poshmark lets you show your unneeded cloth-
<br />ing in a virtual closet and get linked with
<br />people who share your sense of style. You can
<br />even share your dog, or become a sitter, with
<br />DogVacay and Rover helping you find a local
<br />dog sitter to care for your dog at your home or
<br />theirs.
<br />The power of the Internet in facilitating
<br />collaborative consumption was probably best
<br />evidenced first when eBay and Craigslist pro-
<br />vided an online marketplace never experienced
<br />before. Today, we have web -based services like
<br />Freecycle where people can post things they
<br />don't want, the remnants of our overconsump-
<br />tion, and others can take that flotsam and jet-
<br />sam for free. Yes, for free. It solves the donor's
<br />solid waste disposal problem and provides free
<br />goods for the takers.
<br />SHARING THE ROOF OVER OUR HEADS
<br />That brings us to the subject matter of great-
<br />est interest to planners—the sharing of space.
<br />Maybe it began with the sale of timeshares in
<br />the United States in 1974. These fractional in-
<br />terests have proved difficult to sell. Short-term
<br />vacation rentals emerged as a better way for
<br />many, linking property owners with vacation-
<br />ers through companies like HomeAway and its
<br />numerous related entities, claiming over one
<br />million listings. FlipKey does much the same
<br />with what it says are over 300,000 listings in
<br />179 countries.
<br />But Airbnb goes beyond vacation rent-
<br />als. You can rent a shared or private room
<br />for a night, a whole house, an apartment for
<br />your exclusive use for a week, a British castle
<br />(Airbnb says it has 1,400 -plus castles), a tee-
<br />pee, an igloo, a caboose, or an eight -foot by
<br />14 -foot treehouse in Illinois ($195 a night) if
<br />you wish.
<br />The company, originally "AirBed & Break-
<br />fast," was founded in 2008 by Brian Chesky,
<br />Joe Gebbia, and later Nathan Blecharczyk. It
<br />began when Chesky and Gebbia, to help pay
<br />their rent, rented sleeping accommodations
<br />on three air mattresses in their San Francisco
<br />apartment living room and made breakfast for
<br />the guests (Salter 2012). The company is now
<br />worth $25.5 billion and joins the ranks of the
<br />rest of the great ideas we wish we had thought
<br />of first (O'Brien 2015).
<br />GOOD OR BAD?
<br />Are short-term rentals good or bad for your com-
<br />munity? Like so many things, it depends.
<br />A second -floor condominium in this converted mansion in Denver's Capito
<br />bath rental for $1o5 per night, with a two -night minimum stay.
<br />neighborhood offers a private bedroom and;
<br />ZONINGPRACTICE so.i5
<br />AMERICAN PLANNING ASSOCIATION I page 3
<br />
|