The sharing economy
When I first moved from Toronto to California, I left a fantastic group of friends back east.
Making friends as an adult, with zero connections to the people around you, is tough. It’s taken 10 years of living out here to build a social group in Los Angeles that I feel at home with.
Those 10 years of figuring out how to make friends, how to build a community of peers, led me to become extremely interesting community building. I wound up reading a lot of books like Bowling Alone, which talks about the decline in our communities, and Triumph Of The City, which talks about why having communities is important.
I wound up thinking that part of the reason for our decline in communities, is that we’ve been pushed to isolate ourselves in ever smaller groups so we can buy more things. To wit: I’m not going to buy my own lawnmower if I can borrow my neighbors.
That’s why I’m so excited by the rise of websites that encourage a sharing economy. Sites like zipcar, neighborgoods, and getaround all eschew ownership for borrowing. It’s kind of a backwards way of building a community, to. It used to be, I’d get to know my neighbor, and then I’d borrow his hammer. But now, I can borrow a hammer from a stranger, and then get to know him. It may seem like just a way to save a bit of money, but I think these websites can go a long way to strengthening the neighborhoods around us.
Anyway, I’m selling my car this weekend, and going full urban : Bikes, buses, and zipcar.
