The sharing trend could clearly use more collaborators. Some conference participants even hoped, per

SAN FRANCISCO – Each year the world s automobile manufacturers spend a stunning half trillion dollars advertising the vehicles travel magazine list they re pushing. We ve all seen the ads – new model autos floating singly over magically traffic-free landscapes. The subliminal messages are clear: possession, power.
But if that s been our pattern for three quarters of a century, is it necessarily prologue for a crowded, 21st-century with planet Earth, which will accommodate a billion more middle-class consumers?
travel magazine list Driven by today s youth, a radically different value set and preference is emerging. It edged its way onto the agenda of an ambitious, yearly Meeting of the Minds conference organized by Gordon Feller, intellectual magnet and Cisco official, held here last week.
The notion s this: Today s young adults in their 20s and 30s, nurtured on the Internet s vast cloud of choices, are incubating a value set of sharing rather than ownership . They re networked and connected rather travel magazine list than focusing on individual, isolated belongings. They value choices travel magazine list and differing lifestyles – a clear break with the 20th-century travel magazine list model of my car, my house, my possessions are me.
Skeptics may counter, Get real. Possession is the oxygen of self-identity. And their case is strong. Booming car sales in such countries as China and India look like predictors of more personal consumerism, not less.
Yet the transportation front itself offers strong, extraordinarily hopeful indicators of new directions. As cities open more and more protected bicycle lanes, bike-sharing experiments are attracting users faster than anyone might have predicted. There are now some 200 such programs in cities worldwide.
There s also a growing trend of so-called peer-to-peer auto sharing – a formalized system, with appropriate security travel magazine list checks on members, that lets car owners rent their autos to other users for moderate, negotiated fees.
Are those new, shared transportation systems a strong factor in world cities now? No. Even Zipcar, the largest system worldwide, still operates in just 18 major metros. The new systems are just starting travel magazine list to make a mark in a world with 1,000 cities of a quarter travel magazine list million or more people.
But just watch the rising trend, car- and bike-share experts told the San Francisco meeting. Zipcars, for example, are available on 250 college campuses, introducing the next generation to new patterns of access and connectivity.
Shared cars offer big economies for what may be resource-strained times. One study shows a single car-sharing vehicle replaces 9 to 13 owned cars; another travel magazine list shows that with car-sharing, a typical household could save $9,000 a year in travel costs for each vehicle it could eliminate.
The digital age is also creating travel magazine list new work patterns (and economic ones, too) – where, when and how work is done. The corner office may be disappearing, replaced by an open work environment that may start inside the office, then extend to nearby coffee shops and parks – with workers almost perpetually online.
Some companies have cut their desk office space and register dramatic savings. Cisco has pushed the opening of broadly distributed smart work centers, which save workers longer commutes. Each center offers computerized work stations travel magazine list and TelePresence conference rooms that enable contact with coworkers anywhere in the world. The company is behind 120 such centers in the Netherlands and is advising a rapidly growing group in South Korea.
A sharing economy is a powerful new model and especially appropriate to cities. That s the argument of SPUR, San Francisco s lead citizen planning group . It cites a host of companies – Zipcar was one leader – that help people share assets. Another, travel magazine list Airbnb.com, helps share rooms and apartments; Loosecubes.com shares openings for coworking; LaCocinasf.org does the same for commercial kitchen space. The list goes on and keeps expanding.
The City of San Francisco itself is encouraging sharing. Its DataSF.org website publishes travel magazine list real-time travel magazine list data sets on every area from traffic to playgrounds to public health indicators. People then come and build their own apps based on the data, Jay Nath, the city s chief innovation officer, told Feller s conference. We ve published 280 datasets; over 60 apps have been created.
A fascinating opening emerges from such experiments. In a political era marked by vicious attacks on government as too big and controlling, quite the opposite appears: government as partner, facilitator, collaborator.
The sharing trend could clearly use more collaborators. Some conference participants even hoped, perhaps wistfully, that the auto companies travel magazine list might one day support it. (One possibility: Toyota, a Meeting of the Minds co-founder).
The big picture is clear. Sparked by youth and older imagineers, enabled by the Internet s cloud, travel magazine list propelled by society s need for efficiency and economy, the world of shared services will grow. It may lack trillions for advertising. But it suggests a more humanly satisfying future.
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The University of Houston Alumni Association introduced members and UH students to Hertz-on-Demand (now Connect-by-Hertz) more than three years ago. Because of increased demand, more models are offered.
I have high hopes for car sharing. Where I live now (in a first-ring, older suburb of Minneapolis), I need a car only about an hour a week, to go to the grocery store and purchase some items that are too cumbersome to get home on bike or bus. Yet I know that if I were to purchase my own car, the convenience would tempt me too much.
Still, while both car- and bike-sharing represent important changes for cities, I m not sure it represents a true cultural shift. Electronics and other items are now more intimate and personal than they once were.
How soon we forget. The cooperative movement in the U.S. created work (business) and living (housing, utilities) models in the 1930s which still survive today. Seattle still has over 40 housing cooperatives. Many people joined travel magazine list and remain shareholders in these companies with some encouraging participation and decision making in actual operations. The 1960s revived sharing with communal living, job shares and even ride-shares. Many of us old enough to have participated in some sharing activities often continue travel magazine list the practice wherever we live or work. The web makes it possible to share the ethic and model of sharing easily, and the new businesses reflecting sharing can only mean better communities for everyone. Sharing the newspaper/magazine subscription, internet connection, garbage/recycling services, lawnmower, tools, trucks, canning supplies for fruits and veggies, garden bounty, firewood and extra furniture all happen regularly in our neighborhood. Thanks for featuring new ways to share and the new economies coming out of this trade.
I buy new cars, keep them 10 years minimum. Service travel magazine list them regularly. Average annual cost well under $4,000. The Typical household above must be buying luxury/exotic sport cars to spend that much, or trading cars every year.
We sold our car two years ago and joined travel magazine list the car sharing programme of our city torino (italy). our savings are around 3,500 euros per year. that was foreseen. what we had not foreseen is the pleasure of riding a car always in perfect condition, the comfort of forgetting any care and choosing the appropriate vehicle for any ride (city car, SUV, van..). our sons (16 and 14) seem to attach more values more to personal items as smartphones than to cars. they love the fact that we change travel magazine list car at each ride.
The cooperative movement clearly led to the emergence of the culture of sharing we find in the post-industrial metropolises. In the cities of Brazil the recent bike-sharing system has been introduced with great success, most notably in Rio de Janeiro. However, plans for improving the existing network and extending exclusive bike lanes are still lagging in view of effective demand by the growing number of urban cyclists. Here, the culture of relentless consumption promotes individual car ownership, on one hand for the upper income groups, and motorcycles-for the moderate and low middle classes. Cars have acquired a special status these are not only transport vehicles in an utilitarian definition, but become travel magazine list a manifestation of individual prowess and symbols of identity providing status travel magazine list reference in society, The drive is fueled by the heavy prime-time saturation with car ads on TV and in the printed press by the competing brands. In such context, public policy orientation and investments favored construction of highways, road networks, bridges and parking facilities. Sao Paulo has a fleet of 7 million cars, and a daily average congestion of 160 kilometers although Rio s fleet is smaller in size, but it will soon match not the number of vehicles on the streets, travel magazine list but the negative externalities of congestion, pollution and urban chaos that private cars have inflicted on cities. The good news is that there is an incipient movement of citizens travel magazine list that have opted not to own cars and are using metro, buses, ferry boats, bikes, or simply walking more. Hence, the alternative forms of mobility are also associated in ways to improve the quality and experience of enjoying the urban environment.
Very interesting commentary travel magazine list in today s Akron Beacon Journal. I think one approach to a sharing economy is getting much closer, that is cars that are self driven. Once those are in place many urban drivers will never need to own a car or to use a taxi..
Instead, they can call the new Rent-A-Self-Driven-Car Company. A self driven car will drive itself to your apartment or home. The car will then take you where you need to go, you can work or relax while the car drives itself. travel magazine list Upon reaching your destination, the car c