Lessons from the Sharing Economy

An observation was recently made that if someone went to work in a WeWork office building, took an Uber home and then had DoorDash deliver dinner, that person was relying on a collection of industries that, together, lose $13 billion annually. But it is not just our hypothetical person relying on these industries. Cities, developers and planners have made large assumptions based on the presumed permanence of these types of platforms.

But as WeWork ousts its CEO/Founder due to lackluster performance and Uber acknowledges that it cannot make money so long as its workers are both human and require fair labor laws, the market seems to be coming to terms with the overstated promises of these disruptors. However, even if these platforms change or, gasp, disappear in the next five years, they have produced some critical leave behinds that will continue to shape how we work, how we move, and how our built environment supports it all.

What are some of the lessons of the sharing economy that might outlive this current iteration of it?

Lessons from Coworking

WeWork has been joined by dozens of national coworking companies, not to mention hundreds of local iterations and thousands of proxies in coffeeshops, breweries and libraries. This massive move away from the conventional office format demonstrated that people will pay higher per-square-foot rent for less space and a shorter lease if the space is properly amenitized. It also reinforced the importance of creating third places (both as a place to work and as a mediator between home and work life). This redux of office work allowed smaller, funkier buildings — which conventionally would have been scrapped to make way for a large new Class A structure — to once again not only have value but strong desirability as creative office space. 

So if WeWork and other coworking giants went away, would we all go back to the office park? Hardly. The rise of coworking has uncovered more enduring factors at play:

1. We still have a glut of office buildings that need a future. Not all can become housing.

2. Density in a place, for a variety of reasons and at a variety of times, is critical. Standalone, single-use office parks and 9-5 downtowns are things of the past.

3. Employment can and should happen in neighborhoods and other, sometimes surprising, locations.

Lessons from Ridesharing

Both Uber and its competitor Lyft are facing mounting sustainability challenges in their race to an autonomous future. While fraught with issues, these platforms (not to mention the rise of bike and scooter shares) have, in a short time, allowed us to observe more deeply embedded trends in how we move about.

It turns out that people will pay more per mile for the chance to shed a car or two. It also turns out that people who own cars will use them for more than just hauling themselves around. These highly networked services have given rise to the on-demand delivery of virtually everything, and they are generating nuanced data about how people and goods move about. We have also seen that people care about their transportation experience, are more likely to explore new corners of their city when all it entails is the push of a button, and will jump at the chance to spend their time on something other than driving.

In other words, transportation reemerged as more of a service than as a burden borne by individuals. Even when we do drive ourselves, we still try to do non-driving things…like texting and other forms of distracted driving.

Ridesharing has underscored what many of us already knew: that we are still far too reliant on the car. It has further exacerbated the geometric constraints of that reliance (even if providing less parking is now better understood), and it reminds us that transportation of any type is hard to make pencil without public subsidies, venture capital, or both. 

So if the transportation changes of the past ten years are making way for something new, how do we make smart investments in our transportation infrastructure when the time horizon of these investments is measured in decades not quarterly earnings reports? A few insights from the past ten years may provide guidance:

1. Cities need to expand the portfolio of transportation options and expand the ways those transportation options connect to one another.

2. The way we design our streets need to acknowledge the full portfolio of transportation options…and be adaptable because the details of that portfolio are subject to change.

3. Transportation, regardless of mode, needs to be a far better experience than it has been over the past fifty years.

4. The technology and market acceptance exist for a more direct-user, fee-based model, even if those models still rely on some form(s) of subsidy.

5. Far more places need to be built around the scale of free (walking) or near-free (biking) mobility.

We are entering a time of near-constant change. Planning and building within this context should not rely on the latest trends and platforms but on the underlying phenomenon that give rise to these new applications. Whenever a new service takes off, ask yourself: What does this tell us about ourselves as creators, as consumers, and as communities? Iterate and test to find answers. Because the answers to this question are much slower to change and are much more bankable when making long-lasting planning and investment decisions. 

Top photo via Thought Catalog.

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About the Author

Joe Nickol is a Principal and Director of Urban Design and Development at the urban growth firm YARD & Company. YARD & Company uncovers demand for extraordinary places and crafts design & development strategies for shared investment in their future. Learn more about what we are up to at www.buildwithyard.com.