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  • Home
  • Blog
  • Recommendations
    • Sustainability Filter
    • Shared Mobility
    • Shared Spaces
    • Shared Goods
    • Shared Food
    • Shared Energy
    • Community Sharing
    • Addressing Data Gaps
  • City Cases
  • About the Project
    • In the Press
    • Graphics and Logos
  • Resources
    • Webinar 24 Nov
  • Contact
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SHARED SPACES

Shared Spaces include the sharing of living space for short-term rentals (e.g., Airbnb), storage, and parking, as well as permanent housing options such as cooperatives, co-living and cohousing. There are also co-working sites that allow independent workers or employees (while traveling) to share workspaces, and office services and equipment.
Read the chapter

Key recommendations to advance urban sustainability:

  • Thoughtfully regulate short-term rentals, especially in communities with low vacancy rates, in order to safeguard equity and housing affordability, and to mitigate possible impacts on neighbours, community character, and city resources.

  • Support cooperative housing directly or by lobbying higher levels of government, and/or by changing local legislation.
  • Encourage cohousing that locates near transit, emphasizes reducing waste and carbon emissions, and cultivates pro-sustainability behaviours of residents.

  • Promote financial instruments that permit co-ownership.

  • Explore how to fuse co-working with libraries and business incubators, prioritizing those whose client businesses show transformative sustainability potential.

What to watch out for:

  • The rebound effect - by providing cheaper accommodation, short-term rentals may induce more flying and related consumption, increasing carbon emissions; some people are purchasing accommodations for the sole purpose of earning income through short-term rentals.

  • The impact of short-term rentals on reducing affordable housing supply in neighbourhoods with low vacancy rates.

  • Shared personal storage and parking spaces that offer little or even negative sustainability gains by supporting accumulation of goods and greater car use.

  • Shared space options like co-living, which may not live up to their sustainability promise; monitoring and evaluation is required here.

  • Intervening in areas of the Sharing Economy that are thriving without government support unless there is specific public good purpose, e.g., co-working.
Thank you to The J.W. McConnell Family Foundation for supporting this roadmap and project as part of Cities for People.  
​The LGSE roadmap was developed and written by One Earth.