Like other promising social trends before, the Sharing City seems to have slid down in the hype cycle, where it is now stuck in the trough of disillusion. A few years ago, the prospects of car sharing, of renting a place in any city of the world, of renting a car between individuals, and all of that at a very reasonable price, were appealing to everybody. Last September, Julian Agyeman, a professor at Tufts university, summed up this hope in the Time (http://time.com/3446050/smart-cities-should-mean-sharing-cities/):
‘Sharing the whole city’ should become the guiding purpose of the future city. (…) It redefines what ‘smart cities’ of the future might really mean—harnessing smart technology to an agenda of sharing and solidarity, rather than the dumb approaches of competition, enclosure and division.
Alas, since, most of us have taken a ride in a overfilled minivan or have spent a night in an Airbnb apartment looking exactly like a soulless hotel room, the filth in bonus.
Complex Cities, between science and politics 