The increase in shared bicycles has required swift and adaptive responses to design and management of the urban landscape. This image shows shared bicycles taking up a large amount of pedestrian space, while the urban green belt continues to unevenly consume urban resources, failing to provide the sharing city more services. Such a reality is a challenge not only to the design and management process, but also to our values.
In recent years, the revolution brought by sharing economy has significantly shaped the urban space and lifestyles. Cities face both huge challenges and great opportunities in the rapid urbanization and population aggregation, which depends on a well-planned and-governed human society. Singapore is one of few high-dense cities that are able to achieve high liveable standards in the Asian context. The authors reveal the Singapore practices on urban liveability and sustainable development via strategy review and case study, which addresses three key issues in policy-making, spatial arrangement, and site management. This research contributes to facilitating the implementation of public health promotion and quality life improvement in the new era of sharing city.
For designers suffering from slowed-down urban development and shrinking economics, innovative design can help turn a slow down into an opportunity. As various issues emerge with the development of urban areas, such as the political renovation, spatial environment deterioration, erosion of community spirit, industrial transformation, and ecosystem degradation, innovative strategies can produce better public open space design. This article discusses how enhancing user experience, returning to urban nature, and interdisciplinary technologies can promote social consciousness and revitalize urban ecologies.
With the increasing influence of sharing economy in China and throughout the world, its definition, objectives, and development methods have become one of the topics for the science of urban public management. This interview points out that the sharing economy has emerged under the background of the transition of consumer society from possession-orientation to use-orientation, and the revolution of consumption mode and lifestyle with an ultimate aim of improving the efficiency and well-being. As a result, in China’s urbanization process which is now shifting from incremental planning to inventory planning, the key for urban development lies in the promotion of the sharing economy and achieving maximum utility with minimum material possession.
The city, where modern urban life happens, not only allows for the exchange of goods and information, but also accommodates the production and consumption of social relations. The gathering of goods, information, people, and social relations in cities has promoted the growth of sharing economy. From Airbnb, Uber, to shared bicycles and shared office space, the idea of "sharing" seems to have become a new economic model and paradigm which, along with the mobile Internet, is rolling into everyone's daily life. In facing the new economy, which is characterized by sharing economy, and the more open social relations, urban life is inevitably undergoing dramatic changes. When we examine the city through the lens of sharing and apply the concept of sharing into urban design and management, it will not only bring great changes to the city's internal dynamics and socio-economic process, but also lead to a reconstruction of urban space. Responding to these changes and challenges, a number of cities are seeking for a more shared and open future, yet which could not be supported by the current urban space. This article tries to discuss the sharing economy and its characteristics with the study of contemporary urban space in order to envision the future of urban space within this revolution of sharing.
Sharing City Seoul, a plan to revive the sharing culture on a city level to solve the social and economic problems, was proclaimed by the Seoul Metropolitan Government in September 2012. Confronted with a variety of social and urban issues around economic slowdown, welfare decrease, environmental pollution, social isolation and diminishing community spirit, the city leaders of Seoul introduced the plan to reduce pressures in these areas without putting additional resources in, by establishing a sharing ecosystem and embracing it as an integral part of Seoul’s economy. Seoul’s case is unique as the sharing policies were led by the city government as a city policy rather than the private sector, based on a creative, public-private partnership model. The city has taken initiatives to lead by example by building the foundation for the sharing city project to take root and spreading policies through collaboration with citizens and district level governments as partners.
This paper is a derivative of Seoul Draws a City through Sharing under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. By elaborating on the city’s strategies that have enabled Sharing City Seoul to make progress, including improving laws and institutions, supporting sharing enterprises, and facilitating citizen participation, this paper explores visions and insights for a more sharing and sustainable urban future.
This article introduces Team 408+’s design for the protection of the Hengshan Road-Fuxing Road Historical and Cultural Area in the 2016 Shanghai Urban Design Challenge, with the aim to emphasize the significance of the relationship between data platforms and their users. In promoting the historical and cultural protection, the design advocates remediation with spatial self-organization rather than restoration with physical development, and encourages multi-stakeholders’ participation. This project also proposes two mobile applications, “Wandering in Heng-Fu” and “Voice of Alleys,” to apply big data into urban management and to establish sustainable communities by harmonizing big data platforms with urban self-organization development and spatial management.
This paper discusses the possibility and direction of public participation and edible landscape construction in China's high-density metropolitan areas. It is based on the different types of community gardens completed by Shanghai Clover Nature School Teenager Nature Experience Service Center in recent years under the concept of "Urban Permaculture." By endowing rights to the inhabitants of the community, these examples have helped the participants become owners and established cooperation mechanisms between government, enterprises, social organizations, and the public.
Uniting St. James Park through a transformative design process positions the park as the center of its historic district and as a catalyst for the ongoing revitalization of downtown San José. WRT’s design strategies focus on park activation, connections within and around the park, and celebration of community and history to reimagine the park as a favorite destination for the residents of San José.
Increasing intensification of urban density impacts urban spaces and lifestyles, necessitating in society a landscape canvas suitably layered for diverging needs and goals, and ideally blended to cater to “multiplicities” in well-designed fusions. Places of learning — where knowledge, beliefs and values are transferred to and between groups and individuals to better society — is an ideal environment where this “sharing paradigm” manifests. This paper focuses on layered landscapes of contemporary dimensions; approach, scale and cultural references, contributing to design, layering, and sharing, through the cross-cultural visions of the University Town of National University of Singapore.
Interstitial spaces are in-between spaces situated within or bridging over the various built structures in the city’s dense urban environment. The project Interstitial Hong Kong focuses on Hong Kong’s Sitting-out Areas, a unique public space typology distinguished by their small size and incidence in the interstices of Hong Kong’s physical structure. Often overseen in their high occurrence but small size, and opportunistically transformed into a public object with value, sitting-out areas don not “fit” in the city; they are in-between, redundant, vague, leftover spaces, and reflect the cultural, ecological, and geographical settings of Hong Kong. By developing a critical spatial analysis of small landscape spaces in Hong Kong, as well as collecting and communicating their unifying spatial, organizational or procedural attributes, Interstitial Hong Kong examines Sitting-out Areas at the scale of both immediate urban and ecological contexts, and the spatial assemblage in reference to the occupant. The project looks at Sitting-out Areas as not only a physical artifact, but also a conceptual and procedural design strategy.