For too long now, the name of the game has been keeping up with the neighbors. We’ve filled our houses, garages and lives with more stuff than we could ever use. We’ve replaced authentic connection and meaningful lives with possessions, and we’ve driven ourselves into an environmental crisis along the way. The sharing economy aims to change all that.
A global movement that values access over ownership, community over isolation and sustainability over endless growth, the sharing economy includes grassroots organizations, neighborhood groups, startups, nonprofits, government entities and established companies that facilitate the sharing of resources such as cars, homes, tools, food, childcare, money, time, skills and more.
While some aspects of the sharing economy, such as co-ops, community gardens, tool libraries and clothing swaps are nothing new, the Internet now provides us with tools and platforms that make sharing easier than ever. With a smartphone, you can locate a car to borrow, a spare bedroom to stay in, neighborhood fruit trees or a ride. Technology has taken sharing, something that humans have done since time immemorial, and extended it from a small circle of trusted friends to an enormous circle of community-vetted, not-yet-friends by using reputation-based tools including profiles and user reviews.
The entire Bay Area is a hotbed of the sharing economy, and Santa Cruz—itself no stranger to tech and innovation—is well-established on the technology-enabled sharing map. Here’s a sampling of new-school sharing that can be accessed in Santa Cruz:
Home Sharing
The giant of the sharing economy is Airbnb. With this home sharing platform you can rent out a spare room, your entire home, your treehouse, your castle or whatever else is sleep-able. For hosts, this means extra income and an opportunity to meet new people. For renters, this means a range of prices, locales and accommodations that dwarfs hotel options.
A sidestep away from Airbnb is Couchsurfing, a platform that connects travelers with free floors/couches/rooms/homes. With no money exchanged, this tends to be the domain of youngsters traveling on the cheap, but it offers travelers of all ages an opportunity to stay for free and take in the local perspective.
Ride Sharing
If you spend time in or around Santa Cruz, you’ve most likely seen the parking spaces reserved for Zipcars. A fleet-based car-sharing service, Zipcar capitalizes on the fact that many people only need a car occasionally. As a Zipcar member, you have 24/7 access to thousands of cars around the world that can be rented for as little as an hour, or up to a week.
Peer-to-peer car-sharing platforms, including RelayRides and Getaround, through which people rent their cars to others, are booming in the Bay Area. There are some listings in Santa Cruz, but more people need to jump on board to really activate it here.
If you just need a ride someplace, check out Zimride. The ride-sharing service connects drivers with riders for trips across town, across the state or across the country.
Is cycling more your thing? Spinlister is a platform that allows people to rent their bikes out by the hour, day or week.
Sharing Stuff
Let’s say one person has an inflatable raft they haven’t touched in years. Another is planning a camping trip and wants to go rafting. The consumer way would be for the first person to continue to store their raft while the second person goes out and buys a raft that they will then store. The sharing way is for the first person to lend the second their raft. Easy peasy.
There are numerous platforms for the sharing of goods, from blenders and books to chairs and lawnmowers. Some, including Yerdle, focus primarily on the giving away of goods while other platforms, such as Neighborgoods, are all about facilitating borrowing among people. By connecting users with friends of friends via social media platforms including Facebook, these sites strengthen the level of trust among users and increase one’s circle of willing sharers exponentially.
Share Experiences
One of the downers of traveling to new places is that, all too often, we’re reliant on the well-traveled roads and attractions. We can mingle among the locals, but generally not with them. This means that trips orbit around touristy things rather than authentic things. Several sharing platforms are emerging that connect travelers with locals for coffee, a visit, a meal or even a homestay.
Tripping, while offering room and home rentals, also offers a Free section to connect people who want to get off the tourist path and get to know the local people. The site coordinates meetings from a conversation or outing to free home stays.
Vayable helps travelers design their vacations by connecting them with locals for tours, walks, bike rides and more. Those offering the tours can make money showing off the art, sights and locals' view of their town, and travelers get to see things that might not be in a guidebook, as well as connect with locals outside of the tourism realm. Among the Santa Cruz offerings: food tours, surfing lessons and sailing trips.
Work Sharing
Need help with your garden? Or some office work? Maybe you need someone to transport a package for you, or build your beach bonfire. All these things and more can be hired out to the Task Rabbits, a community of vetted people who bid on tasks listed on the TaskRabbit website.
Skillshare is a platform that allows anyone to teach an online class. Classes include graphic design, cooking, audio engineering, fashion and much more. Participants work at their own pace, and the instructors have a way to share their knowledge with the world. The only limit to class offerings is the imagination of the teacher. As naturally happens with reputation-based, sharing systems, the best ones rise to the top while the weak ones move to the bottom.
Coworking spaces are proving to be centers for innovation within the sharing economy. Numerous startups, freelancers and small businesses use the collaborative, connected nature of these spaces to solidify their place in the sharing economy. Here in the Santa Cruz area, we’re fortunate to have a handful of coworking spaces. If you’re tired of working alone and looking for a community of forward-thinking, engaged peers, check out Cruzioworks, NextSpace and the Satellite.
The Big Picture
On a personal level, sharing is a fun, easy way to connect with those around us and save some money. On a global level, this movement, which is growing larger and more widespread by the day, provides a model for how to live a sustainable, connected life. Around the globe, people, organizations and municipalities are finding ways to activate the sharing economy in their regions. As the local sharing community grows in Santa Cruz, so do our opportunities to step away from the endless-growth, über-consumer model and continue our emergence as a forward-thinking, tech-savvy, connected community.
