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Space-Sharing Practices in the CityYe Zhang & Jeffrey Kok Hui Chan
Built Environment https://doi.org/10.2148/benv.46.1.5 Abstract: Space-sharing practice is deemed an emerging urban phenomenon that has so far accreted in new forms of sharing spatial resources, the creation of new shared spaces, and the production of new socio-spatial sharing relations. Central to space-sharing practice is the recognition that the physical space can be designed and configured into a shareable resource, and that there are certain resources that would be more effectively shared in actual and spatial environment. Space-sharing practice can be further specified through a threefold distinction: the space of sharing (i.e. the different ways of sharing spaces and the different typologies of shared space), space in sharing (i.e. the different roles that space plays in facilitating or enabling sharing activities and practices), and finally, space for sharing (i.e. how environmental design can create affordance for sharing and enable social transformations). |
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Sharing Space: Urban Sharing, Sharing a Living Space, and Shared Social SpacesJeffrey Kok Hui Chan & Ye Zhang
Space and Culture https://doi.org/10.1177/1206331218806160 Abstract: Although sharing city is by definition a "place-based" approach to understand sharing activities, and despite the fact that spatial proximity and configuration can affect the formation of sharing practices, neither the impacts of sharing activities on space nor the different spatial attributes, which in turn condition sharing activities and behaviors, have been adequately explicated. In this article, the sociospatial dimensions of sharing space are encapsulated through the following three vectors on different spatial scales-namely, urban sharing, sharing a living space, and shared social spaces-and described through the case examples of the dockless bikeshare program, sharing a domestic space, and the coworking space and hackerspace, respectively. These vectors are then framed as the contours of a general theory of sharing spaces. |
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How inclusive is the sharing economy? And what is the implication for neighbourhood design?Ye Zhang & Kenny Han Teng Chen
Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers - Urban Design and Planning https://doi.org/10.1680/jurdp.18.00036 Abstract: The sharing economy is growing rapidly and in the meantime scepticism emerges questioning its alleged benefits with respect to inclusiveness, such as providing equal access, encouraging participation and building social connection. However, how inclusive the sharing economy is has yet to be adequately explicated. This paper examines the inclusiveness of the sharing economy using a conceptual framework of inclusive economy, highlighting potential risks and problems. It then proposes a model of a more inclusive sharing economy that comprises hybrid sharing platforms and integrates collaborative consumption and co-production in a local community. Following this, the model is translated into a neighbourhood prototype and then tested using a hypothetical urban design scheme for an ordinary neighbourhood in Singapore. |
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Dockless bike-sharing system and its relations with public space: what does media news tell us?Zhuoshu He & Ye Zhang
13th International Forum on Urbanism 2019 Nanjing, China Abstract: The dockless bike-sharing system is often owned and operated by the private sector, but ineluctably exerts direct influences on the urban public space and draws abundant public attentions. It creates new ways of space appropriation by promoting cycling in an access-based way. At the same time, problems arise pertaining to spatial conflicts between different users and the maintenance of public spaces. Then, what exactly public perceptions and debates on these issues are? And how would they inform the future of urban public space? This article aims to explicate the social discourse of dockless bike-sharing system, and its relations with urban public space based on media news. Singapore, where the dockless bike sharing experienced the first wave of boom and retreat from January 2017 to April 2019, is used as the case study. A total number of 229 news articles in the city's two major news media are used as analysis samples. Automated-mapping and manually coded content analysis are combined to reveal important issues, the relationship within them and debates among stakeholders, following by a discussion on relations between dockless bike-sharing system and key critiques in public space. The result shows that public perceptions on dockless bike-sharing system differ widely and the relations between dockless bike-sharing system and public space is overlooked. It can be inferred that the way a social group engaging with urban public space significantly influences their tendency on how it should be designed and managed. The article concluded that better public-private partnerships are urgent to improve the dockless bike-sharing system and create a less exclusive urban public space. |
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The Design Question: Commons through commoning, and commons by capital?Jeffrey Kok Hui Chan & Ye Zhang
The City as a Commons, Research Symposium, 2019 Pavia, Italy Full paper online Abstract: All across the world, cities have been seized by the neoliberal imaginary that valorizes economic growth by urbanization at the expense of their most vulnerable citadins. Consequently, in spite of the ever expanding program of city-building, an ever larger segment of humanity remains alienated from their neoliberal city. To address the practical needs of this neglected urban population, alternatives are needed. However, such alternatives are unlikely to emerge without either deliberate intervention or mobilisation in the neoliberal city. Equally, the urgency of these needs means that there is little time for adaptive practices to evolve on their own. In this context, it is necessary to consider the prospect of 'sharing by design'. In this paper, we consider two major approaches of 'sharing by design', which are 'Commons by capital' and 'Commons through commoning'. In the near future, both approaches will compete for a similar group of 'commoners' that are neglected or marginalized by the neoliberal city. In the approach 'Commons by capital', capital has started to design co-living systems that resemble emancipatory commons. Understanding that subsequent generations of workers and individuals will have very different economic profiles and access to urban resources compared to their predecessors today, these newly designed systems are harbingers of emerging spatial (urban) typologies of accumulation. As for the approach 'Commons through commoning', we examine the co-housing typology, which offers a contrasting set of attributes, dividends but also obligations for the 'commoners'. Paraphrasing Marx here, 'between comparable functions design decides': The commons that is able to seize the political imagination of the 'commoners' while addressing their practical needs will gain preeminence. In light of this impending adversarial competition, it is paramount for 'Commons through commoning' to develop systematic knowledge on how to design, operate and maintain the urban commons against emerging models of 'Commons by capital'--if only because capital has also initiated the process of developing this design knowledge. |
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Exploring an Alternative to Bridging Hong Kong and Shenzhen:Lok Ma Chau Loop as New Urban CommonsChing Yan Lam & Ye Zhang
12th International Forum on Urbanism 2019 Jakarta, Indonesia Full paper online Abstract: Standing on the belief of effective cross-border interactions, and expanded upon the recent collaboration opportunity of Lok Ma Chau Innovation Hub, this paper proposes an alternative to bridging Hong Kong and Shenzhen through urban commons, and challenges the existing rigid typology of border control points as a space of separation. The proposal taps into the potentials of e-waste recycling by turning the trash into a treasure shared by the innovation community, and envisions the innovation hub as new urban commons. Adopting the framework of co-operative as the set of rules to manage the urban commons, the proposed innovation hub engages four critical players - academia, industry, government, and media-based and culture-based public, and responds to five main needs of New Technology-Based Firms - innovative technology, physical space for activities, funding to support research and production, market evaluation for technical and business improvement, and management resources. It serves to catalyze start-up formation and incubate high-tech enterprises, and acts as a testing ground for nascent technologies and innovative products. This paper explores an alternative to building an open community beyond territorial demarcation and to softening Hong Kong-Shenzhen border, thereby contributing to social cohesion. |
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Beyond the neoliberal city: Commoning sharing practices and sharing the urban commonsJeffrey Kok Hui Chan & Ye Zhang
The 35th EGOS - European Group for Organizational Studies, 2019 Edinburgh, U.K. Full paper online Abstract: For all their similarities and consonances, sharing and the commons have remained separate and distinct discourses. In this paper, these two discourses are intertwined in the context of the following questions: (1) How can the political formation of the commons regulate, or even enhance, intrinsically unstable sharing practices, which are often based on the power asymmetry between providers and net users? (2) How can certain sharing practices in the city catalyze the beginning of the (urban) commons? In addressing these questions, this article aims to offer another urban vision beyond the hegemonic neoliberal city. |
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Designing Sharing Cities: a practice of design researchYe Zhang & He Huang
The 13th Conference of International Association for China Planning (IACP) 2019 Chengdu, China Abstract: While sharing has been advocated as both a social practice and planning concept to achieve sustainable and equitable urban development, researchers pointed out that the environmental and social promises of the booming Sharing Economy appear exaggerated and that its negative externalities may exacerbate resource consumption and social segregation. This prompts the question of whether, through deliberate planning and design of the city, the claimed benefits of the Sharing Economy can be attained and its negative externalities mitigated? And if possible, what are the issues, variables, specifications and even methods to inform the planning and design of a constructive sharing city? Following this, how should the knowledge be taught, or transmitted, to students who are the future planners and designers of the sharing city? To address these questions, the Department of Architecture, National University of Singapore and the School of Architecture, Tsinghua University jointly formed a Design Research Initiative in 2017, using a joint design studio as the testbed to explore plausible planning and design solutions and develop accompanied pedagogical approaches. A self-reflective design framework was employed to guide and inform the conceptualisation, development, analysis and evaluation of hypothetical planning and design schemes. Teaching activities and learning outcomes of the design studio were also observed, documented, measured and analysed. This paper crystallises our practices of the Design Research Initiative over the past three years, and on this basis, it suggests a nascent framework of planning and designing sharing cities with immense environmental and social potentials. A studio pedagogy on teaching the planning and design of sharing cities is also discussed. |
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A Feeding Strait: Imagining a Cross-Border Commons Between Singapore and MalaysiaYann Herng Yeow & Ye Zhang
The 6th International Conference on Architecture and Built Environment, S.ARCH 2019 Havana, Cuba Full paper online Abstract: The Straits of Johor, which forms the border between Singapore and Malaysia, has never ceased to be a site of power contestation, rendering the waterscape into terra nullius. In view of the fast-changing international geo-political environment, this study proposes that the border of separation can be transformed into a place for food production, a shared territory that can facilitate cooperation between Singapore and Johor, a state of Malaysia and achieve common economic growth, greater social cohesion, and higher competence of the region. This shared infrastructure is expected to contribute to tackling food security, a pressing challenge for both Singapore and Johor, and further help to address a series of bilateral issues arising from the separation, such as physical separation, territorial dispute, environmental pollution, economic imbalance, and social segregation. A phased masterplan is also proposed and discussed to show how the food production infrastructure can be planned and then turned into a catalyst for achieving the broader social objective – creating a cross-border commons. |
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Envisioning spatial practice of co-production and collaborative consumption in the urban neighbourhood of SingaporeYe Zhang & Kenny Han Teng Chen
The Entrepreneurial City: proceedings of 10th International Forum of Urbanism Hong Kong S.A.R, China Abstract: Powered by information technology advancement, sharing as a novel economic institution has brought forward new collaborative lifestyles, entrepreneurialism exchanges, and social interactions in modern cities. These changes also challenge the conventional concepts of and boundaries between the private and public. Moreover, concerning urban design, this means that existing approaches need to be adapted or new ones to be developed to create new public spaces to accommodate and then facilitate the practice of sharing, in particular, sharing production and consumption. Nevertheless, existing literature on this is uneven and often confounding, and there is no clear explanation of and systematic investigation into how this can be achieved spatially. This study aims to test the concepts of co-production and collaborative consumption through a design investigation – the notion of repair and its significance to a sharing system designed for regenerating a historical neighbourhood in Singapore. In this approach, repairing is the key driver for different configurations of economic production and collaborative consumption to take place. The results provoke the way we design for sharing. We suggested that the design of new public spaces to enable and promote sharing, in this case, co-production and collaborative consumption, will benefit from a framework predicated on the systems approach. |
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A Systems Framework for Designing of Urban Commons and Sharing Practice: Three Case Studies in SingaporeYe Zhang & Jeffrey Kok Hui Chan
Proceedings of Relating Systems Thinking and Design (RSD6) 2017 Symposium Oslo, Norway Full paper online Abstract: The idea of the urban commons has became increasingly appealing due to the state and the market’s incapability of providing an equitable provision of urban resources in the city. However, while the urban commons can be created, produced, organised and appropriated, little knowledge exists on how to design it. This paper analyses the Systems Approach developed by C.W Churchman (1913-2004) and proposes a conceptual framework to guide the design of urban commons. The framework is then elaborated based on a case study of an urban design studio themed on sharing cities, and its implications to architecture and urban design, and design pedagogy, are discussed. Importantly, it is emphasised that how systemic design is not only an approach distinct from many conventional ways of conceptualising the urban built environment, but also how systemic design could be framed as a possible approach to design the urban commons. This paper concludes with a brief comparison of the framework and other approaches to creating the urban commons. |
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