My name is Harmen Van Sprang and I'm the co-founder of two organizations. One is Share NL, which is an organization that develops the sharing economy with an eye for opportunities and for challenges. The other organization is a foundation which is called the Sharing Cities Alliance. So the Sharing Cities Alliance is a foundation fostering collaboration between city governments. On the one hand, we have the organization Share NL, with which I've been working with for a few years now. There we believe in working with the entire playing field within the sharing economy. So individuals and platforms and cities and companies. But we see more and more cities moving up and having to deal with the sharing economy and also with a lot of challenges there and therefore we believe that it's really interesting and also good to have a secure place where city governments and only city governments can exchange information and insights and policy, etc., and learn from each other and also collaborate on projects. There are a lot of different definitions, but if you would really break it down, it's the possibility for example, two people to exchange a good or a service between each other. So take that example of a car or for example, a power drill or a meal. Most of the times they are just available in your own neighborhood and your neighbor or somebody in the same housing block has that drill or has that car or cooks that meal that is just available to you. What we see of course, is that technology like an app is making it possible that if you would visualize the block of apartments that are living, then that app is opening up all those doors and seeing what is there available for you or what you can of course, supply to other people in your neighborhood. What you see is that cities mostly are becoming more dense over the coming years, even more and more people will move to cities. So it's like a mural painting in the heart of Amsterdam, which says, "I play in the city with everything that is already there," and that's a mural painting near a school, so it's a quote by a pupil there. But for me that's a metaphor of the sharing economy in a city. Everything is there, all those goods and services are there, only they're maybe not so well distributed and if we make them more visible, then I think you can better deal also with all the challenges that the city has, for example, congestion with mobility or, for example, people helping each other out in their neighborhoods. So you have a platform in Amsterdam, which is called The Helping or We Help, where people just help each other out because, for example, if you broke your leg and you have to go somewhere and I have a day off, then I can bring you to the place. Those things are the oldest in the book and really logical. But somehow, we also tend to forget those things, to help each other out, we have to rely on each other and that is where the sharing economy partly comes in. So it's an app and a website and you just turn that to, of course, like every platform in the sharing economy is a marketplace with supply and demand and you can just either put a question there or you can offer your help there. The interesting thing at this moment, there is more supply of help on this platform than there is demand. Well, the ecosystem, so to say, of sharing economy platforms in Amsterdam is quite rich and diverse. So there are quite some car-sharing initiatives, of course, going on and they are also growing rapidly. The few years already ago, the city of Amsterdam had a pilot where they said, "If you hand in your parking permits as a citizen, then you get €300 of a car-sharing voucher." So I was one of the people doing that and saying, "Okay, I just got rid of my car because it's standing idle 90 percent of the time." In general, doesn't make sense in like mostly you're on the bike in Amsterdam. So quite some mobility, there's energy sharing, more and more people are also producing energy of course, for example, through solar roofs, etc. So you see that there is a great initiative to share energy, the food sharing as I mentioned, of course, the goods to household appliances. We have an initiative called Peerby, which is Amsterdam based and where you just can most of the tools all the time for free, borrow something from a neighbor also makes sense. I mean, why own a drill while everybody has one. What is working on as a city government is we need to try to see if it can expand the sharing economy also, but also with an eye for the challenges there. For example, we have quite some Airbnb going on in the city of Amsterdam which is partly good because it spreads to tourism. But on the other hand of course, you don't want people to extract their homes from the housing markets, and that is something that, for example, Amsterdam as a government has been working on to make regulation around it and to keep it like a level playing field with also the traditional hotel industry. In general, you see that most of the Dutch platforms are social entrepreneurs and social enterprises really wanting to have impact in a social or sustainable matter, which is an interesting alternative for some of the bigger platforms that are worldwide. For example, the city of Barcelona is really working on the more common side of the sharing economy. So it wants to turn away a little bit from the bigger platforms are really give it back, so to say to the people and so for example, thinking about regulation around sharing economy, Barcelona really crowdsourced that regulation with its citizens. This is something that you see, this is more commons-based strategy or platform corporatism as they sometimes call it. Also in the City of Ghent, in Belgium, Berlin a little. It's really important to just get together. I mean, in the end Reiki regulation is up to the people that as their current job. But you can crowdsource, of course, by organizing several events, where you get different stakeholders together and that has also been our experience with my other organizations Share NL in the Netherlands, that it's really always good to get everybody to the table instead of just working with one perspective. That's also maybe a bit of a Dutch approach to also get always everybody to the table. It's not the easiest, but it's good to do, I think, and gives the best success, hopefully for the future also to stick around the sharing economy. In a lot of countries, it's still quite coming up, so you have the regular bigger platforms, but is quite coming up. For example, take in Japan where they're also moving up in the sharing economy, is that they are more focusing on rural areas to say, okay, can the sharing economy partly be an answer to smaller rural cities that are maybe becoming smaller, because young people move to the biggest cities. So for example, the sharing economy, they partly an answer to keep your city more attractive. If you'd look at Singapore, they are trying to see if they can build more social cohesion with the sharing economy because it's quite a new country. You know, it's like less than 60 years, I think, independent, and it trying to still build the DNA, so to say, of the society, and seeing if the sharing economy could partly be an answer to that, which is interesting. Another take is Seoul in South Korea, where they are, for example, looking into how they can combine housing for students with senior citizens. So senior citizens live quite near a university. Can maybe, students lived in those homes and partly also do some small tasks for those senior citizens, which is, I think, also great connections between two generations. So yeah, there's a lot of opportunities, and also, of course, really depends on the character of a city and also the problems that might arise in the city. For example, also like isolation. If senior citizens become alone, then it's interesting to bring in the new generation and see if there was a connection for both. For example, Airbnb and other platforms in the housing markets, congestion and pollution in your city and public space by all those cars. So we can be divide it better, regulation might not be in place anymore. Tax is an issue. So for example, when are you still an individual? Sometimes delivering a service in the sharing economy. When are you an entrepreneur? Then of course, different tax, rules apply. Safety is an important one. So if you're cooking a meal, is it safe? How do we see to it that that is monitored? Innovation, so of course, if you give room and of course monetary, but if you give room to it, then there's more innovation and I think that is also good for entrepreneurship and for economy, etc. In different fields and areas there are challenges, but in general, I think it's good to mainly give way to a sharing economy and just see how it evolves, through Fedora or Deliveroo, etc. There you see that, work is changing and the worker rights and employee rights are different. That is something that is also moving up in different regions in the world. So it's really exciting and a lot of different things are coming up everywhere. So we have to address it and balance always between the two sides, of the story, the opportunities and the challenges. Everybody has his mission and vision, of course, with our organization, that is really our vision for the longer run. A better quality of life, because we have better access to a lot of goods and services that make us happy and connected and more sustainable. Right now, in most situations, you will just balance and say, "Okay, I can buy this and I can buy this, and if I have more income, I can buy this," etc., is always about buying and having. Of course, we're moving a bit away in a sharing economy from owning to having more access. That will have the opportunity to have a much more variety there in your daily life. It's also, I think, empowering citizens to be a bit more independent because they can be a provider also of course, of those services around the sharing economy. So in general, the empowerment of citizens, maybe more balanced cities, and I think also partly, an answer just needed because we have limited resources in his world. In general, you see technology coming into our lives more and more, that's not new. But you see that there is more thought leadership needed around the ethical part of it. So when is it still contributing to your life and when is it more maybe so to say, invading your life? Are people aware of this? So that is I think something that is also important, to educate people and make them aware of all the pluses and minuses of the sharing economy, but also in general, modern technology in your lives.
