The sharing economy is transformative in that it decentralizes services by permitting direct transactions between individuals. A less recognized consequence is that it also decentralizes the geography of services, shifting their distribution away from major business districts and into residential communities. We present a three-part generalized theory for studying and developing policy responses to the arrival of these services in neighborhoods where they were not previously available. First, one must quantify the distribution of the new services across neighborhoods. Second, these geographic shifts in supply and demand can generate positive and negative externalities for communities, which might be hypothesized and tested for empirically. Third, policy responses can be developed based on the knowledge generated by components 1 and 2. We illustrate this proposed theory by examining the incursion of Airbnb short-term rentals into the neighborhoods of Boston, MA for 2010 to 2018. We demonstrate that Airbnb listings quickly grew into neighborhoods away from the downtown core where hotels are concentrated and hypothesize how this might increase investment in local buildings (measured through building permits), activity at local food establishments (measured through the number of new licenses), and crime (measured through 911 reports). We find initial evidence for increased investment through building permits and limited evidence for increased violent crime, but no evidence for increases in food establishments. This can then guide how cities regulate short-term rentals to maximize benefits and minimize negative impacts. We conclude by exploring how the theory might be applied to other forms of the sharing economy.

On-demand mobility services and Transportation Network Companies (TNC) are transforming urban mobility by providing more flexibility and improved level of service to users. However, they also raise concerns about their impact on congestion, vehicle miles traveled (VMT), and competition with transit. Considering the popularity of TNC services, increasing ride-pooling is, potentially, an important means to address these concerns. While companies attempt to promote ride-pooling with pricing strategies, evidence suggests that shared trips are a small fraction of all trips. We review the literature on the impact of TNC on congestion and ridership of alternative sustainable modes and discuss opportunities to improve sharing performance. We examine two such opportunities: Alternative operating models that use advanced booking to improve shareability; and collaboration with traditional transit. In the first case, we use a large TNC data set to assess the benefits of advanced booking in terms of increasing shared trips and reducing VMT. The results suggest that even with short advanced request horizons, significant benefits can be realized, with little deterioration of the level of service that customers experience. In the second case, we review results from various partnerships between TNCs and transit agencies and highlight the main characteristics.

Improving urban mobility systems has been one of the main engineering challenges especially in large cities and metropolitan areas. Since their emergence, ridesharing services have had a promising outlook on disrupting the current urban transportation system and using technology to solve its problems. However, studies on their current and projected future accomplishments towards this goal are divided. Despite being supported by many well-designed studies, many recent studies point out the new problems caused by these services or the exacerbation of the old problems after their entry to the mobility services mix of a city. This chapter reviews the research from both sides and describes policy measures and research gaps that could help mitigate such potential negative impacts on traffic congestion and improve the overall efficiency and effectiveness of the urban mobility systems.

This chapter explores the integrated potential of future technological and social innovations enabling sharing in future energy systems. Energy systems around the world are undergoing a transformation toward more distributed, renewable-based configurations where new mechanisms for “sharing” are evolving. Future energy systems are likely to integrate a regionally appropriate mix of electricity generation that is dispatched, stored, and distributed through sophisticated platforms that enable sharing of electricity at multiple scales. Sharing in future energy systems has the potential to radically disrupt relationships governing utilities, energy consumers, and distributed electricity generation at the individual and household levels, at the community and organizational levels, and at the regional, state, national, and even international levels. Innovations may allow formerly passive consumers to become actively engaged in producing and managing electricity which could shift the locus of organizational decision making and control away from traditional utilities. Prosumers who can “share” their electricity may be empowered to change the rules that have governed their relationships with utilities for the past century. We consider a potential “death spiral of utilities’ business model” as new sharing platforms, including community-level energy cooperatives, emerge to replace the conventional approach to managing and distributing energy. This chapter also explores how future energy sharing might connect with the concept of energy democracy.

A defining feature of twenty-first-century capitalism is the emergence of platform labor. While still small, many scholars are convinced it will grow significantly, with far-reaching effects on work. To date, the literature is unsettled on questions such as how “algorithmic management” reshapes power and authority over labor, impacts on conventional jobs, inclusion in the labor market, regulatory requirements, and labor struggles. In this chapter we outline the main lines of contention, identify major gaps in knowledge, and suggest areas for future research. We begin by sketching three dominant themes: A hopeful view, in which platforms expand the range of freedoms and autonomy that income earners enjoy; a technology-centered approach, in which algorithms and digital surveillance and evaluation establish greater management control over labor; and a view in which platforms accelerate a trend toward precarious forms of work. We identify one source of complexity that yields continuing contention: Heterogeneity in the workforce, with varying segments of labor differentially positioned with respect to the platforms themselves. We end by alluding to regulatory struggles and forms of worker mobilization and speculate about possible paths that might yield more humane yet innovative uses of the platform paradigm.

This chapter reviews the first generation of sharing economy regulations and proposes an approach for developing the second generation of regulations. In the first section, the chapter argues that first-generation sharing economy regulations rely on legal categories and assumptions that have been used to address business operations that have developed over decades (sometimes centuries), but that such legal approaches are at times ill-suited to regulation of the sharing economy. In the second section, the chapter argues for a new regulatory approach that directly addresses core principles or values in the sharing economy. The chapter focuses in particular on four core principles that ought to serve as foundations for the next generation of sharing economy regulations.

This chapter provides an overview of five core dimensions that are central to the challenge of optimizing for a just sharing economy: Understanding socioeconomic externalities; pursuing resilience; charting more just and systems-oriented business directions; defining the future of work; and prioritizing access and equity. It highlights the multiple ways in which the analyses throughout the book intersect with these dimensions and argues that each of these dimensions conveys significant information about the values that must be prioritized in the next generation of sharing economy platforms. Finally, the chapter discusses a set of key questions that remain for future research and exploration.

Addiction to cigarettes governed my father’s life and death. He smoked heavily and eventually became sick with emphysema. My father could have avoided his painful final years hooked to an oxygen tank by quitting smoking when he was diagnosed. But he chose otherwise. We desperately tried to resist his decision by taking his cigarettes away. He reacted with uncharacteristic anger, exercising every means at his disposal to get his cigarette pack back. We eventually gave up.

I always had a complicated relationship with technology. I would like it, then realize I like it too much, and then try to disentangle from it. I went through several cycles of this. As a young girl in the 1970s, I spent far too much time playing video games. Then in the 1990s, I spent every spare minute during one college semester playing a dungeon treasure hunt computer game. I stopped only after I convinced a friend to place a password on the game to prevent my access. Then came email. I simply could not stop checking it. In my first apartment in New York City as a graduate student, I endlessly connected and disconnected my modem to check my emails. But for me and for many others, 2009 was the year when things started changing. This was the year that smartphones and Facebook became popular.1 Suddenly, we could text, email, access the Internet, and engage in social interactions practically anywhere and anytime.

Technology overuse is a novel problem. For the first time in history, electronic communications have replaced a significant part of real-life face-to-face interactions. The harms are also unique. But battles between corporations and activists seeking to protect the public from harmful products have happened before. And when they did, the stakes were often high, and the fight prolonged. This past gives us a window into the future. We can extract from the battles of the past, the choices and obstacles likely to confront a movement to curtail technology overuse.

I met Seth, a 23-year-old man, at a meditation retreat in Connecticut. Seth called himself “a recovering tech-addict.” It started in high school, he told me, when he spent a lot of time playing online games. But it was in college when things got out of control. For nearly three years, he said he was “a slave to information from the Internet.” He spent eight hours a day on Reddit. Reddit users can submit news items and vote them up or down. When enough users give a submission up-votes, the item will make it to the site’s front page. Sam told me it was a vicious cycle. He felt isolated in college and used Reddit to fill his time. But then the more he used Reddit, the more isolated he became. He could not stay off Reddit and barely studied. Eventually, the college placed him on academic probation, and he knew then that he had to quit. In our conversation, he used AA lingo. “I have been two years clean,” he said. Seth explained that he now religiously limits the time and type of his online activities, but he is always worried about relapsing.

As the science wars raged on, a grassroots movement emerged. Parents and regulators took action to protect children against technology overuse. It is not surprising that children came first. They bear the brunt of the harm. They are also where corporate vulnerability lies. Action began against online gaming and spread to social networks. Children are the Achilles heel of the technology industry’s hold on manipulative designs to sustain an abusive business model. But, protecting children also opens the door for more. Any gain made for kids is a step toward change for all.

Melissa came to speak to me after a lecture I gave to parents at her son’s school. Her son Neil was a fifth grader. She told me that Neil was a good student and had friends in school, but he plays Fortnite for many hours a day. At first, Melissa told him to stop playing, but he kept begging for more time. When she insisted, he yelled and got extremely upset. Melissa then installed an app to limit Neil’s computer time. After a while Melissa noticed that he was playing Fortnite well into the evening. It turned out that Neil had discovered the password and changed the settings. This happened multiple times. Sometimes Neil asked for extra computer time for homework, but Melissa found him playing Fortnite instead. Melissa told me she thought she was not so good with technology, and that she should have found a better app. She felt that maybe she could have prevented what happened next.

Our connectivity is here to stay. Our phones, computers, and tablets will remain until replaced by the communication tools of the future. We are unlikely to return to an era of limited connectivity. And neither should we. When considering the good, the bad, and the ugly of connectivity, the good stands out. Learning about the misfortunes of others, whether across the globe or even in our own city. Connecting to help ourselves, friends, and strangers. We will never know, but would definitely hope, that an Internet in 1939 would have prevented the horrors of the Holocaust that followed.