Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Cat Johnson No longer just places to get a drill when you need one, tool libraries are neighborhood hubs offering classes, community building spaces, workshops and a variety of tools ranging from belt sanders to lawnmowers and more.
Bicycles are the ideal vehicles for navigating sprawling, car-centric environments quickly, safely, and affordably. Also, riding a bicycle is both fun and healthy, and biking is an effective way people build community and create lasting, positive changes in our lives and the world around us.
One of the most important questions of my life three years ago was, “How can we start a movement for sharing?”
How small could you go when it comes to home? 500 square feet? 250 feet? 100 feet? For Jay Shafer, less is definitely more.
Never before, not when Ortelius began collecting the images of the New World in his Antwerp workshop, not during the explosion of maps for railway tourists in the nineteenth century, did so many maps fly around the world so quickly.
Yesterday Matthew Yglesias of Slate posted, “There Is No ‘Sharing Economy.’” Well, he’s a little late to the party beating that dead horse.
Sharing is also at the heart of the employment model that is designed to keep wealth and jobs in the community: cooperatives.
In order for sharing to be a successful alternative to the status quo, we need one important ingredient: people. Sharing requires a motivated, passionate community, whether physical or digital.
To truly get to zero waste, you’d need to go beyond recycling into reduce and reuse. In South Australia, they’re experimenting with how to take this one step further by adding “avoid” to the top of the waste management hierarchy.
If we want to wean ourselves off consumer culture and learn to practice simple living, where might we find inspiration?
In a sharing economy, individuals look less to big chain stores to meet their food needs, and look more to each other.
Most internet start-ups believe there is only one path to financing their company’s growth: start with friends and family, move on to wealthy angel investors, attract venture capital, and finally sell the company so the investors can make a killing. The good news is that there is an alternative path…
