Sharing cities: new urban imaginaries for diverse economies

This chapter explores the sharing city as a new imaginary of urban transformation that creates alternative visions and practices for more diverse forms of organization and distributive mechanisms that challenge the dominant capitalocentric reading of the economy. The diverse economy framework is utilized as a heuristic device to interpret how sharing cities enrol alternative market and non-market transactions, paid and unpaid labour, reciprocal modes of exchange and commoning practices to create new transformation pathways that reframe the context of urban experimentation. Cases of transformational sharing demonstrate how new urban imaginaries create opportunity contexts that support grassroots agency through local sustainability initiatives, peer production communities and forms of postcapitalist entrepreneurship. This chapter reveals how new urban imaginaries reframe experimentation and create a wider role for grassroots actors and alternative practices outside of the mainstream economy.