“Seoul Sharing City Project” is a remarkable and sparkling sharing
project launched in 2013 and I think some common features (long working hours,
high housing cost, high density housing, air pollution, little peer-to-peer
exchange of goods, people became more isolated, growing number of seniors
living alone, growing suicide rate etc.) and fertile ground (high fiber optic
broadband penetration rate, fast internet, high smartphone penetration rate,
good subway system etc.) between Seoul and Hong Kong can inspire the next step
to promote the value of sharing in Hong Kong. Shall we utilize our
densely-populated apartments in rebuilding a sense of community and sharing?
Some sharing movements and examples may restore dissolved social services and
communities and revive sharing culture in citizen’s daily lives. This is
neither a solely government support exercise nor a pure grassroots
citizen-driven sharing, Hong Kong needs to build infrastructure such as law,
institution and social trust capital, the city needs to pave the way and
strengthen the ecosystem for the sharing economy to strive. It means a sharing
model couldn’t be a top-down nor bottom up approach; it should be a creative,
private-NGOs-public partnership model.
How to encourage citizen participation? Dozens of prgrammes have
been launched to support the initiative in Seoul and some of them may be made
reference for HKSAR government and social service providers in Hong Kong (Johnson, 2014):
Public Wi-Fi: 1,992 wireless access points have been
established at Seoul’s markets, parks and government offices.
Government (financial) Support: 461 million won has been invested
in 27 sharing organizations or businesses. Among these are platforms that
facilitate Airbnb-style home sharing, children’s clothing exchanges, parking
space sharing, and goods sharing. These projects resulted in 359 shared parking
lots; a 68% increase in homestays; and a doubling of the amount of children’s
clothing shared from 18,000 to 40,000 items.
Housing and Inter-generational Connection: To address the housing
crisis and reduce the social isolation of seniors, a program was created to
match young people with idle rooms in seniors’ houses. There have been 28
matches to date.
Seoul Youth Hub: Another initiative of the Seoul Metropolitan Government
(SMG), Seoul Youth Hub is a place for young adults to come together
face-to-face to design the future society.
Public Buildings: Since the launch of the Sharing City, 779 public
buildings have been opened to the public during idle hours for events,
meetings, and more. These buildings have been utilized over 22,000 times by
Seoul citizens.
Startup Incubation: 20 teams were selected for the Youth Business
Startup Incubation program where they were provided office space, funds, and
training or consulting.
Startup School: To encourage entrepreneurialism, officials
launched a program to help entrepreneurs understand the sharing economy and
support them in creating sharing businesses.
Lending Libraries: 32 lending libraries have been opened for books,
tool rental and repair (plus woodworking programs).
To make sharing economy possible, the HKSAR Government and NGOs
should face up to improve those outdated regulation that hampers sharing (e.g.
regulation of insurance). Government should actively implement the sharing
policies initiatives and promote the sharing economy through public-NGO-private
partnership. And Hong Kong can make reference to those sharing experience and
successful cases in all sharing cities worldwide (e.g. Boston in US, Amsterdam in
Netherlands, Napoli in Italy, Gothenburg in Sweden, Melbourne in Australia,
Istanbul in Turkey, Seoul in South Korea etc.). But most important of all, we
must recognize that no one could avoid contraction and conflict with
old-habits, traditional social norms and exiting rules and regulation to make
the society sustainable.
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