Zhang Ye: Sharing by Design. Switzerland: Springer Nature

This book connects sharing with design. Even when sharing has been widely studied as a cooperative practice and a distributive strategy, sharing has yet to be examined from the perspective of design. In particular, under the pressing circumstances of resource scarcity and rapid urbanisation, it has become implausible for sharing systems to evolve on their own. Instead, sharing systems may have to be deliberately designed.

What should we consider for designing sharing systems? What are the precedents, issues, questions, variables, conditions, and methods that may be relevant and useful for the design of sharing systems? Moreover, if a sharing system can be designed, how to teach, or transmit, the design of sharing systems to others (which ineluctably, is the definitive spirit of sharing), at a time when this knowledge is increasingly critical for the long term flourishing of cities.

Our book aims to fill this gap in the present literature and practice by providing a concise, yet systematic, guidebook for the prospective ‘designers’ of sharing systems from different disciplines.