Collaborative Services | EMUDE
Collaborative Services is a book by the European Commission-funded EMUDE (Emerging User Demands for Sustainable Solutions). Downloadable from the Sustainable Everyday Project. Hat tip to WC.
[W]hat is a sustainable lifestyle? What will our daily lives become if we agree to change some of our routines? How do we reduce our impact without lowering our living standards? Observations show that growing material wealth and levels of population satisfaction are increasingly uncoupled. Could the pursuit of more sustainable lifestyles also lead to better quality and more satisfaction? This book attempts to answer some of these questions. Mainly, it suggests a scenario: the Scenario of Collaborative Services.
“Car-sharing on demand”, “micro-leasing system for tools between neighbours”, “shared sewing studio”, “home restaurant”, “delivery service between users who exchange goods”… This sample of solutions looks at how various daily procedures could be performed by structured services that rely on a greater collaboration of individuals amongst themselves. From this hypothesis, the Scenario of Collaborative Services indicates how, through local collaboration, mutual assistance, shared use we can reduce significantly each individual’s needs in terms of products and living space and optimize the use of equipment, reduce travel distances and, finally, lessen the impact of our daily lives on the environment. The scenario also gives an idea of how the diffusion of organisations based on sharing, exchange, and participation on a neighbourhood scale can also regenerate the social fabric, restore relations of proximity and create meaningful bonds between individuals.This book is therefore an essay about a new design field, which lies at the crossroads of social innovation and design for sustainable development. It provides an overview of current research, including case studies of individuals or groups of individuals who have reinvented their lifestyles to come up with new solutions, which are both adapted to their daily needs and more sustainable. These social groups or Creative Communities are part of a deeper transformation currently underway in our society, like the development of a distributed and participatory economy. They give birth to a form of everyday Diffused Social Enterprise.
