Creating living environments: BPD workshops insights

'Airbnb? That's a crazy idea.' This was the general reaction I received when I started working on the collaborative economy in 2012. Over the past few years I've seen people's attitudes towards sharing our own homes change fast. By now, millions of people are doing it and Airbnb, which is not the only platform of its kind, will have its 100.000.000th guest somewhere over the next months. It is clear that, for many of us, 'what is private,' is being redefined.

Yesterday I spent an afternoon at the old Fokker factory to work with the people from BPD, a large property developer. This was my first opportunity to rethink the places we live in.

I gave a keynote and ran two workshops on the future of real estate. It was inspiring to see how the buildings we live in can be redesigned to enable the shared use of assets and spaces. Even the most traditional BPD developers recognized that much is possible: a shared garden where children can play safely, a co-working space or a squash court. But also a café area where both (Airbnb) guests and residents may have breakfast. The café owner could handle key exchange for Airbnb guests but also manage a tool library as well as shared cars and bikes.

The mission of BPD is to create living environments. The cool thing is that they are developing a building designed for the collaborative economy. This is exciting because redesigning the places we live in, can enable all of us to get acces to all products and services, necessary for a connected, prosperous, sustainable and happy life.

Which is at the core of our mission at shareNL.

by Pieter van de Glind