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Chapter 4 explores the scope for the sharing city to enhance equity and social justice. It situates the sharing paradigm in contemporary theories of justice, with particular reference to just sustainabilities, the capabilities approach and recognition. It then examines emerging areas of conflict and tension between justice and sharing in practice, first illustrating the challenges with consideration of transport – and particularly car- and ride-sharing promoted by platforms such as Uber. It also addresses exploitation of labor in sharing, the commodification of non-market aspects of life and exclusion of the disadvantaged from sharing practices through marketization, criminalization and gentrification. It concludes by suggesting some key contributions to justice in sharing: building empathy, strengthening civil liberties online, and developing complementary currencies.

Environmental justice refers to both a concept and a social movement that originally spun off from the American civil rights establishment in the 1980s. The core idea focuses on the now well-established fact that members of vulnerable population groups tend to experience disproportionately higher levels of exposure to environmental hazards, less access to green amenities, and fewer opportunities to have their environmental concerns heard and remedied compared to their wealthier and whiter counterparts. Environmental justice terminology is deeply embedded in contemporary environmental discourse and governance in multiple countries, but its ability to alleviate real instances of environmental mal-distribution has been strongest at the local level thanks to the concept’s power to mobilize diverse networks of activists around local causes.

This chapter examines the technological transformation of the flood-damaged Holy Cross, a subdistrict of the Lower Ninth Ward neighborhood in New Orleans, after Hurricane Katrina. Using insights gleaned from science and technology studies, including a version of “laboratory studies” as developed by Bruno Latour, it considers the dynamics of Holy Cross’s remarkable post-Katrina transition from devastated neighborhood to a beacon of sustainability and green architecture. Latour’s version of laboratory studies is an applied methodological approach to track emerging technoscience innovation and transfer on-the-ground; it is demonstrative of the application of another broader theoretical and methodological approach that was also developed in part by him—actor-network theory. The chapter calls for “just sustainability” that combines traditional sustainability and environmental justice goals—in particular, “the need for distributed environmental goods and harms to all regardless of race or class”.

The case study explores how Amsterdam’s communitarian culture based in its history of collaborative construction of canals and dykes is reflected in the modern city and its adoption of sharing approaches. It emphasises the benefits of Amsterdam’s efforts to promote social mixing in its housing, districts and public spaces, which have delivered relatively high levels of ethnic integration in a genuinely intercultural city. It also outlines some of the communal and commercial mediated sharing initiatives now springing up in Amsterdam, such as Repair Cafes and Peerby, and the ways in which Amsterdam is integrated sharing into its smart city strategy.