The driverless car is arriving. Soon, joining the daily traffic jams will be a lot more enjoyable. Traffic jams could also disappear. The use of cars can be much more effective if we make best use of the technology and available data. The self-driving car has the potential to dramatically change our mobility. But who decides which direction we go?
Today the success stories of AirBnB, BlaBlaCar, Lyft, and others are already well known. The rise of these initiatives is just one side of the sharing economy. In many neighborhoods, peer-initiatives are flourishing. Something new is happening – the rise of active citizenship, people identifying themselves with their neighborhood, working on social cohesion – a renaissance of neighborhoods and bringing people together who believe in each other. At least this is happening in the Belgian city of Ghent where local initiatives received a big window: a very successful sharefest took place this September.