Chris Diplock believes his research has the potential to make Vancouver not only greener but less lonely. The Sharing Project, founded by Diplock, is already generating nationwide buzz for its plans to explore exactly how Vancouverites could share both goods and services -- one neighbourhood at a time.

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"The Sharing Project focuses on finding out what Vancouverites want to share, and how they want to share it, in different regions and neighbourhoods across the city," explains Gala Milne, the project's community engagement manager. "Determining the demand for, say, if Kitsilano wants to share watersports equipment, like kayaks and canoes, or if people in Strathcona want to be sharing tools, or space, or skills."

Known by a variety of titles (the Peer-to-Peer Market, The Collaborative Economy, Collaborative Consumption), the Sharing Economy is hardly unique to Vancouver. In fact, it's already exploding on a worldwide scale, having enjoyed a surge of popularity in the aftermath of the 2008 global financial crisis. By expert's estimates, the market is already worth approximately $26 billion, and, in March 2013, a story on the Sharing Economy even graced the front page of The Economist. However, despite these gains, the concept is still a relatively new one. Many companies who serve to facilitate peer-to-peer transactions (Airbnb, Weeelz, RelayRides) currently operate in legal grey areas, and even the parameters of the market itself aren't set -- including anything from communal use of shared items, to borrowing and bartering, to renting goods or space from individuals.

For Diplock, the idea to explore opportunities for the Sharing Economy in Vancouver grew from his experiences as founder of The Tool Library, a co-op which, over the past two years, has proved exceedingly popular in its Cedar Cottage neighbourhood, now boasting over 600 members, and renting out approximately 3,000 tools per year.

"We had gotten a lot of questions about a year ago, about how we wanted to grow," he explains. "And I started to think: we're a small organization. We can't actually prove there's demand in other parts of the city for a project like this to happen... And when I looked at how the Tool Library could grow, I realized that we needed some proof, and some dialogue with people in other communities about what they wanted to share. And I realized it could be more than just tools. It could be anything."

Alternatives to going it alone

Officially launched at the beginning of April, The Sharing Project has already gained some high-profile financial support from a number of organizations citywide. Vancity is a sponsor, as is the City of Vancouver. The project's leaders hope to raise rest of their budget (approximately $20,000), through a crowdfunding Indiegogo campaign. The team has already begun its research in earnest, having conducted both interviews and focus groups with a diverse selection of Vancouverites.

At the end of April, an open online survey will be launched to supplement their findings, and, as they have already discovered, a transition to a Sharing Economy may not be as radical as it sounds -- largely because, in many ways, we're doing it already.

"If we look at Vancouver, there are tens of thousands of people that are already involved in sharing organizations," Diplock explains. "MODO has thousands of members. Car2Go is the same thing... People go to the gym, they share a community centre, they share the library. There's also some really cool shared workspace that goes on downtown. The Vancouver Hackspace, which is a place where people go and they work on electronics. They have all the tools they need there, they drop in, and they work on it. The Vancouver Community Laboratory -- they're also a drop-in workspace where you can work on creative projects."

Throughout the city, many other examples exist, ranging from The Hive and The Toast Collective (shared work and creative spaces), to more offbeat additions such as the Viking Sailing Club, which allows members to share sailboats. But, in addition to surveying the city's residents, in an effort to determine what Vancouver's neighbourhoods might be interested in sharing, the study also aims to explore the parameters of our growing Collaborative Economy.

"Another thing that the research is trying to figure out is exactly what Vancouverites define as 'sharing,'" Milne says. "Is it simply the exchange of one thing for another? Is it barter? Is it renting? If money changes hands, does it turn into something else?"

Research in emotion

"There will be pockets of people who feel very strongly that renting may be sharing," Diplock adds. "But there may be a large portion of people who don't... So we're going to get a sense of what that is in Vancouver. Because up until now, I can't point to a lot of research that's been done -- despite all the conversations that are being had about the sharing economy, that really picks that issue apart. You look at this explosion in sharing, and some people are sitting back and saying: 'Well, that looks a lot like renting.' People haven't really examined that difference -- what's included when people say 'I want to share with you.'"

When the study's findings are published later this year, the team intends to make it available as a resource to entrepreneurs, but also to present the information, and use it to facilitate discussion with the neighbourhoods themselves, in a series of one-hour presentations. And, while The Sharing Project is primarily intended as a data-gathering venture, it does have some additional benefits -- one in particular which drew attention (in the form of a $15,000 donation) from the City of Vancouver.

"The city of Vancouver is looking to become the greenest city by 2020," Milne explains, "and for them, they see sharing as one way to potentially reduce our consumption of goods, which would also reduce our overall waste. When people are sharing more, they're consuming less."

Another advantage, Diplock notes, is that any expansion of the Sharing Economy in Vancouver's neighbourhoods will bring with it an increase in social contact -- nothing to scoff at after a recent survey by the Vancouver Foundation found that one out of three Vancouverites feel lonely and isolated. The survey's results, heavily reported in the news media, found human connection at the neighbourhood level to be alarmingly weak -- something the Collaborative Economy has the potential to change.

"This is a city that needs to get out there and meet other people," Diplock says, "and parts of that report said that people don't feel like they have anything to give. Well, think of the things you have that you can share. There is that social connection that people want to get out there and make, and sharing can make that happen."

The share is growing

On a worldwide scale, the move to incorporate a Sharing Economy is increasing exponentially, thanks to websites ranging from Airbnb and couchsurfing.org, to Rover (which connects people with potential dog-sitters), to even the free section on Craigslist. And, as Milne explains, social media sites like Facebook and Instagram have paved the way for these changes, not only altering how we do business, but by transforming how we view the act of sharing itself.

"If you go to couchsurfing.org, you can see that this stranger in a town you've never visited has been vouched for by fifty other people," she notes, "and you can cross-reference that with their profile on another website. You can get to know people a lot more intimately a lot faster. Our ability to trust people has increased tenfold over the last ten years. So, when we talk about sharing with people, we're already doing it in our online life every day. And so the translation to our own backyard becomes a lot easier."

"Whenever you start to share, there's a lot of magic that can happen," Diplock concludes. "I think we all want to live in a neighbourhood where we're spending time with other people, and we're sharing each other's spaces, we're working on our gardens together, we're building benches for the neighbourhood together. That's something I would be really excited about."

For further information on the project, and Vancouver's Sharing Economy, visit The Sharing Project's website at www.thesharingproject.ca.