Amsterdam has created a free Airbnb for city-owned buildings

Amsterdam has developed an Airbnb for city-owned offices, so residents can use them for free, and may do the same with municipal cars and tools.

The project is due to be launched by the city government with access to some 15 underused meeting rooms around the turn of the year, and will be extended to more rooms along with vehicles and tools if it is a success.

‘You walk through these buildings and all these meeting rooms are empty,’ Nanette Schippers, an official in the city’s Chief Technology Office and one of the creators of the project, told Apolitical. ‘It’s just a waste, especially when you know people need those spaces. We spoke to our Facilities people and they were really enthusiastic and eager to help, so we thought: let’s just start.’

“We ask: how will it contribute to the city?”

To avoid damaging the market for companies that provide office space, the project is available only to organisations that are working for a social purpose. Said Schippers, ‘We ask them things like: is your group giving any kind of social impact? What’s the meeting for? What’s your organisation doing? How will it contribute to the city of Amsterdam?’

The creators think it is realistic to eventually run the scheme with around 100 meeting rooms, but as one of the founders, Urban Innovation Officer Femke Haccou, told Apolitical, ‘We hardly know ourselves how much space we have. This could be a great moment to get an insight into that as well. We have so many buildings and so many spaces, so you can maybe understand that not every building is in a database yet.’

The rationale for access being free is that the city would be paying the associated costs – security, utilities, wear and tear – anyway. It may start to charge a minimal fee if it makes the spaces available outside office hours.

Some of the groundwork for sharing the city’s car fleet has also already been done. So that people don’t need to pick up keys and vehicles from some particular garage, the city has converted its cars so they can be opened with a smartphone. The technology came from a local start-up called We Go, which also means the cars are tracked and can be parked anywhere. The scheme has been running for a year for municipal employees.

The city government has been greatly aided in exploring the sharing economy by its close ties to local companies working in that sector. For example, it took advice on how to set up and run the project from Peerby, an app that lets neighbours request or offer things to borrow, such as hammers, tents, badminton rackets or indeed anything. It has also learned from Kirklees, a town in England, which has set up a platform on which the community can share sports equipment, allotments for growing vegetables and municipal vans, if it’s for social good.