SHARECITY uses innovative social science and collaborative research methods to explore the practices and sustainability potential of food sharing within cities. The project runs until 2020 and involves a team of international researchers and a high-level advisory panel of global experts committed to exploring novel pathways for more sustainable futures. SHARECITY is funded by the European Research Council.

With planetary urbanization fast approaching there is growing clarity regarding the unsustainability of cities, not least with respect to food consumption. Sharing, including food sharing, is increasingly being identified as one transformative mechanism for sustainable cities: reducing consumption; conserving resources, preventing waste and providing new forms of socio-economic relations. However, such claims currently rest on thin conceptual and empirical foundations.

SHARECITY will establish the significance and potential of ICT-mediated food sharing economies to transform cities onto more sustainable pathways the project by:

• Developing deeper theoretical understanding of contemporary food sharing
• Generating comparative international empirical data about food sharing activities within cities
• Assessing the impact of food sharing activities
• Exploring how food sharing in cities might evolve in the future

Conducting such frontier science SHARECITY will open new research horizons to substantively improve understanding of how, why and to what end people share food within cities in the 21st Century.

SHARECITY will provide open access knowledge and data on the sustainability potential (social, environmental and economic) of ICT-mediated food sharing through a searchable, interactive database of >4000 enterprises across 100 cities; in-depth insights into social innovation and enterprise; toolkit for demonstrating sustainability worth; scenarios for the future of ICT-mediated food sharing