Bicycle-sharing Economy Will Reshape Cities
A bicycle-sharing system is a service in which bicycles are made available for shared use to individuals on a very short-term basis for a price. The smartphone apps show nearby available bikes and they are used to scan the QR code on the bicycle to unlock it.
https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2017/mar/22/bike-wars-dockless-china-millions-bicycles-hangzhou
This article introduces how bicycle-sharing economy develops in China and is heading overseas. It focuses on the development of bicycle-sharing in Hangzhou, where the public bicycle-sharing system is one of the largest in the world, with around 60,000 bicycles. In 2017, the bicycle-sharing system arrives in the UK and there are at least four companies of the bicycle-sharing in Oxford now.
In such economy, the bicycle has been endowed with new cultural meanings. They are not treated as the commodities in such economy but becomes the intermediary between the consumers and the commodities. To some degree, it is the services of sharing bicycle here that become the new commodities in the bicycle-sharing economy.
Contributed by Erika, NingxinWang on 15/01/2018
