We are happy to share with you the new guide Your Municipality’s Sharing Economy Journey: A 5-Step Guide, created within the Interreg Europe Good Cities project.

The guide distils key insights from the Good Cities project, offering municipalities a practical roadmap to foster local sharing economies.

It highlights why sharing matters—as a powerful lever of the circular economy, it reduces waste, promotes sustainable resource use, and builds more inclusive, resilient communities—while also addressing the challenges cities face, from financing and cultural acceptance to mainstreaming sharing beyond niche initiatives.

The guide is organised into five practical chapters, each forming a step in the sharing economy journey. Step 1: Understand Your Baseline helps municipalities map existing initiatives, stakeholders, and resources. Step 2: Develop a Clear Goal & Vision turns this understanding into a shared direction through collaborative workshops and clear objectives. Step 3: Define Your Municipality’s Role introduces the five-role framework, encouraging cities to reflect on whether they act best as initiators, enablers, or facilitators. Step 4: Invite the Right Stakeholders focuses on building networks across public, private, civic, and cultural actors to co-create solutions. Step 5: Engage Your Citizens underlines the importance of community trust, awareness, and participation, with examples like gamification and citizen roundtables.

Each step is illustrated with methodologies, partner experiences, and good practices from across Europe, showing how municipalities can move from scattered ideas to long-term, tangible initiatives. More than a technical manual, the guide is an invitation to reimagine how sharing can be embedded into daily life, linking environmental goals with social cohesion, and ensuring trust and collaboration for a greener, fairer future.

The guide was developed thanks to the collaboration of the Association of Municipalities of Tartu County (EE), City of Jyväskylä (FI), City of Malmö (SE), Cluster of Bioeconomy and Environment of Western Macedonia (EL), Eutropian (AT), Municipality of Újbuda – Budapest District XI (HU), Region of Western Macedonia (EL), Tilburg Municipality (NL), and Bax Innovation.

You can also download the guide directly from Interreg Good Cities website.