City of Amersfoort

Amersfoort will establish three sharing stations across different neighbourhoods to improve access to tools, household items, and community equipment. The pilot focuses on supporting local residents - particularly those in lower-income areas - while testing different spatial and operational models for future citywide scaling.

Amersfoort will deploy three multi-purpose sharing stations at the following locations: 

• GarageBox at Liendert: an unused storage unit in the Liendert neighbourhood will be transformed into an open, multipurpose sharing space. Located within a social housing complex owned by De Alliantie and surrounded by playgrounds, sports fields, and community facilities, the aim is to provide easy, local access to useful items for DIY, gardening, small household tasks, and community events.
• Bibliotheek Eemland: The second station will be placed inside the multifunctional library building at Eemplein, which also hosts the city archive and arts education centre and is situated in a busy area near cafés, shops, and future residential developments. 
• Energy House Room: this meeting place, set up by the municipality in the neighbourhood of Schothorst to support citizens to make their homes more sustainable through better isolation and greener energy use, will host the third sharing station pilot. 

All three pilots are multi-purpose sharing stations. 

The GarageBox will operate as an open-room sharing space equipped with shelving and fixtures to display items. It will likely include a mix of tools, DIY materials, gardening equipment, and lightweight leisure items - such as a drill, a carpet cleaner, foldable tables, a ladder, or a basic fitness kit.

The Het Eemplein sharing station will focus on compact and easy-to-carry items suited to visitors who typically arrive on foot or by bicycle, such as a toolkit, board games, a bike repair kit, or small household appliances.

The Energy House Room sharing station will provide access to DIY tools such as a toolkit, drill, extendable ladder and thermal imaging camera. 

The pilot seeks to operate three fully functioning sharing stations to generate insights into implementation, operations, pricing models, communication, and user uptake in different locations across the city and among a variety of audience groups to aid the scaling up of similar community sharing initiatives across the city. 

The long-term goal is to translate lessons from the pilot into policies and infrastructure for 2027 and beyond, particularly in newly designed neighbourhoods where shared resources can be integrated from the start.