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2019 Shearmur Wachsmuth Urban technology

May 2020
Plan Canada 59(1):175-179

Project: Municipal innovation

Authors:

Richard Shearmur

McGill University

David Wachsmuth

McGill University

This short article, published both in English and French, provides a brief overview of urban technology, arguing that the term 'technology' is increasingly defined very narrowly as digital and communication technology. This serves the purpose of a growing 'Innovation Machine' - i.e. a constellation of actors who stand to gain by introducing these technologies, whilst ignoring key urban issues such as housing, inequality and - sometimes - basic sanitation, all of which could benefit from investment in different technologies and/or in questioning urban processes that have nothing to do with technology.

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Project

Where does economic activity take place?

Objective: To understand whether, and, if so, how, peoples' economic activities take place along a spatial trajectory rather than from a fixed location. The projects' hypotheses - outlined in the w orking paper 'The Millennial Space Economy' - are that some types of work (or work function) are spatially fixed, whereas others take place from a variety of locations. Furthermore, it is not necessarily high-knowledge-content jobs that are mobile (e.g. surgeons tend to perform their activities from fixed locations), and many lower-order service jobs (e.g. dog-walkers, nannies, house-cleaning) are multi-locational. Whilst this type of work-mobility is facilitated by mobile communications technologies, economic activity has never taken place exclusively at the 'place-of-work'. The relevance of, and reasons for, the spatial clustering of economic establishments (particularly at the neighbourhood level) will be questioned if it is found that economic activity does not take place at the administratively assigned place-of-work. The nature and scale of agglomeration economies (the study of which is usually premised on establishment or place-of-work location), will also be questioned in the light of what is revealed in the studies currently underway. ... [more]

Project

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Project

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Project

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Article

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Richard Shearmur

Many policy-makers, particularly in North America, have been seduced and influenced by the ideas of Richard Florida, who suggests that cities and regions can be economically revitalised if they make themselves attractive to the mobile and talented 'creative class'. This suggests that economic growth is caused by an influx of such people. This paper argues that it is more plausible to suggest the ... [Show full abstract] reverse-that the 'creative class' is attracted to economic growth and that Florida's theories have the unintended consequence of justifying the investment of considerable public resources in support of the lifestyle choices of this already privileged class, in effect sustaining a new knowledge aristocracy at the expense of the immobile majority.

Article

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February 2018 · Environment and Planning A

Airbnb and other short-term rental services are a topic of increasing interest and concern for urban researchers, policymakers and activists, because of the fear that short-term rentals are facilitating gentrification. This article presents a framework for analyzing the relationship between short-term rentals and gentrification, an exploratory case study of New York City, and an agenda for future ... [Show full abstract] research. We argue that Airbnb has introduced a new potential revenue flow into housing markets which is systematic but geographically uneven, creating a new form of rent gap in culturally desirable and internationally recognizable neighbourhoods. This rent gap can emerge quickly—in advance of any declining property income— and requires minimal new capital to be exploited by a range of different housing actors, from developers to landlords, tenants and homeowners. Performing spatial analysis on three years of Airbnb activity in New York City, we measure new capital flows into the short- term rental market, identify neighbourhoods whose housing markets have already been significantly impacted by short-term, identify neighbourhoods which are increasingly under threat of Airbnb-induced gentrification, and measure the amount of rental housing lost to Airbnb. Finally, we conclude by offering a research agenda on gentrification and the sharing economy.