There is perhaps nothing in the city of greater importance to the individual than housing. Housing is the foundation upon which every society is based: without living space, there would be no people, no infrastructure, and no city. That being said, different environments demand different types of living spaces. As such, we must consider a variety of factors when determining how to create the best possible housing system for any particular city.
Smart cities all over the world are constantly experimenting with new housing ideas. In Songdo, for example, video conferencing has been built into every apartment. [1] This telepresence has fundamentally changed how the city operates, such as by allowing children to have classes from the comforts of their homes. [2] As we discussed in class, however, technologies like this discourage face-to-fact interactions that are so characteristic of the quintessential urban experience. This is not to say that all “smart” technologies have to fundamentally change the ways in which we live. Crowley et al. describe their study in which sensors and social media are used in workplace environments to reduce energy usage. If implemented into living spaces, technologies such as this could certainly make our living environments more cost-effective and eco-friendly. Technologies should not necessarily change how housing works on a foundational level. Rather, technologies should be used to preserve and enhance those aspects of housing essential to people’s day-to-day lives.
While “smart” technologies can certainly be used to improve housing in cities, there are even more basic steps that can be taken to promote the common good. First and foremost, housing should be considered a necessary service and not solely a means of making money. As Neil Smith says in his article about the Lower East Side of New York, “The perverse rationality of real estate capitalism means that building owners and developers garner a double reward for milking properties and destroying buildings.” [4] The treatment of housing as a financial asset and nothing more leads to poor living conditions and financial disaster, as we saw firsthand during the housing crisis of 2008. [5] This crisis affected the entire country (and the rest of the world, to a certain extent), not just lower income families who were victims of predatory loaning. Everyone in society benefits from affordable housing for all. This was a fundamental assumption in Germany for a long time, as Fields and Uffer explain: “Under the principle of the ‘common public interest’ (Geminnützigkeit), companies limited their profit orientation in exchange for tax exemption.” [5] Affordable housing does not need to come at the expense of landlords, however; the co-op system of housing places the burden of upkeep on all residents in the building, thereby minimizing the financial burdens on any one person. In short, the best ways to serve the common good with housing are to make housing about people rather than money and to hold society as a whole, not just one individual, responsible for providing and maintaining living spaces for everyone.
How can these ideas be applied to Portland? Considering that as of 2012 58 percent of people living in Portland are renters and the average household income is less than $43,000, lower cost housing would certainly help people with smaller incomes living in the city. [6] The median cost to rent in Portland in 2012 was almost $900 a month, meaning rental costs were about 25% of the median household income. [6] Increased adoption of the co-op housing model would also relieve a great deal of financial stress on lower income families, since these families would be more able to deal with unforeseen housing problems. Portland renters could also benefit greatly from stabilized rental costs, seeing as the price of living is constantly rising in the city.
[1] Maija Palmer, “Screen Time: How Video Conferencing is Gaining Ground,” Financial Times (London, UK), September 11, 2011.
[2] “Songdo, South Korea — The Forefront of Education,” YouTube video, 3:25, posted by “Cisco,” April 11, 2012, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YLsmSvVpO0
[3] David Crowley, Edward Curry, and John Breslin, “Leveraging Social Media and IoT to Bootstrap Smart Environments,” in Big Data and the Internet of Things: A Roadmap for Smart Environments, ed. Nick Bessis and Ciprian Dobre, Springer, http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-05029-4_16.
[4] Neil Smith, “Class Struggle on Avenue B: The Lower East Side sat he Wild Wild West,” in The People, Place, and Space Reader, ed. Jen Jack Gieseking et al. (New York: Routledge), 314–319.
[5] Desiree Fields and Sabina Uffer, “The Financialisation of Rental Housing: A Comparative Analysis of New York City and Berlin,” in Urban Studies, July.
[6] “Portland, Maine,” City-Data.com, accessed October 6, 2014, http://www.city-data.com/city/Portland-Maine.html