Housing cannot be discussed without gentrification and that is exactly the issue that looms over the advent of the smart city. Gentrification as a term was first coined by Ruth Glass in 1964 to describe the process of middle class residents moving into lower class neighborhoods and subsequently driving up property values. The causes for gentrification vary by case, but real estate investment is certainly an important factor. Further, private equity real estate investment is exactly what Fields and Uffer identify as an important factor that causes financialization, which ultimately leads to “higher inequalities in housing affordability and stability and rearranged spaces of abandonment and gentrification.” [1] Therefore, we can expect that the investment needed to build the smart city should have similar results to the effects of financializtion in Berlin in New York described by Fields and Uffer. As global financial integration transformed the political economy of housing in both cities, it either furthered gentrification or deterioration depending on the area. In New York, private equity firms “repurposed informality as a leverage to evict ‘illegal subletters’” [1] forcing out lower-income residents who could not afford legal representation in court. In Berlin, a similar process occurred as well, which was that in neighborhoods where housing investors tried to minimize costs and did not focus in housing maintenance, people would often abandon the deteriorating housing: “Households with the resources to secure better housing often left, concentrating low-income households without other options.” [1] I fear that it is likely that smart technology will be only installed in the areas of the city that investors would deem “appropriate” for the technology and thus this would further marginalize or gentrify certain areas.
The technology necessary to making housing smarter also has its pro and cons as well. A smart city requires housing that is integrated community-wide, or at least all updated with current technology. And Greenfield criticizes the smart city in the way that “it pretends to be an objectivity, a unity and a perfect knowledge that are nowhere achievable, even in principle.” [2] This is certainly the case for smart technology that requires citizen actuation, as it may not always be correctly sensing an issue in the grid and requires anthropogenic maintenance. This kind of intermediate technology, though certainly not objective, does seem to be the most affordable and easy to install. Crowley demonstrated how such technology could reduce energy usage in an office building by up to 26% by notifying workers via twitter of items using energy that were not being used by anyone. [3] Further, this technology may be of minimal cost and this easy to implement in a variety of public and private buildings. Thus, use of smaller scale and less expensive technologies could lessen the probability that energy and technology companies would first begin this program in higher income homes and organizations, subsequently expanding differences between income classes. Therefore, this kind of smart city may actually be very useful in promoting the common good in the way that it uses simple measure to reduce energy costs in buildings.
The reason why we must very strongly consider how investment in smart technology in housing could gentrify areas and exacerbate class differences is because this has proven to be a significant issue in the past. Smith highlights how the transformation of the lower east side into the “East Village” is a perfect example of how gentrification created class conflict. Hundreds of homeless people were evicted from Tompkins Square Park in the dead of winter in December 1989 following riots in August the year before as many were angered about the rampant gentrification of the area. [4] This site and area became a symbol of new urbanism being categorized as the urban “frontier”. [4] It would appear that the American tradiation with manifest destiny continued as “real-estate cowboys” sought to take control of the “uncivil” working class and take over this “new” territory from marginalized communities in a romantic, yet dangerous way. [4] It is very easy to see how this could similarly happen in the future as smart city technology becomes increasingly available. “Software Cowboys” could bring forth sensor technology to “civilize” the lack of smart technology in marginalized neighborhoods.
Overall, Portland will need to both take ideas from the smart city and preexisting housing institutions and structures currently available. Use of human actuation systems in building energy use over the high cost of actuation systems can both easily reduce energy usage and thus costs and also help to develop more of a sense of community in these building through the human actuation process. Therefore, implementation of such housing technology seems pragmatic for the community of Portland (especially for a city that spends much money on the heating of buildings during the cold winter). However, these technologies should be implemented in a cautious manner as to not allow already privileged communities develop more advantages and cause oppressed communities to be more at a disadvantage. Specifically, perhaps it would be wise to install such technology in a non-profit like Preble Street that is already looking for easy ways to reduce energy cost.
Ultimately, as smart technology is likely more frequently used in cities around the world, we must carefully consider how these implementations may worsen preexisting social inequalities. If we look at what real estate investment has done to many communities in the past, we need to carefully consider what smart technology may do to these same and similar communities in the future.
References
[1] Fields, Desiree, and Sabina Uffer. “The financialisation of rental housing: A comparative analysis of New York City and Berlin.” Urban Studies July (2014): 1-17.
[2] Greenfield, A. Against the Smart City. 2013.
[3] Crowley, David N., Edward Curry, and John G. Breslin. “Leveraging Social Media and IoT to Bootstrap Smart Environments.” In Big Data and Internet of Things: A Roadmap for Smart Environments. Switzerland: Spring International Publishing, 2014. 379-399.
[4] Smith, Neil. “Class Struggle on Avenue B: The Lower East Side as Wild Wild West.” In The People, Place, and Space Reader, edited by Jen Jack Gieseking, et al, New York: Routledge, 2014. 314-319.