In a smart city, housing needs to be designed in a way so that it is affordable and inclusive. Currently, smart technology is not available in most places because of the costs of implementation and the difficulties in adding the technology into older buildings. {1} We have discussed in class how smart technology is not accessible for the vast majority of people, but if we want people of all socioeconomic classes to be able to have access to smart technology or even live in prototypes of smart cities, then they need to be able to afford the technology or housing itself. Looking back at history of housing in the cities, things like redlining and blockbusting were exploitative and led to larger issues of segregation in cities. When cities are highly racially or socioeconomically segregated, it is difficult to implement things like smart technology into them, as certain neighborhoods can financially support the technology and certain cannot.
In cities, there is an incredibly large gap between housing for the rich and housing for the poor. While a large portion of this is due to practices that have now been deemed illegal, the real estate market accounts for a lot of it as well. The practices of rental housing and the manipulation of markets for financial benefit discussed in the Fields and Uffer reading are simply not beneficial on a large scale. {2} For example, the ways in which landlords will not always renovate apartments in rent-stabilized units because it is not financially beneficial to them is something that prevents a neighborhood from revitalization. This goes against the 1991 Tompkins Square Park concert and then riot/movement idea that “housing is a human right,” as it not only prevents residents from living in appropriate housing, but also devalues neighborhoods. {3} Smart technology needs to be implemented in housing of all kinds so that neighborhoods do not become even more socioeconomically stratified than they already are today.
One way in which smart technology could be implemented into housing in all cities as well as in Portland is through more affordable smart housing. Lower socioeconomic neighborhoods are the major barrier to technology changes in cities, so implementing technology into affordable housing would not only make smart housing more accessible, but would also rejuvenate neighborhoods that are currently thought of as dangerous or more generally “bad” because of their residents. One way in which I think this could be implemented in Portland is through foundations that provide low-income or homeless housing. One of the programs that Preble Street runs is a program called Logan Place. Logan Place is a housing complex that houses 30 continuously homeless adults with 24-hour onsite help to assist them in the transition back to more conventional lives. {4} I believe that this program can already be considered a program with some sort of smart technology, as the 24-hour assistance allows residents to get help in whatever ways they need. This reminds me of the way in which the experiment in “Leveraging Social Media and IoT to Bootstrap Smart Environments” used Twitter as a means to communicate with people to have them perform tasks such as turning off the lights to conserve energy. {5} Having 24-hour on-call support is similar to this, as it allows residents to learn or relearn how to live stable lives through communication and aid.
{1} 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.
{2} 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. usj.sagepub.com (accessed October 3, 2014).
{3} 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.
{4} “Logan Place.” Preble Street. http://www.preblestreet.org/logan_place.php (accessed October 5, 2014).
{5} Crowley.