Smart technology for houses needs to be something that people of all economic levels can afford to put into their home, however, currently these goods are considered “luxury”[1]. Smart technology may raise our efficiency rate, but the burden of the cost to take of the system in the home is much higher than without smart technology. Therefore, smart technology is currently not accessible for the majority of the population. In order to change this pattern, we often have to look into our behaviors of the past. Through techniques such as redlining, we have been able to see how difficult it would be to implement the same standard smart technology because of the wide range of socioeconomic status in different neighborhoods. Currently, possessing a smart device, or having a “smart” home signals to people a certain level of wealth or level of “success”, however, in a smart city every person needs to be able to live up to that standard.
The income gap in cities is very large and continues to expand as gentrification occurs. People that once inhabited certain neighborhoods can no longer afford to liver there because of the cost of living becoming too much. Smith argues, that with cities people become “urban pioneers” [2]. Essentially, the Frontier of the city is class conquest, which occurs when people go into areas of lower socioeconomic status and rebuild them to make them “better”. Scholars Uffer and Fields demonstrate to us that this problem is not just an issue that is affecting the US, but rather a worldwide problem. Property ownership is cities vary, between people renting, leasing to total ownership. However, due to such diversity in ownership, it is hard to keep individuals accountable for making sure their housing is in good condition [3]. In other words, the lack of communication between residents and tenants leads to housing statuses falling apart, which then continues to spiral out until something such as gentrification occurs. We need to create a smart housing option in which everyone can afford to live in and one in which everyone can be held accountable.
In Portland, the smart housing option should not just worry about costs, but also needs to be completed in a “smart way”. Along those lines, in order to create more open and equal housing, borders between neighborhoods and different socioeconomic classes need to broken down as well. So first, housing should be affordable for everyone. Secondly, another option that could be implemented in Portland is to set up a form of system of systems, as Uffer and Fields explain in their article [4]. However the system in place in Portland should use a means of communication that is accessible and readily available for everyone. Installing this sort of communication throughout the city would bring instant access to real time data, and to events (good or bad) when they occur, thus allowing everyone in the city to be on the same page.
Works cited
[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]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.
[3]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).
[4] Fields, Desiree, and Sabina Uffer. “The financialisation of rental housing: A comparative analysis of New York City and Berlin