With a growing ease of accessible technology available at our hands, it is only expected that “smart” housing will soon become normative. Crowley suggests in his essay that, “The vision of a Smart Building is of one that optimises its internal environment for the comfort and usability of its occupants while minimising the resources required to run and maintain the building.” [1] One of the suggestions to implement this is running a house entirely on one system: controlling the heat and electricity through the same means. This smart design is furthered with an experiment to test how users can become engaged with the system through Twitter. This involves posting requests such as, “Could you turn off the lights?” publically on Twitter for the user to be tagged in and to respond to. Though this is an efficient method to keep energy usage low and to keep the user in-tune with the house elements, it is definitely concerning. There’s a point at which being too connected is not necessarily the best solution. It is effective, but how much more effective? Is it actually worth doing? Another way to ensure the same energy is saved is automatic lights…Do we actually have to take this to the next level of technological advancement? This system has elements that help the house run efficiently in terms of energy usage, which is useful in promoting the common good. However, there are definitely other smart systems that provide the same benefits.

A few effective forms of energy efficient solutions that could be implemented in Portland include the use of solar power or automatic electrical audits. The use of solar power energy is increasing for not only large companies, but also individual houses, and even parking lots. Though expensive to implement, solar powered energy can be useful in the future because it is a form of “green” energy and will eventually be cost effective. Certain large parking lots can also implement solar powered canopies, which serve as a roof to shade the cars, while also collecting sunlight to power a nearby building. Inside a house, instead of having the system publically tweet the user to conserve energy, it could complete an automatic audit on electrical consumption within the household. Audits can be beneficial in identifying the main contributing factors to energy waste in a private household or a larger company. With the audit, the informed user can then respond with the proper means to reduce electrical consumption.

In general, smart housing is an efficient and beneficial way to promote energy sustainability using technology. But, there is a line at which becoming too dependent on technology is probably not as effective as a less technologically involved solution. Once again, the Twitter solution, as mentioned above, is probably an excessive attempt to create smart housing. However, another caveat of smart housing is the audience to which smart houses appeal. Yes, smart housing is beneficial, but it is also expensive. Since smart technology is not as frequent as it could be, it is more likely that, at the present time, smart technology would be used in a gentrifying neighborhood. Smith states in gentrifying areas, “Hostile landscapes are regenerated, cleansed, reinfused with middle-class sensibility; real estate values soar.” [2] Smart technology is often though of as a clean, regenerating form of efficiency, yet it comes at a price. The problem with creating a smart neighborhood with more economic value is that it then becomes unaffordable for those previously living there. So, how can a smart neighborhood that does not only serve the elite form? The usage of smart technology should be dispersed throughout the city so that technological pockets do not form. An effective way to incorporate smart buildings into a city would be for companies to implement them first so that they ideally, would become more normalized. Additionally, the city could provide subsidies on purchasing smart technology, or incentivize the usage of smart technology through decreased housing taxes. Smart technology is definitely growing in popularity and appeal in cities, especially with an increasing desire for cities to become smart, yet the audience of smart technology must also be considered.

1. Crowley, David N., Edward Curry, and John G. Breslin. 2014. “Leveraging Social Media and IoT to Bootstrap Smart Environments.” In Big Data and Internet of Things: A Roadmap for Smart Environments, edited by Nik Bessis and Ciprian Dobre, 381. Springer.
2. Smith, Neil. 2014 [1996]. “‘Class Struggle on Avenue B’: The Lower East Side as the Wild Wild West.” In The People, Place and Space Reader, edited by Jen Jack Gieseking, et al, 316. New York: Routledge, 2014.