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Digital informalisation: rental housing, platforms, and the management of risk

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  • Ferreri, Mara
  • Sanyal, Romola

Abstract

The eruption of disruptive digital platforms is reshaping geographies of housing under the gaze of corporations and through the webs of algorithms. Engaging with interdisciplinary scholarship on informal housing across the Global North and South, we propose the term ‘digital informalisation’ to examine how digital platforms are engendering new and opaque ways of governing housing, presenting a theoretical and political blind spot. Focusing on rental housing, our paper unpacks the ways in which new forms of digital management of risk control access and filter populations. In contrast to progressive imaginaries of ‘smart’ technological mediation, practices of algorithmic redlining, biased tenant profiling and the management of risk in private tenancies and in housing welfare both introduce and extend discriminatory and exclusionary housing practices. The paper aims to contribute to research on informal housing in the Global North by examining digital mediation and its governance as key overlooked components of housing geographies beyond North and South dichotomies.

Suggested Citation

  • Ferreri, Mara & Sanyal, Romola, 2022. "Digital informalisation: rental housing, platforms, and the management of risk," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 112794, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    • Handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:112794
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    File URL: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/112794/
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Sanyal, Romola & Ferreri, Mara, 2018. "Platform economies and urban planning: Airbnb and regulated deregulation in London," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 87473, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    2. Libby Porter & Desiree Fields & Ani Landau-Ward & Dallas Rogers & Jathan Sadowski & Sophia Maalsen & Rob Kitchin & Oliver Dawkins & Gareth Young & Lisa K Bates, 2019. "Planning, Land and Housing in the Digital Data Revolution/The Politics of Digital Transformations of Housing/Digital Innovations, PropTech and Housing – the View from Melbourne/Digital Housing and Ren," Planning Theory & Practice, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 20(4), pages 575-603, August.
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    7. Anna Joo Kim & Anne Brown & Marla Nelson & Renia Ehrenfeucht & Nancy Holman & Nicole Gurran & Jathan Sadowski & Mara Ferreri & Romola Sanyal & Marta Bastos & Klaas Kresse, 2019. "Planning and the So-Called ‘Sharing’ Economy / Can Shared Mobility Deliver Equity?/ The Sharing Economy and the Ongoing Dilemma about How to Plan for Informality/ Regulating Platform Economies in Citi," Planning Theory & Practice, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 20(2), pages 261-287, March.
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    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    algorithm; Global North; digital platforms; housing informality;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • R14 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - General Regional Economics - - - Land Use Patterns
    • J01 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - General - - - Labor Economics: General

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