Airbnb and the City: Comparative Analysis of Short-Term Rentals policies in Florence (Italy)

This work aims at investigating and problematizing the effectiveness of regulating short term rental (STR) in the housing sector, by comparing 9 different policies applied in a matching number of cities worldwide. The research focuses on the municipality of Florence, and takes it as a ground zero case study, given that so far regulamentation and monitoring policies in Italy have been absent or at least negligible. The paper aims at providing a comparative analysis of the effects imputable to the hipotetical application of several housing policies to the case study of Florence. Although many cities are experiencing the same dynamics (overtourism, gentrification, commercial use of private apartments), there is not a regulation fitting all of them. While the goal of regulation could be quite similar (reducing the overtourism and limiting commercial style STRs), the underlying processes and consequences differ per city. In this paper we argue that an adequate and data-driven policy can be implemented to ensure that the positive effects of new companies like Airbnb stay within the community and that the majority of hosts using the platform are representative of the community, not multinational commercial operations. The analysis of the Florence case study are based on spatial GIS techniques fuelled by Airbnb scaped data and other data base. Results shows that shifting from a laissez faire approach (which is the status quo) to even the weakest of such policies can have a large impact on dynamics of supply within short term and long term rental housing.