The role in the economy of “disruptors”, such as Amazon, Uber, Mytaxi and Airbnb, has been the subject of much debate over the past few years. Each has shaken up their various industries by creating new and often more affordable ways to do things. Now Britain’s estate agencies are being challenged by online-only, flat-fee companies such as Purplebricks, currently the third-largest estate agent in the UK.
Alongside a debate about the impact these companies have on the quality of employment, job security, income, and so on, there should also be a discussion about their impact on physical locations. The real payback for a city dealing with the impact of these companies comes from the rich data they collect. If it can be collected, that is.
For example, think of the information Uber has about how people move across cities and how this correlates, or not, with local bus routes and congestion. Similarly, Airbnb will have useful data on its hosts, properties and tourists.
All this information would be invaluable to city planners and policy-makers, and potentially be low-cost. The data shows how humans interact with their built environment and can lead to better evidence-based policies. How would city routes change, I wonder, if authorities had access to Uber’s travel data?
Under pressure to counteract negative publicity, Uber shared its passenger-trip information with authorities in Boston. The taxi-hailing giant was careful about what it released, but Boston planners can use the data to identify the ebbs and flows of traffic in the city, and also plan for better public transport, something that would compete with Uber.
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The information held by these companies has the potential to improve people’s lives and create better policy when used by governments, which have different objectives from business-led platforms.
These “sharing-economy” companies often make their profits by using existing public infrastructure. They know their data is precious, and most refuse to share it.
Airbnb often challenges those who say it has a destabilising effect on the Dublin rental market — there are more than twice as many apartments on Airbnb than there are available to rent — but refuses to release data to prove itself right.
Barcelona’s proactive city council has taken on Airbnb, insisting that an online platform cannot be allowed to “shelter illegal tourist apartments”. Here, Dublin city council has no accurate idea how many Airbnb apartments are being let full-time in its administrative area. Short-term lets require planning permission, and the council is therefore facing a breach of planning law right under its nose. To date, it has issued 33 warning notices to Airbnb hosts but there is lots more to do.
This unregulated sharing economy has negative consequences that affect government agencies, not least of which is regulation.
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Information is the future of planning in cities. Transport, housing and infrastructure will all be planned based on data from a variety of sources. This information will be critical in city governance, and creating a better living experience.
Data takes the guesswork out of policy-making and provides a basis to evaluate historically. All this works only if participants in the sharing economy put their money where their mouths are, and actually share.
Although some smart-city data is already available on websites like dublindashboard.ie, cities need to be proactive in accessing the data held by the disruptors. They make their money on the back of the city; they should give something back to it.
@lorcansirr