Existenzmaximum - Atlas of Shared Living. Vol. I Sharing economy

ExistenzMaximum ATLAS OF SHARED LIVING

vol. I

[ an uncomplete, and unfinished journey through times, people, and the sharing economy. ] thesis by ani safaryan

Milano 2019

v.I Ani Safaryan Prof.: Piero Poggioli Tutor.: Micaela Bordin Politecnico di Milano Scuola di Architettura Urbanistica Ingegneria delle Costruzioni - MI Laurea Magistrale Architettura MI 1136 E12 850279 Milano 2019

# sharing economy

Everytime the world changed around us our lifestyles and mind-sets changed accordingly, and our homes got transformed.

The last two decades saw the technology advancing from person-al computers to smartphones and our interractions shifting from real to the digital realm. As the world becomes increasingly bor-derless, we get mobile and untethered. Services like Uber, Airbnb and Netflix are gaining more and more users and marking the passage from the market-based to crowdbased capitalism, where access is valued more than ownership.

The industry, mobility and the market already got upgraded to the new realities. But when was the last time our homes got re-vamped? The real estate developers are still sticking to the old models of dwellings, which aren’t answering our new lifestyle and needs. Isn’t it really time for the dwelling to catch up with us?

Vol.I

# Sharing economy Chapter I

Chapter II

“Of Millennials and of their unusual manner of living.”

“How Millennials grew up with Technology and where it leads them.” p.05

Chapter IV

Chapter III

“Of the manner the things are shared, swapped, traded and rented in the Sharing Economy” p.23

Chapter VII

Chapter VI

“Of Airbnb, or How to belong Anywhere ”

“From Existenzminimum to Existenzmaximum, Or how the Architects designed our homes in the last century” p.51

p.35

“Of Venice and Shanghai and how they treat the Time differently”

p.67

p.77

Vol.III

# From Venice to Shanghai and back Chapter I

Chapter II

Chapter III

“Of Home as a Network”

“How a Palazzo in Venice got transformed”

“How to move from Venice to Shanghai in one day”

p.05

p.39

p.95

TABLE OF CONTENTS Vol.II

# Communal living Chapter I

Chapter II

Chapter III

“How Hakka people built earthen building and lived ”

“What manner of dwelling the Yanomami have”

“Of the manner the Iroquis, the Viking and the Austronesian Longhouse is made”

p.05

Chapter IV

p.17

Chapter VI

Chapter V

“How the Qala Residents hid their houses from the Strangers’ eyes”

p.57

p.69

“Of Venice and Shanghai and how they treat the Time differently”

“How communal dinners stopped taking place in Kollontai”

p.95

# Author’s observations Privacy v.I, p.66

p.77

Chapter VII

Chapter VIII

“How the Squats are vanishing everywhere and how people in Køpi resist”

Legal Issues v.I, p.57

“How Migrants used to dwell in Boarding Houses”

“How people in Kommunalka set their own rules and of their manner of living”

Chapter VII

p.29

p.109

The two cosmopolitans v.I, p.80

The new type of city dweller v.I, p.95

p.121

Of Ikea and identity v.III, p.21

“Each day and every hour, the telephone was my twin brother. I was an intimate observer of the way it rose above the humiliations of its early years. For once the chandelier, fire screen, potted palm, console table, gueridon, and alcove balustrade—all formerly on display in the front rooms—had finally faded and died a natural death, the apparatus, like a legendary hero ones exposed to die in a mountain gorge, left the dark hallway in the back of the house to make its regal entry into this cleaner and brighter rooms that now were inhabited by the younger generation. For the latter, it became a consolation for their loneliness. To the despondent who wanted to leave this wicked world, it shone with the light in a last hope. With the forsaken, it shared its bed”.

05

Walter Benjamin “Berlin Childhood”, around 1900

CHAPTER 1 Of Millennials and of their unusual manner of living

f1

06

THE FIRST GLOBAL GENERATION 1/4 of world’s population are millennials it’s 1.8 bln people over the globe the largest and most ethnically diverse generation *and first one to think itself global the first digitally native generation mention the technology use as something that distinguishes them from the older generations

think of travel as an essential part of their identity tend to travel “as a local” delay traditional milestones like marriage and kids mobile, flexible and untethered instead are always connected digitally

age in 2018:

73-90

Silents born

1910 1920 1930 07

1964

1928

1945

have a blurred boundary between life and work tend to work while commuting or travelling and combine business trips with leisure

53-73

Baby Boomers born

1940 1950 1960

Gen.

197

A quarter of the world’s population are millennials. It’s 1.8 bn young people born between 1980-1996, currently between 22-37 years old. They are the largest and most ethnically diverse generation and the first one to be digitally native.

Millennials grew up in a world of rapid technological advancements and new opportunities, but also of huge global challenges, high youth unemployment, unaffordable housing, low wages and an uncertain economic environment. During the first two decades of their lives they already experienced the consequences of past unsustainable and short-term policies and saw how fragile are the stability, the current economical models and our planet itself.

37-53

X born

22-37

Millennials born

2019

1980

1996

Thanks to the media, the internet and the relative ease of travelling, millennials are world’s first generation to grow up thinking of itself as global and responsible for the biosphere. With that awareness, their mindset differs strongly from Generation X, and is exactly opposite to the trends launched by Baby-Boomers: Millennials are not individualists, but cooperative team players, most of them accept authority and are not rule breakers. They support convention—the idea that social rules can help, and manifest many positive social habits that were never associated with youth, such as a new focus on collaboration, achievement, good conduct, attention to own health and most importantly: environmental consciousness. Their choices of products and services, their support for companies and brands and their lifestyles are often driven by sustainability concerns, and the new economical models that are emerging now are based on their anti-consumerist views.

1-22

post-Millennials born

70 1980 1990 2000 2010 2020 2030 08

LIVING ARRANGEMENTS Millennials have a set of priorities and expectations drasticly different from previous generations, which makes them the most studied generation ever.

Governments, institutions and first of all companies and corporations put huge efforts to understand the way the new generation lives, works and plays in order to taylor the “supply” to the changing “demand”. Shifts and upgrades in all the aspects of economy are unavoidable and a matter of the coming decade of years.

Being more ethnically and racially diverse than older adults, millennials are also more tolerant of racial and cultural differences and of a wide range of nontraditional behaviors related to marriage and parenting. In ranking their own life priorities, Millennials (like older adults) place parenthood and marriage above career and financial success, but they are notably less likely to be married or to have children than earlier generations were at comparable ages. For example, in the US in 2012 only 23% of the young adults were married, compared with the 43% of the Gen Xers in 1981 and 56% of Baby Boomers in 1968.

Milennials are city dwellers, and since housing becomes increasingly unaffordable in large cities, adults in their peak home-buying years are instead renting longer.

The trend in delayed marriage and having fewer children later in life has led to rising numbers of single-person household and the problem of loneliness in the metropolitan areas. The alternative to a single-person household and to renting is to share the household. In general, the young adults today are more likely to be living with roommates, non-spouse partners or their parents, instead of living with their spouse and children, than were the immediate two previous generations at the same age.

In developed markets most of the millennials are facing the problem of unaffordable housing. Millennial homeownership in the US and Europe is at a record low: a millennial is not likely to buy a home without parental help or inheriting. For instance, In Italy only 9 out of 100 youngs under 35 own the house they live in. In UK 2/3 of millennials are forcasted to be renting their homes for the rest of their lives.

The situation in the emerging countries such as India and China is very different.

There millennials earn comparably low wages by international standards but are wealthy compared to their parents and grandparents. So, for instance, while young people around the world are struggling to get a property, 70% of Chinese millennials own their homes and a notable 91% also plan to buy a house in the next five years.

09

* Eurostat data

OF MILLENNIAL WORK AND PLAY ”What do you do when you can’t afford to buy somewhere to live? Well, you decide to live” Bridget Delaney on “The Guardian”

f2 f1 Gustave Doré, Illustration from Gargantua and Pantagruel f2 Daily commuter. Photograph found somewhere on the web

10

Digitally native, entrepreneurial and well-travelled, millennials are not afraid to relocate halfway across the world for the right opportunities and experiences and thanks to the relative ease of travelling overseas they have more options in where they live. They have grown up in the world of the gig economy and see the flexibility as a key to career progression. Global assignments give them new skills and experiences and they see enormous value in the frequent business travels, international commuting, and extended business trips.

Millennials are not only comfortable with technology, but they expect to use it as a key part of the relocation. This is a benefit to global mobility because it increases the fluency of communication and makes it easier to maintain contact overseas, it decreases the sense of disconnection of an expat and helps to adapt quicker to the new location.

Taking on an international assignment is often tempting, good for the career and intrinsically interesting for the opportunity to spend time in a different culture, yet for those who have a family it provokes many troubles. They need to consider the impact on taking their children out of school, how their spouse’s career will be affected and what will happen to their house and so on. The young adults, in general, have fewer anchors. They usually don’t have children, many are single, most don’t have a mortgage because they can’t afford to buy a house. The lack of anchoring factors means that they are much more likely to take off for an international assignment and the process of moving is much cheaper and easier for them.

The lack of family ties is, of course, a great advantage to global mobility and obviously young people statistically are more likely to be unmarried and childless.

But besides this, there are also other social factors that affect millennials as a generation (and not an age group), such as seeing the travel as a part of their identity, the confidence of staying connected with people due to the social media even on distance, the decreased likelihood of owning a home and the fleeting nature of modern commodities. In many countries, home ownership is financially beyond many millennials and renters are easier to relocate than homeowners.

Millennials are more flexible. People from the millennial generation are not only flexible in their lifestyles – they are flexible in mindset too. Millennials are up to date with the latest remote working practices. While older generations can be baffled by the sophistication of handling it millennials feel absolutely confident about cloud technologies and contemporary remote working practices.

11

66% (48%)

of young adults aged 18-34 in Italy (EU) live with their parents (2016 data)

9 of 100

Italians under 35 own the house they live in (2017 data)

74%

of the US adults from 25-35 y/o live in a rental property (2016 data)

1/3

of the US young adults lives with roommates (2014 data)

42.5%

of the global workforce expected to be mobile by 2020

1/3

of the employees do most of their work somewhere other than employer’s location

77%

of millennials say flexible work hours would make them more productive

89%

of millennials regularly check their working email after work hours

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#work #alwaysconnected

Millennials are more highly educated when ranked with other generations at comparable ages. By 2020 they are forecast to make up 35 per cent of the global workforce. Millennials are significantly less likely to be working full time (41%) than Gen Xers (65%) or Boomers (54%), reflecting in part the very different life circumstances of the contemporary youth. They are more likely to have a part time or freelance job and to be in a constant search for new career opportunities.

millennials often struggle with taking extended time away from the office. Many of them tend to believe that no one else at the company can do their work while they are away, or they want to show complete dedication to their job, don’t want to be seen as replaceable or feel guilty for using time off. As a result, millennials go for the philosophy of “planned spontaneity”, balancing the workplace routine expectations and using any travel opportunities whenever they arise.

Millennials prefer work-life integration instead of work-life balance. This infers that family and personal pursuits would not be sacrificed for the sake of career growth. As a highly social generation, millennials have a deep sense of community and an always-connected lifestyle that has resulted in their work-life integration preference. They tend to measure productivity by work completed, not by time spent on a task - especially not time spent in the office. Millennials simply don’t feel they need to be in the office, or at their desk, to get a job done - especially since the evolution of technology has made portability very possible.

Millennials place a higher value on experiences than products. They are not interested in packaged trips that were common to the older generations’ vacations.

When planning their trips millennials are largely motivated by the desire for acquiring immersive adventures, local insights and memories worth sharing with their networks.

And these beliefs have begun to create a paradigm shift in the design and implementation of the modern workplace and contributed to the global mobility.

Companies feel these changes and tend to move away from traditional longterm engagements to shorter projects and distance work assignments. Flexible accommodation and care are steadily evolving along with this trend.

#travel #alwaysconnected Another extremely aspect of millennial life is travelling. For them it is not just a way to get from one location to anothere, travelling is a part of their identity.

They travel more both leisure and business compared to generation X and baby boomers and are more likely than any other generation to take vacations for travelling, but the the traditional weeklong, plannedout-to-the-very-last-detail trip in the summer months or at the major holidays is no longer the top vacation for millennial travelers. They are opting for weekend trips and any other short travel occurrences, since they are simply easier for the lifestyle of today’s working millennial who faces excessive pressure in the workplace as a result of the modern employee mindset shift from work/life balance to work/life integration. In fact, weekend trips make up almost half of all millennial vacations.

In USA, for example, 56 percent of adults receive paid vacation days, but 41 percent of those respondents leave days on the table. The unfortunate reality is that 16

* Alamo Family Vacation Survey 2016

Millennials have grown up with internet and smartphones in their pockets. For them, digital connectivity is almost as vital as any other basic human need, such as food or shelter. Travel-hacking millennials are making use of travel apps and online travel agents more than any other generation and largely favor the sharing economy over traditional hotels and transportation, suggesting that they value the authentic lodging experience over a manufactured tourist experience and prefer to spend their budget on things more meaningful than taxis and hotels.

That is why one of the strongest reasons of their wide use of Airbnb platform, besides of course it’s being affordable, is the desire for connection to the local “community”. Millennials often want see and experience more of the area where they live in, seeing the locals in their daily routines, local shops, transportation etc.) Most of millennials say they’re getting more social while traveling—much of this taking place online or through mobile.

The global mobility has increased the importance of cultural and linguistic collaboration and consideration. The need to modernise attitudes with regard to religious, gender, lifestyle and racial equality is growing.

17

URBAN DOMESTICITY

feeling home anywhere

The way millennials live the cities differs from the past behaviors: they are extremely mobile, and so is their work. The constant Internet connectivity and the ability to multi-task are critical for Millennials, especially when commuting. Millennials are used to anytime, anywhere content access, and they appreciate the opportunity to keep working instead of waiting around while traveling. Many of Millennials instead of driving a car are happy with biking or walking, and see public transit as a way to meet people, connect, and have extra time to do work while commuting.

The tendency to be always connected, to be in constant move and hurry, fed with the technology, has changed a lot the use of the spaces in the cities and also in people’s houses.

Many domestic and other functions, that previously had spaces specifically designed for them migrated in the urban realm. The boundary between on-stage and backstage life got in a way blurred. Thus if previously working was done in the workplace, now a lot of work can be done remotely from anywhere: public gardens, transportation vehicles, waiting areas in airports and stations, not to talk about the cafes and coffee shops which became some kind of social hubs for the young: places to go for a business lunch, teamwork meeting, studying, for a thematic meetup or just not to have to stay alone at home while working - being used to the social networks and being somehow constantly on-stage online, the youngs feel comfortable being constantly on-stage in public, they feel, in general, quite comfortable in the cities among others, and are known to need society around them, to see and to be seen not necessarily entering in direct contact with the others.

From the other side, the domestic spaces are experiencing some change. One’s own house, that before was considered a no place for strangers now can be listed on Airbnb and rented out to a complete stranger. The kitchen may lose its importance for many millennials, since they don’t have time to cook at home, or simply prefer dining out and getting food delivered. The rooms that before were used for sleeping or for socializing may become also one’s workstations, and so on...

According to surveys, 63% of global millennials tell they feel free most at home not in their current private residency. Instead they mostly mention some other, public spaces in the cities they live in.

* Survey by New York based design duo Anton&Irene in collaboration with Space 10

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1.2 BILLION PEOPLE MORE

by 2030

The the world’s population is predicted to increase to 8.5 billion by 2030. It’s 1.2 billion more people on the planet just in 12 years from today. This growth is unbalanced and happens mostly in the countries with emerging economy. In the countries with advanced economies both the birth and death rates are low, which results in aging of the population. This dynamics are already visible today:

9/10 millennials live in emerging economies.

Number of millennials in the country*

> 25 mln 10-24 mln 5-9 mln 1-4 mln < 1 mln

Almost 60% are concentrated in Asia. The Chinese millennials alone outnumber the Iran has the highest proportion of entire population of the US. The highest millennials: 1/3 of its population proportion of millennials has Iran: more than 1/3 of the population; in China, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s 1/4.

385 mln millennials in India While millennials outnumber both Boomers and Gen Xers in the US, this is not the Chinese millennials outnumber case in many other advanced economies: in the whole USA populaton Japan they comprise 17.2% of the population, 17.8 % in Spain. Italy, ith just 16.9%, Italy has the smallest share of millennials of any major economy: has the smallest share of millennials of any major economy.

16.9% 58% of millennials lives in Asia

19

* UN World Population Prospects 2015

This uneven distribution of the young people in their best working age, multiplied with the new possibilities to move and to seek for better opportunities elsewhere has already provoked a big international migrational wave and, considering the millennial way of live and set of priorities, it will continue to grow incrementally.

It is interesting to reflect on the current world population data by regions. Europe and Northern America have the lowest fertility rates as well as the highest median age of the population (In Northern America it is 38 years, in Europe it’s even more dramatic: 42). The gap between the rest of the world is quite impressive. As regards international migrants, Europe and Northern America are experiencing migrant net in-flow, while from the rest of the regions people rather flow out.

And when millennials move, they move to cities. They prefer active, vibrant cities full of life, energy and opportunities where they can live, work and play all in one space. It is predicted, that 70% of the world’s population will be living in cities by 2030. This mass migration to the cities brings a twofold problem. On the backstage of it, the rural regions lose their population and get obsolete, and of course, the more it continues, the less attractive they become for the young. For example, in China from 1990 to 2010, more than 250mln people moved from the countryside to the cities: by their early 20s Chinese millennials are now nearly three times more likely to live in cities than their counterparts from 30 years ago.

On the other side this leads to densification and growth of the existing cities. In the countries with emerging economies it gives ground for construction of new cities from scratch. It is forecasted, that the 40% of the areas that will be urban in 2030 are cities that haven’t even been built yet. 95% of that growth will be in emerging economies like India and China so that means cities the size of New York have to be built every six months for the next 13 years to house the increasing population (In fact, China has already started the construction of Xiong’an - a city three times bigger than NY). This solution doesn’t always work well (actually, it almost never works) - instead of dwelling in the new ghost cities, people still prefer to dwell in already densely inhabited cities, even by the cost of unaffordable housing, high competition, long commuting hours and limited spaces available.

The space and the resources in our cities and our planet are limited, and in order to house 1.2 billion more people everyone will have to share more things than ever before. The new and the old residents of the cties will have to deal with the rapid changes in their cities, develop new behavior patterns and social rules and to adapt to the new proxomities.

20

OF FUTURE AND ITS MOBILITY International Migrants Worldwide

95% of urban growth ASIA CARRIBEAN

LATIN AMERICA

by 2030 70 % of people will live in cities

World Population by region (2018)*

AFRICA cities the size of New York have to be built every six months for the next 13 years to house the increasing population

Population Region 1. Asia 2. Africa 3. Europe 4. Latin America and the Carribbean 5. Northern America 6. Oceania

21

* Data by Worldometers

(2013) 4.545.133.094 1.287.920.518 742.648.010 652.012.001 363.644.490 41.262.212

Urban Population Growth

In the last 2 decades the number of international migrants grew by 85mln Asia and Europe have the largest immigrant population

total

258 mln

international migrants 58mln 78mln

25mln

refuges

10 %

(25.9 mln)

80mln

10mln 8mln

median age:

In Europe, instead of growing by 2%, the population would have fallen by 1% in the absence of a net inflow of migrants.

39 *gets younger with every year

Land Area (km2) 31.033.131 29.648.481 22.134.900 20.139.373 18.651.660 8.488.460

Density

106mln of total 258mln int.migrants were born in Asia.

61mln of total int. migrants were born in Europe.

Fertility

Median

(p/km2)

Migrants (net)

rate

age

Urban Pop. (%)

146 43 34 32 20 5

-1.096.905 -855.581 810.747 -368.531 1.128.727 181.999

2.2 4.7 1.6 2.1 1.9 2.4

30 19 42 29 38 33

49.6% 40.6% 74.3% 80.2% 83.5% 70.3%

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CHAPTER 2

How Millennials grew up with Technology

* and where it leads them

“We don’t notice things change. We know that things change, we’ve been told since childhood that things change, we’ve witnessed things change ourselves many a time, and yet we’re still utterly incapable of noticing the moment that change comes--or we search for change in all the wrong places.”

Arkady and Boris Strugatsky

additive manufacturing sume. *see also “sharing economy” *read R.Botsman&R.Rogers “All What’s advances in 3D printing and other enabling technologies mean that product components can Mine is Yours” be made lighter and for less cost.

Couchsurfing Airbnb a hospitality and social networking service launched in 2004, accessible via a website a global community of hosts and travelers. and mobile app. Members can use the Founded in 2008 by Brian Chesky, Joe Gebbia and Nathan Blecharczyk and headquartered in service to arrange homestays, offer lodging and hospitality, and join events. A part of San Francisco it operates an online hospitality service offering a variety of short-term lodging gift economy rentals and hosted music and tourism events crowd-based capitalism (experiences). The pioneer of the sharing a new model of capitalism, where large, economy as we know it today disconnected groups of people pool their augmented reality assets, capital or labor on a shared platform, virtually augmenting what we can see with our for the consumers to find and utilize these own eyes with data and hidden systems can be resources, thus bypassing the traditional company-consumer interraction immensely powerful when it comes to process *read A. Sundarrarjan “Crowd-Based Capiand product improvement. talism, Digital Automation, and the Future autonomous systems of Work” robotics and artificial intelligence have evolved crowd-funding to a point where systems can operate to high the practice of funding a project or venstandards on various tasks without constant ture by raising small amounts of money human intervention. from a large number of people, typically big data online. A form of crowdsourcing businesses can create huge volumes of data without realising it and this data can be a source crowd-sourcing of untapped value for business improvement and a sourcing model in which individuals or organizations obtain goods and services growth such as ideas and finances, from a large, BlaBlaCar relatively open and often rapidly-evolving an online marketplace for carpooling, which group of internet users; it divides work connects drivers with empty seats and people between participants to achieve a cumulatravelling the same way. Founded in 2006 tive result. c2c consumer-to-consumer

cyber security connected systems require optimised and current security so that your assets and information are safe from intrusion

cloud computing IT services are increasingly being provided by the ‘cloud’ to generate cost and space savings as well Ebay as to offer innovative use models. online marketplace for buyers and sellcollaborative consumption an economic model based on sharing, swapping, trading, or renting products and services, enabling access over ownership. It is reinventing not just what we consume but how we con-

ers, one of the pioneers of p2p ecomomy launched in 2005. It’s trust based reputation system gave an important input into the development of the sharing economy platforms as Airbnb and others.

generation rent a name to call millennials due to their preference to access goods instead of owning them gift economy a mode of exchange where valuables are not traded or sold, but rather given without an explicit agreement for immediate or future rewards. gig-economy *see “on-demand economy” idle capacity goods that by nature provide owners with excess capacity, providing the consumer with an opportunity to lend out or rent out their goods to other consumers industry 4.0 the increasing convergence of digital, physical and biological assets internet of things IoT is the ever-growing infrastructure of internetconnected devices which can transfer data and commands between points Kickstarter an American public-benefit corporation based in Brooklyn, New York, that maintains a global crowdfunding platform focused on creativity and merchandising. The company’s stated mission is to “help bring creative projects to life” on-demand economy *not to confuse with sharing economy is about p2p service delivery instead of p2p good sharing

p2p, peer-to-peer economy *see “sharing economy” product-service economy *not to confuse with sh.ec. renting goods from a company rather than from another consumer. The service provided by the company consists of giving the consumer access to a product while the company retains ownership of it

effective to trial something in the virtual world than to make a physical prototype for each variable being tested

second hand economy *not to confuse with sh.ec. consumers selling goods to each other (granting to others permanent access, rather than temporary access to their goods)

Taskrabbit an online and mobile marketplace that matches freelance labor with local demand, allowing consumers to find immediate help with everyday tasks, including cleaning, moving, delivery and handyman work

sharable goods goods that by nature provide owners with excess capacity, providing the consumer with an opportunity to lend out or rent out their goods to other consumers sharing economy (crowd-based economy, p2p economy, collaborative consumption) consumers granting each other temporary access to underutilized physical and human assets (“idle capacity”) for money, using web platforms as a means of matching the sides interpretation by EU Parliament: “the use of digital platforms or portals to reduce the scale for viable hiring transactions or viable participation in consumer hiring markets (i.e. ‘sharing’ in the sense of hiring an asset) and thereby reduce the extent to which assets are under-utilized.” simulation it can often be more cost-

systems intergation a business can have many different pieces of hardware of software which need to be utilised in unison so that maximum value can be derived

trust based system a system of two-sided feedback and rating between the user and provider. Main making the interraction between strangers possible and transparent Uber a technology platform that uses a smartphone application to connect riders with drivers, founded in 2009 and now operating in more than 300 cities

DIGITAL NATIVES NOMADS After the WWII and also ironically thanks to it, the humanity did an incredible jump in science and technologies in every field. In the relatively peaceful period after the war those inventions continued to be developed for peaceful goals. The end of the 20th century and the beginnng of the 21st were significant for the passage from analogue to digital technologies. That period is concidered as the third industrial revolution. And it coincides with the birth of the first millennials.

Maybe that is the reason most millennials mention the technology use as something that constitutes the unique and distinctive identity of their generation.

One of the technology features that today is integrated to almost all of our digital gadgets and apps: the GPS system was introduced already in 1983. Internet became available to wide public in 198990. Today the world without it is no more thinkable: everything we know and are used to works with it. From that time period on the digital literacy across the globe rapidly rises and all of the technology tends to become more and more weightless. Post correspondence and fax get largely replaced by emails (email goes viral on 1993), music, films, books - everything goes digital. Our assets are getting less and less physical.

Browser is introduced on 1992 and already two years later the one of todayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s technology giants is born: the Amazon. Commerce goes online. 1995, Ebay and Craigslist follow Amazon. This is the first wave of digital platforms: the ultimate goal is to bring everything online.

The most important feature that gets introduced at this period is the trust based system of reviews. It will later be one of the mechanisms adopted by the third wave of internet platforms together with the online payments systems (those will be introduced in 2002 starting with Paypal).

Year 1999. Google was introduced a year ago from it. The new breakthrough is the wireless internet. Together with the services offered by Google, Wifi lets us become untethered, work remotely and be always connected. From this moment on the change in the social behavior patterns and in the cityscape becomes evident.

The term digital nomad, first introduced in 1997 in a book* by Tsugio Makimoto and David Manners becomes even more relevant. Many millennials become some sort of contemporary nomads who use the technology to earn a living and live in a location-independent way. Wifi empowers us to work remotely from foreign countries,

29

* Makimoto, Tsugio, and David Manners. Digital nomad. Wiley, 1997.

coffee shops, public libraries, co-working spaces, even vehicles and basically from everywhere.

Next year Wikipedia is founded. This is the start of the second wave of internet platforms: crowdsourcing and social network websites are launched one after the other: LinkedIn and Skype in 2003, Facebook and Youtube in the next two years. The goal of this wave of platforms is to connect everything.

The first iphone is presented in 2007 and gives birth to the whole smartphone era. Now everything one may need is contained in a device that fits into a pocket. We get even more connected and location-independent. The old technology of GPS gets revamped into Google Maps and integrated in smartphone apps and all of the existing internet platforms. Navigating, travelling, matching users based on their location becomes even more easy.

And then...

f3 Lehman Brothers -investment bank in the US, the bancrupcy of which sent the whole market in crisis. On the photo: Lehman Brothers Auction at Christies, London, August 2010 (photograph by Linda Nylind/Guardian Newspapers)

30

CAPITALISM_REBOOT

f4

”The power of capitalist realism derives in part from the way that capitalism subsumes and consumes all of previous history: one effect of its ‘system of equivalence’ which can assign all cultural objects, whether they are religious iconography, pornography, or Das Kapital, a monetary value...In the conversion of practices and rituals into merely aesthetic objects, the beliefs of previous cultures are objectively ironized, transformed into artifacts” 31

Mark Fischer “Capitalism Realism”

A lot of contemporary social behavior patterns that millennials inherited like “flexibility”, “nomadism” and “spontaneity” are exactly the results of the capitalist system. Capitalism has also resulted that work and life became inseparable and in order to succeed one has to develop a capacity to respond to unforeseen events, and to live in conditions of total instability, always to move on instead of settling down, where nothing is long-term and short periods of work are followed by periods of unemployment. Where formerly one could have a single set of skills and expect to progress upwards through a rigid organizational hierarchy, now one is required to periodically re-skill, as the organization of work is getting decentralized and lateral networks with focus on flexibility are replacing pyramidal hierarchies*.

With all the advancements and opportunities, that it brought, capitalism has also resulted in huge competitiveness and unequality.

People who do remote work and have little real life contacts with their employees and colleagues tend to be marginalized and to miss out on the informal contacts.

Besides, in capitalist system everything in society is seen as a business and the “transactions” are replacing many of basic “relationships” in people’s dealings with one another**.

Up untill September 2008 that was the state of capitalism and for most people in Europe and North America, capitalist system had no alternative and seamlessly occupied the horizons of the thinkable**.

But together with crisis something cracked in the capitalist system. The new mood among the progressive youth is the anti-consumerism and environmental consciousness. The economic conditions of the youth got worse, the environmental situations gets notably worse. And so the millennial generation lost the trust in the capitalist system with all of its vertically organized institutions, organizations and also governments. A new economical model was born out of capitalism’s internal contradictions: the sharing economy - or collaborative, peer to peer economy.

In sharing economy markets rather than getting something from an institution, from a government or from a traditional company, a lot of economic activity is shifting to getting the same goods and services from other individuals mediated by some kind of peer-to-peer community platform. It is not a coincidence those platforms started to boom in 2012 after the wave of the Occupy Movement. The global society led by millennials lost the trust in vertically governed institutions and started to move towards collaboration, networking and lateral systems.

* Sennett, Richard. The culture of the new capitalism. Yale University Press, 2007 ** Fisher, Mark. Capitalist realism: Is there no alternative?. John Hunt Publishing, 2009 f4 photograph by the author, Milano, via S.Dionigi

32

ANTI-CONSUMERIST MOOD

access over ownership

The new economic realities together with the technological advancement brought an important shift in the society: millennials came to understanding that accummulating assets, possessing many things is no more an indicator of wealth or status. Millennials no longer value milestones like owning a house, a vehicle or other hard assets, opting instead for new types of services that provide access (short-leases, rentals, memberships) to products and experiences without the burden of outright ownership. Also the businesses already took the way toward the transition from ownership to access. They are selling off their real estate, shrinking their inventories, leasing their equipment, and outsourcing their activities: almost everything needed to run the physical business itself is borrowed.

The most valuable things to possess are no more tangible.

Owning things, lots of things, is considered outdated, it is an obstacle to flexibility and mobility, moreover it implies maintenance costs and other disadvantages. Now that we can have music, films, storage stored on the servers, we don’t need physical assets to get the experiences we want. As our possessions “dematerialize” into the intangible, our preconceptions of ownership are changing. Another reason for this shift of course the speed of technological innovation and upgrades, and ever narrowing product life cycles, everything becomes almost immediately outdated, so own things nowadays makes less and less sense.

Vehicle ownership rates, for example, are declining rapidly. Those of the millenials who do own cars put a premium on being green, in line with their passion for environmental causes. The ones who don’t own a car, consider the cost, reliability, convenience, and health/exercise benefits of the transportation option, but eco impact is also taken into account. Thus many of them are opting for walking, biking or public transit. From environmental considerations millennials are also becoming increasingly aware of and interested in the idea of share-based transportation services (bike sharing, car sharing).

Those living in a “hot spot’ neighborhood are distinguished from those who do not in some of the following ways: They are less likely to personally own a car and drive one regularly, they frequently use car-sharing services, are more likely to use a bus and subway a few times a week. As reason for not owning a car they are likely to mention the need to save money, avoid traffic, not wanting the burden of a car, and caring about the environment as motivations behind their transportation choices/routines.

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THE THIRD WAVE OF DIGITAL PLATFORMS This trend has enormous implications for the society. For the whole of Modern Age, property and markets have been synonymous. Indeed, the capitalist economy is founded on the very idea of exchanging property in markets. Now the foundation of modern life is beginning to disintegrate, the markets make way for networks and the exchange of property between sellers and buyers - the most important feature of the modern market system - gives way to short-term access between providers and users operating in a network relationship.

As an outcome of the financial crisis, and as the ownership loses its value, a new economy model: market economy system is actually giving birth now to a new economic system: the sharing economy and the collaborative commons.

And this is the first new economic system to emerge after capitalism and socialism* in early 19th century, so it’s a quite remarkable moment in history.

Sharing economy is a natural fruit of capitalism, which has successfully

installed a ‘business ontology’ in which it is simply obvious that everything in society should be run as a business and the “transactions” have replaced many of basic “relationships” in people’s dealings with one another. Sharing economy took this idea. Now acts like hosting someone in your own house, giving someone a passage, sharing a meal with someone or showing someone around in the city and many other things became actions that can be monetized. But the tricky part here is that in this process the third party role which was the company providing assets or services, now is made to a minimum. The sharing economy platforms help to match users and due to their integrated trust based systems allow them to interract with each other directly with almost zero marginal cost. And the interaction happens in the non-virtual world.

This is the big difference of the

third wave of digital platforms: the ultimate goal is going back to the real life. *Rifkin J. The zero marginal cost society: The internet of things, the collaborative commons, and the eclipse of capitalism. – St. Martin’s Press, 2014.

34

“The world’s largest hospitality brand owns not a single room or hotel. The world’s largest car service owns not a single vehicle”.

35

US Companies Crowd Report 2016

CHAPTER 3 Of the manner the things are shared, swapped, traded and rented in the Sharing Economy

f5

36

SHARING ECONOMY As a phenomenon the sharing economy started after the Financial Crisis. The collapse of 2008 did not only bring a need for new career paths and perspectives, but a new need for opportunities where supply and demand could be matched thus the individuals could exploit better the potential capacity of the assets.

Coincidence or not, the main player of the sector, Airbnb has been on the market since 2008, at that time as a San Francisco based startup that matched people in need for affroable accommodation and people having vacant space in their homes.

The next few years saw the establishment of such important companies nowadays as Uber, Spotify, Kickstarter and WeWork. Since 2012 the sharing economy platforms started to boom with millions of revenue all over the globe.

The base of the sharing economy platforms is the trust based reputation system.

It’s roots go back to the first e-commerce models of 1990s. The pioneer company with the first platform of consumer-to-consumer interaction was eBay (already in 1995). The firm was in a leading position within the scope of p2p e-commerce activities from the beginning and currently still holds a top position. They have provided a standard to follow for platforms like Airbnb and Uber. The mechanism of eBay is simple: the platform provides intermediary matching between demand and supply actors, who in their turn have to provide feedback regarding their purchases. The feedback allows the later customers with their choice and endures the trust. This mechanism was transferred to the sharing economy platforms and developed as trust based reputation system.

There are many factors that contributed to the success of the sharing economy.

The main four drivers* are the technological innovation, which brougt the transactions to minimal marginal costs, the value shift from ownership to access, economic realities such as the big financial crisis and its consequences: the economical uncertainty, high unemployment rates, etc.; and last but not least the growing environmental pressure which brought a lot of critisism towards the consumerism and unefficient use of goods.

Future prospects suggest that impact of sharing will change the economic landscape at its core, the way we live, work and play in the cities also will differ from what we were used to, and the process already started. The

sharing economy is disrupting the traditional industries and giving rise to the crowd-based capitalism.

37

* Botsman, Rachel, and Rogers, Roo. “What’s mine is yours: how collaborative consumption is changing the way we live.”

1

technological innovation peer to peer social networking innovative mobile technologies peer to peer payment systems reduced transaction costs

2

values shift desire for community access over ownership untethered way of living blurred live-work boundaries

3

economic realities

4

environmental pressures increasing population density need for more resources dissatisfaction with consumerism efficient use of assets

monetize excess of idling capacity increase financial flexibility financial uncertainty influx of VC funding

As millennialsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the generation most comfortable with sharing as a means to save moneyâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;grow older, the collaborative economy is bound to grow bigger. The main categories for sharing are the travel, car service, finance, staffing, and music and video streaming. These industries currently account for $15 billion annual revenue but that number is predicted to grow to $335 billion by 2025*. sharing economy sector 2015

traditional rental sector

15 bln

240 bln

335 bln

335 bln

peer to peer lending and crowdfunding online staffing peer to peer accommodation car sharing music and video streaming

* Pew Research Center f5 anti-consumerism graffiti, photograph found somewhere on the web

2025

equipment rental B&B and hostels book rental car rental DVD rental

38

stakeholders

. providers of services, space or resources . consumers of these services . traditional service providers . nonprofits, NGO-s focusing on sustainability

}

. the startups . the investors . sharing advocates and lobbysts

} } }

. incumbent corporations . respective lobbyists . governments, supporting innovation (as well as protecting their vested interests) . press and media . thought leaders

the new occasional roles of the consumer 39

the people

the technologists

the established

the influencers

The principle of sharing economy is simple: consumers grant each other temporary access to under-utilized physical assets, possibly for money, using digital platforms find each other*. Thus the consumer gets better prices, flexible selections, access to big choice of options, while also adressing some crucial social and environmental aspects (like reutilization and redistribution of goods, efficient use of assets, instead of the hyperconsumption, which characterised all the last century).

Typical goods that are currently being shared are cars and homes. These are “shareable goods” - goods that by nature provide owners with excess capacity, providing the consumer with an opportunity to rent out their goods to other consumers. Excess capacity is present when the owner does not consume the product all the time. A majority of consumer goods have an excess capacity, including houses, cars, boats, houses, clothing, books, toys, appliances, tools, furniture, computers, etc.

In this process the digital platforms enable a more precise, realtime measurement of excess capacity and dynamically connect that capacity with those who need it.

Thus Airbnb matches spare rooms and apartments with travelers in need of lodging, Zipcar matches spare cars with local demand and so on.

In the last decade the technology-based sharing platforms emerged into a wide range of service industries: not only accommodation (Airbnb, SwapYourHome), transportation (Uber, Lyft, Blablacar, RelayRides, Getaround), but also labor, human capital and intellectual property (Taskrabbit, Upwork, Freelancer). Further things to share are tools, toys, clothes (Girlmeetsdress, Fashionhire), meals (Grubclub, Mealsharing, Tablecrowd and Vizeats), even wi-fi (Fon), pretty much anything.

Of course, sharing/renting out goods is nothing new, it existed long before the Internet. But if before people shared with their families, friends and the known trusted social contacts, now users interract with strangers, because the Internet has enormously decreased transaction costs between unknown others.

Transaction costs are all the costs and trouble that occur in an economic transaction (especially the costs related to search). The Internet platforms have brought the transaction costs to minimum. Now it is much easier to locate goods and services, and transactions are regularized via standard contracts and online payment systems. In addition, most sharing-economy platforms provide information on the past behaviour and therefore trustworthiness of users is “predictable” This further lowers transaction costs and lowers risk.

* Sundararajan A. The sharing economy: The end of employment and the rise of crowd-based capitalism.

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WHAT IS SHAREABLE? pretty much anything #spaces accommodation The most prominent sharing category is the apartment/house sharing, since the space is a valuable asset and is very much likely to periodically stay unused. Platforms as Airbnb, VRBO, LoveHomeSwap and Couchsurfing connect homeowners with people who need a place to stay when they’re travelling. Hosts set the nightly price and specify available dates, typically when they’re not using the property, and visitors can find accommodations in their destination and choose a place that fits their desired neighborhood, amenity needs, and budget. The most popular is the Airbnb, VRBO works on same principles. LoveHomeSwap is different, since it offers property exchange for holidays and Couchsurfing connects travelers with a global network of people willing to share life in profound and meaningful ways, making travel a truly social experience. Hosts open their homes to travelers for no charge, promoting cultural exchange and mutual respect. workspace Coworking is another industry born from the sharing concept. It lets to share the cost of office rent, utilities, storage, mail, and office supplies with other professionals. It’s particularly useful for freelancers, sole proprietors, and very small businesses that don’t have huge inventories requiring lots of storage space.

These facilities, stocked with coffee and connected to the outside world with phone lines and WiFi connections, typically feature large space with office suites, conference rooms, and common areas. The users pay a weekly or monthly fee based on their space requirements and the amount of time they spend at the office. Depending on the coworking hub’s policies, one may also need to pay to for conference room time, storage lockers, P.O. boxes, and other perks. But these costs are likely to be significantly lower than what one has to pay for even a small office space, especially in the bustling districts where coworking hubs are usually found. parking lots JustPark is a technology platform that matches drivers with available parking spaces through its website and mobile app. By providing access to 200,000 underused spaces, JustPark provides cheaper, more convenient parking to more than 1 million drivers, for now only across the United Kingdom. Drivers can find, reserve and pay for parking wherever and whenever they need it.

41

land There are also several platforms to monetize the unused land. Hipcamp and Landshare are online travel services designed to connect land-owners with vacant space with people who want a place for their tiny homes on wheels, for camping, or for people passionate about gardening and farming. boats Boatsetter is a boat rental community which allows the owners of boats to list their assets and travellers who to rent a boat (also a boat with captain), for short or longer periods. There are currently 4,000 boats listed on the platform in over 2,500 locations in North America, Europe, Asia and Australia. #transportation carsharing & ridesharing Ridesharing and carsharing offer some of the benefits of car ownership, such as easy access to a city without having to rely on public transit, with few of the drawbacks, such as paying for gas, insurance, and maintenance. The sharing economy dramatically undercuts the taxi and car rental business mode and has forced taxi and rental to adopt technological solutions, such as smartphone apps, and may result in lower prices over time.

With apps like Uber, Didi (in Asia), one can hail a ride from drivers in their personal vehicles. Lyft is a ridesharing network that matches drivers with passengers who request rides through Lyftâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s smartphone app. Passengers pay automatically through the app. Bla bla car works on the same principle, but on the intercity level. Today in Europe this app has resulted to an infrastructure parallel to the train and bus system. With services like Car2Go and Zipcar it is possible commandeer a shared vehicle, owned by a for-profit or nonprofit organization, and pay for the time driving it. Same with Turo and Getaround: one can rent privately owned cars by the hour or day when their owners donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t need them. Depending on the location, rides with Uber, Lyft, and other ridesharing companies can cost half the amount of an identical taxi trip. Since carsharing companies like Car2Go and Zipcar mostly charge for the time (minutes or hours) and distance one drives, theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re much cheaper than rental car companies, which typically charge by the day.

42

#money peer-to-peer lending Peer-to-peer lending platforms allow individuals to lend and borrow money without going through a traditional bank. Based on the borrower’s credit history, the interest rate is typically set by the platform, which acts as the intermediary between the two parties. Basically, technology makes it easier and safer for individuals who have money to find people who need money. Since the platforms themselves don’t have to worry about absorbing losses from failed loans (the individual who lends the money bears the risk), they can be much leaner than traditional banks. Over time, this could compel banks to be more accommodating. crowdfunding Crowdfunding platforms as Kickstarter and Indiegogo connect people who need money with those willing to provide it. Entrepreneurs, artists, and others present startup or project ideas to a community of potential funders, and then set a target fundraising amount and date. Unlimited number of individuals can contribute to a single campaign and the recipients aren’t always expected to repay the funds.

Some crowdfunding campaigns function like grants, in other case the recipients offer rewards, such as merchandise; others are more like capital raising rounds, where startups or small businesses solicit investments in exchange for equity in the company. For creative types, using a crowdfunding platform is less timeconsuming and easier than through government or nonprofit arts organizations.

And for those who contribute funds, the rewards can range from the emotional satisfaction of supporting something they care about, to an equity stake in a potentially successful venture. #time skills&services Many sharing economy platforms such as Taskrabbit, Zaarly, Skillshare are allowing people who don’t have time or necessary skill to find ones who have both. Thus one can find someone to asseble his furniture, hang pictures, do some other household work or even just wait in line for him. By creating more liquid marketplaces for knowledge and and talent, this facet of the sharing economy enables busy people to delegate work on demand – and creates economic opportunities for those willing to do it.

43

#things goods Reselling and trading platforms let one buy, sell and swap new and used goods without face-to-face interaction. Other sharing economy platforms focus on specific niches. For instance, Kidizen is an online marketplace for used childrensâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; toys and clothing. As popular marketplaces for used goods, eBay, Craigslist, and Kidizen let sellers extract value from things that might otherwise collect dust and buyers obtain needed items at a lower cost. As lower-cost, human-scale alternatives to traditional retail and rental networks, these options turn normally impersonal, potentially expensive transactions into rewarding experiences one can feel good about. And the arrangement is more sustainable than buying a new item and throwing it away when you no longer have use for it. Many platforms work with niche sectors, for instace Cohealo helps health systems share medical equipment across facilities so they can optimize spend, accelerate cash flow, and improve access to care. #pretty_much_anything pre-owned goods loaner products custom products professional services personal services transport.services loaner vehicles office space place to stay money lending crowdfunding 44

SOCIAL BENEFITS From the user’s point of view the participation in the sharing economy makes sense because of the flexibility, convenience, low barriers to entry and minimal regulations. Being accustomed to the constant Being in the virtual reality, people place crucial trust in the platforms that hold on to their personal information and supply the information flow of other users for fair decision making. Within the same umbrella are the YouTube and Facebook. These platforms helped to create the social norms for our society to be ready to trust the online information services to an extent to connect virtual reality with the real life, which is claimed by all the sharing economy platforms as a social benefit and a “common good”, because it allows meeting other people, making friends and getting to know others.

Without exception, technology was one of the main tools in the transformation of sharing economy. However without the enthusiastically participating consumers the platforms would not function.

The advent of Internet platforms makes stranger sharing more secure, thereby extending an existing practice to a larger social scale. On some platforms strangers meet face-to-face after a matching process, and from such face-to-face meetings new social ties are thought to emerge. Furthermore, sharing economy practices do not necessarily lead to stratification, since owners may be expected to differ in socio-demographic background from renters and borrowers. Possibly, with more expensive goods like cars and houses, providers may be richer and older than the renters on average, so one could hypothise that the sharing practices also somehow increase the social mixing.

Probably, the site that has been most successful at creating new social ties is Airbnb.

Many Airbnb hosts tend to claim that the social interaction was central to their motivation and practice on the site. There is a big quantity of hosts who socialize with their guests, eat with them, take them out, and in some cases become friends with them. There is also a small group of hosts who report that they would host even if they had all the money they needed, and a few offer their homes on both Airbnb and Couchsurfing, for which they receive no money.

The socially-oriented hosts are eager to interact with foreign guests who are “comfortably exotic,” i.e., different enough to be interesting, but similar enough to be comfortable.

As regards the motivation of people to participate in the sharing economy services, it depends highly on the type of assets: when it goes about accommodations, 45

user

provider Economic

car sharing

25%

tool sharing

ride sharing

50%

Environmental

50%

50%

motivation

Economic accommodation sharing

25%

25%

meal sharing

accommodation sharing

25%

car sharing

50%

50%

Social Environm.

tool sharing

meal sharing

ride sharing

50%

Social

Reasons to participate in different sectors of the sharing economy

the participation is usually motivated economically or socially. Environmental motivations are important particularly for car and ride-sharing. For meal sharing, which requires high personal interaction component, social motivations play a large stimulating role.

Also participants of other sharing economy platforms, such as Taskrabbit, for example, often say that platforms help them to build new social networks they can rely on, and give the opportunity to meet people they would have never met. They report satisfaction with the relations they developed with the people they do tasks for. In the same manner, many Couchsurfing users tell that participation resulted in new friendships.

Of course when the sharing sites will become a less novel and more normative part of daily life the social ties may become weaker: was more people participate in the platforms for economic reasons, social interaction will decline.The quality of ratings may also contribute to the declining importance of social contacts on sharing platforms. As participants acquire more ratings over time, trust is codified and there is less need for face-to-face interaction. This trend is reinforced by technological and business developments such as â&#x20AC;&#x153;smart locksâ&#x20AC;? where the owner provides digital access to the rentier by a temporary pin code and businesses that provide additional supporting services including check-in and key handover.

It is also possible that sharing platforms may be harmful to social cohesion as reflected in existing social ties. Platforms economize private things in the sense 46

that at any time these stand idle, an opportunity cost arises. While idle capacity was generally available to family and friends for free in the past, some concerns may arise about the viability of non-monetized sharing within networks as people prefer earning money.

One important outcome of a society built on sharing goods and services is the flexibility to make life and work arrangements faster, with less risk or uncertainty, and often on one’s own terms. For example, if one arranges his work from a coworking space, then he is free to leave the space at any moment without breaking a lease or waiting untill the end of the contract. Home-sharing services offer on-demand lodging, with many of the comforts of home, at a reasonable cost at any moment when needed. Crowdfunding lets to raise money for a new idea without jumping through a traditional lender’s hoops.

Likewise, as a ridesharing provider, peer-to-peer lender, Aribnb host or participant in a task marketplace, one has the opportunity to set own work schedule or earn passive income. That may be attractive compared to conventional employment arrangements.

Another positive side of using sharing economy can be the freedom from burdens of possession. Fewer valuable possessions – and fewer worries about them. For instance, if one lives in a city and only needs to drive a few times per month, a car may be unnecessary and not having to deal with car insurance, maintenance issues, and potential thieves could be a big benefit. Likewise, if one rents or shares expensive tools or equipment that are needed for special projects, one can be quiet that his tool shed or garage won’t be an attractive target for thieves.

Collaborative consumption offers economic benefits for everyone involved. For a user renting own car as a ridesharing vehicle, renting out the house when one is not at home, one is getting additional value from an asset that he owns. On the other side of these arrangements, the user may eliminate the cost of car ownership and maintenance, reduce the travel expenses or secure valuable financial support for a new business idea that may not have been fundable otherwise. Other sharing functions, such as coworking spaces and task marketplaces, may be cheaper than their traditional counterparts. In all cases, the sharing economy either saves money or provides income for its participants.

The direct economic effects of the sharing economy are indisputably positive.

A transaction in the sharing economy is beneficial to both parties: thanks to the 47

minimal transaction costs, the providerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s income rises and the user is able to find something affordable.

The full economic effects of the sharing economy are far more complex and yet to be studied. For sure they have as positive as negative impact on other markets.

Some traditional industries may get disrupted, some others may on contrary get some lateral positive effects. For example Airbnb is a partial substitute for the cheaper segments of the hotel market. Same is valid for car rentals market, which now faces increased competition due to the rise of p2p carsharing platforms.

There are also potentially effects on the supply and price of housing: the more widespread becomes housing, the higher get the rents in that neighbourhoods.

Many of assets are taken away from traditional rental markets.

Second, there are externalities as third parties may experience losses as the two parties transact. This is especially a problem with house sharing with neighbours experiencing nuisance and feeling danger from strangers.

Though all of the effects are hard to consider, the peer-to-peer networks will definitely reorder the modern society and economy in the coming years and the more people participate in the sharing economy platforms, the stronger will be network effect and thus the more notable will get its benefits.

Despite its increased prominence and continued growth, the sharing economy wonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t completely displace traditional economic networks anytime soon. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s more likely to force existing industries to become more like the collaborative platforms that challenge them, with potential benefits for everyone involved.

48

+ Cheaper Goods and Services Sharing certain goods, services, and skills on-demand is more efficient, while you don’t have to deal with the costs of ownership and employment. If you only need to use a bandsaw once a year, it’s much cheaper to pay $20 to rent one from a neighbor or tool lending library than to shell out $1,000 or more for one of your own. The same goes for an occasional service, such as an annual housecleaning or a ride. In essence, the sharing economy cuts out the middle man, whether that’s a traditional employer or the company you buy goods and services from.

Extra Income for Providers On the other side of the transaction, an owner can unlock the potential value of an item, such as a vehicle that would otherwise be sitting in the driveway or a talent that wouldn’t be utilized in a day job, by sharing it when it’s not in use. Same way, by renting idle goods, you can earn passive income.

New and Better Opportunities The sharing economy offers access to things that might not be practical to own or obtain. For instance, many people simply can’t afford a car or convince a traditional bank to extend a personal loan. Peer networks make it possible to access such things without asking participants to pay a lot or assume unacceptable amounts of risk.

Stronger Communities Many sharing economy platforms, such as ridesharing apps and Airbnb, have built-in ratings and reviews that help keep providers and consumers honest. Coworking and task marketplaces are built on the idea of interpersonal collaboration and resource-sharing. And some platforms use their influence – and the shared resources of their participants – to help those in need.

For instance, Airbnb has coordinated free accommodations for people affected by natural disasters, and TaskRabbit has experimented with organizing volunteers in crisis situations. These and other trust-building efforts help sharing economy participants see one another as equals, building constructive relationships where none existed previously.

PRO-s & CON-s OF S 49

Privacy/Safety Concerns The sharing economy requires people on both sides of the transaction to forfeit some privacy. For instance, when you rent out your house on Airbnb, you basically invite strangers into your home. While you trust your renters to be respectful and law-abiding, you can’t be 100% sure that they’ll follow through. The same issue applies to ridesharing, selling or renting items in an online marketplace, and using a task platform to source in-person labor, like housecleaning and home repair.

By contrast, the traditional services must be licensed and/or abide by consumerprotection regulations that don’t necessarily apply to sharing economy No or Few Guarantees When you share your resources with others – whether by renting out a house, car, or equipment, or participating in a talent marketplace – you also assume the risk that you won’t get paid or that the items you share will be damaged. There is also no guarantee of a steady income. Plus, renters in your home or riders in your car could cause damage that you have to pay for – either above and beyond a security deposit you require, or in the form of an insurance deductible.

Cooperation With Others Though its community-building power can be a benefit, the sharing economy requires close cooperation between people on each side of a transaction. This may lead to tradeoffs that constrain your independence or self-reliance. For instance, when you use a coworking space, you agree to share resources that, in a standalone office suite, you’d have total control over. When you rent on a house or apartment sharing platform, you occupy a space that contains someone else’s personal property, and may be subject to a homeowners’ association’s rules (or neighbors’ scrutiny).

Market Distortions The sharing economy’s inherently disruptive effects sometimes feel downright punitive. Among the most widely studied are local housing market distortions precipitated by short-term rental platforms in major cities and popular tourist destinations.

SHARING SHARING ECONOMY ECONOMY 50

“Airbnb is the worst idea that ever worked”.

Bryan Chesky, CEO of Airbnb

CHAPTER 4

AIRBNB

for architects and urban planners

Why is Airbnb interesting from an architectsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; or urban plannersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; point of view?

Started in October 2007 from two friends having difficulties to pay their rent and thus renting out three air-mattresses for a Design Conference in San Francisco*, the platform soon grew to the most common way to get an accommodation while travelling worldwide.

After the interesting outcome of their experiment with air-mattresses: they not only had gained enough to cover the rent, but also met interesting people and established new social ties, Bryan Chesky and Joe Gebbia (both industrial designers by profession) had their third founder: Nathan Blecharczyk (a software engineer) joining them and founded the company.

After the big financial crisis striked in 2008, a lot of people faced the growing economical difficulties. Airbnb provided a possibility for home-owners, from one side, to monetize their underutilized rooms and houses, and from other side it gave the people who travel the possibility to choose from various options at a lower cost than a traditional hotel.

In the first couple of years the company was struggling to gain its critical mass of users from both sides, to make it possible the network effect to work: the more people would list their homes, the more travellers it would attract, and on the contrary, the more people would use the website, the more it would gain attractiveness for the home-owners to join. For making the mechanisms work really well, all the three founders started to use their platform to get direct feedback from teh hosts and to experience it as guests. They came up with lots of features which helped people to overcome the trust issues of dealing with strangers, they also introduced the service of the free professional photography for the hostsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; houses.

After several not really successful launches, the company finaly could find some investors and during the 2008-2010 had some time to develop its philosophy of belonging anywhere and the engineering of its platform with its sophisticated internally, but extremely simple and user-friendly payment system and its trustbased mechanisms. Since then both have improved but not changed in their core.

By the end of 2010 Airbnb reached its first important milestone: it passed the 1million bookings on the platform. The number of users of the platform grew exponentially on both sides, mostly because of the word spread by its users: statistically, one who uses the platform for the first time becomes a devoted Airbnb 53

* Gallagher L., Marshall C. L. The Airbnb Story. Penguine Random House, UK, 2017

two friends, three air-mattresses company founded. 2007. October.

2010

1 million bookings on Airbnb network effect starts to work

10 millions

2012

5 millions bookings

2015

145 millions bookings ings

2017

Airbnb has more loggings than the 5 major hotel companies together the Chinese version of the website is successfully launched

2018

Airbnb is present in

6 months later

191 countries from total 195 existing over 400 mln travellers and 2.9mln hosts on Airbnb

every year 14000 new hosts join Airbnb every night there are 2mln stays in an Airbnb listing

user and tells about it to its friends and relatives. People usually use the service for the first time when they travel with someone who is already familiar with how it works, so the initial fear of staying at strangerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s home is overcome. And the same way it works for hosts.

In 2012 the network effect worked with its full potential: by the beginning of the year there were already 5 millions of bookings on Airbnb, in the coming 6 months they doubled: Airbnb reached 10 million bookings. This was already a big success.

In the next three years, in 2015, Airbnb had 145 millions of bookings on his platform. From that time on it lost the sense to count...The growth is not to stop any soon: the only obstacle to the growth is considered not the fear of strangers, not the rejection of the concept of homesharing, but simply the unawareness of it.

And the more time passes the more people join.

Today Airbnb is present in 191 countries (from the 195 officially recognized total).

It has over 400 million of travellers and over 2.9 million hosts on the platform.

Every night over 2 mln people stay in an Airbnb and every month over 14000 new hosts join.

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The main idea behind the Airbnb is the communal profit: doing well by doing good. Besides the economical advantages it brings to the both parties, there is also a strong social benefit of having to deal with real people directly and eliminating the third man which in the traditional hospitality industry is the institution: the hotel or hostel. The hosts, besides gaining some additional income for their spare rooms (Airbnb charges them only 3%, the 97% of what the guest pays goes to the host), could meet new people and have some cultural exchange. The guests could spare some money for the accommodation and use it for something else during their travel, they became the opportunity to choose from diverse options, not only just rooms as is the case of the hotel, but entire apartments, homes, attics, treehouses, castles, practically from any type of dwelling.

This is the first point interesting for us, architects. With its presence in almost every country in the world (except Crimea, Iran, Syria and North Korea), it is an interesting catalogue of people’s houses worldwide and its about the mass housing, not single pieces of architecture that are usually in the focus of the attention.

Another feature of Airbnb is its tendency to promote travelling “as a local”. That is also imprinted in the slogan of the company: “We immagine the world where you can belong anywhere”.

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f6 Airbnb add-campaign

Since the dwellings of city inhabitants can be located anywhere, not necessarily on the main tourist routes, and the districts, where all the hotels are concentrated, the traveller sees the life of the city as it is in its daily routine. This is a big advantage for the city for it becomes guests more evenly distributed and they tend to spend some money in the districts where they live, thus bringing some profit to the local stores, cafes and so on. The hosts are encouraged to share their local knowledge and advice to the guests places out of the touristy routes, where usually the city locals would go. Staying in a home instead of the hotel lets the travellers to stay longer (the average stay on Airbnb is 5 times longer than in a hotel) and it gives them the possibility to feel more comfortable and to live the city more: for example, the traditional hospitality industry focuses on hotel rooms as opposed to entire suites, apartments, or homes. But these often lack amenities that make a longer stay more comfortable, such as a full kitchen. On the homesharing platforms all the amenities are usually included - often at a lower cost than traditional lodging, and thus the travellers have the possibility to live more like at home and as a result they spend some time visiting the local food markets and small shops, and become more intimate knowledge of a city.

From an urban plannersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; point of view it is interesting to evidence how some districts previously not really notable in the city life become to fill with public commercial facilities, because that districts are full of Airbnb listings and thus there is a constant flow of tourists there.

Airbnb provokes also some troubles for the city. One of the accusations is that the traditional hotels and hostels (mainly the mid-income, affordable ones) get disrupted, because people prefer the home-sharing, many former hotels and hostels can get abbandoned. The residential buildings get many strangers coming and going, this may provoke some worries among the permanent residents who are not familiar with the concept of the home-sharing or are against it. There are also many resients who fight against mass-tourism (the case of Venice, Barcelona).

There may be some tensions on the traditional long-term rental market, since the Airbnb short-term rental may seem more profitable for the hosts. A lot of the property is taken away from the long-term rental market thus bringing problems of rental housing shortage.

Some cities fight back, some cities accept Airbnb-friendly policies. In any case the new realities globally suggest, that it is a start of some changes in the image, infrastructure and demographics of the modern cities.

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LEGAL ISSUES

#authorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s observations

Innovation cannot be stopped and should not be stopped.

Sharing economy changes the way the market used to work and requires a transformation of the old-fashion legal structure. At the moment sharing economyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s conduct is a grey area, in another words as it does not fit into the traditional concept of legislation, it seem to be left out. The platforms mostly operate in the self-regulatory area. This mostly worked in their first days, but now brings a lot of accusations from all the sides. While people, even knowing, that they are not exactly on the legal side, continue to use the platforms, because they either prioritize their own profit, either just not think they are doing something bad.

It is without doubt that the common interest for industry and governments would be the establishment of fair and clear rules. In this situation there is a need for regulation that fits the new innovative business model in a way that economic growth is not hold back but consumer protection is more in focus. The interests of the sharing economy customers, and not industries affected, should be kept in the main focus: if Airbnb disrupts the hotel industry, the hotel industry has to develop solutions to keep up with the changing times and moods of the customers.

If Airbnb is used as a platform to be an illegal hotelier - that should be avoided, because it is not in line with the company, neither it is the point of its customers to get a hotel instead of a home. But if Airbnb is helping some host to earn some additional income and improves his living conditions, that has definitely a positive impact on the city. And same regards other sharing ecnomy platforms.

At this moment it seems that cities, even in the same country, instead of joining forces, are trying to act on their own. Even when the sharing economy platform is ready to collaborate, this increases transaction cost and slows down innovation.

If each sharing company has to go through a long process and every city with the legislatures, time and expenses will arise. Furthermore it would defeat the purpose of the companies to establish international standards and equity among its usersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; right overall.

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A mute evidence of the battle the Airbnb and its supporters were leading against the city municipality and the platforms opposers

Previously, when the telecommunications where booming and the regulations where too obsolete to keep up with the technology, many advanced countries introduced the dynamic regulations. This can be a model to adopt also in the case of sharing economy. The aim of such regulation is to keep up with innovation by involving the different players of the market. Dynamic Regulation could be implemented in the sharing economy, as the concept itself is close to the feedback system the economy is built upon. This would mean that industry players would provide feedback regarding the regulations. This method would help first of all to create rules that are more precise to the industry and provides a chance for decision makers to continuously evaluate the regulation and to decide upon and to make the best possible outcomes for society without disrupting innovation.

The collaboration between the companies and the governments should be brought to a higher and more intense level and based on a system of a continous two-sided feedback. The new regulations should include some minimum standards regarding the health and safety, that are now missing from the most of the companiesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; trustbased mechanism. But the new regulations should also undoubtedly, leave some space for self-regulation, since it is the main thing that allowed to the sharing economy companies to operate for so long without creating any big scale disasters and create communities of enthusiastic users.

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SOCIAL INITIATIVES emergency accommodation

Maybe the most interesting social benefit that the company brings are its new divisions: Open Homes, Airbnb Citizen and Samara. Being aware that they have established a new culture of home-sharing, hospitality and trust and have a big community of international supporters (which physically participate, and not only sympathize to the company), Airbnb, after the hurricane Sandy in NY came up with the idea that the people who list their homes on Airbnb are already used to and happy to have guests in their homes, so they may be willing to join the company in helping people who are left without a place to stay during some natural disasters. Basically, when disasters strike, Airbnb activates its hosts through the response tool integrated to the platform and automatically contacts hosts in the impacted and surrounding area asking if they have extra space they would like to share with their displaced neighbours at no cost. Hosts who choose to participate have their space listed on the Airbnb disaster response portal.

In the same way people who are willing to share their homes with those who for some reasons need a place to stay. This can be the case of medical stays: hosts open their homes for people on the road to recovery. Typically these guests need housing while they receive treatment or when they travel for respite. The stays are coordinated by nonprofits who help patients get the care they need. And, of course, another category to get help in this way are the refuges: people moving to a new city and hoping to integrate into the community. The stays are coordinated by refugee relief organizations on behalf of their clients.

From its side, Airbnb not only provides the platform, but also run those who book against regulatory, terrorist, and sanctions watchlists. In the United States, and they also conduct background checks. Though accidents like property damage are rare, the company provides The Host Guarantee that will reimburse every host for qualifying property damages up to $1,000,000. Before any stay, agency representatives and guests booking directly in the event of a disaster must create an Airbnb account and will be asked to provide details, including a full name, date of birth, photo, phone number, email address and payment information thus providing much transparency to this operation.

Through Open Homes, hosts have already offered temporary housing to over 11,000 people.

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rural communities support

Maybe the most interesting social benefit that the company brings are its new divisions: Open Homes, Airbnb Citizen and Samara. Being aware that they have established a new culture of home-sharing, hospitality and trust and have a big community of international supporters (which physically participate, and not only sympathize to the company), Airbnb, after the hurricane Sandy in NY came up with the idea that the people who list their homes on Airbnb are already used to and happy to have guests in their homes, so they may be willing to join the company in helping people who are left without a place to stay during some natural disasters. Basically, when disasters strike, Airbnb activates its hosts through the response tool integrated to the platform and automatically contacts hosts in the impacted and surrounding area asking if they have extra space they would like to share with their displaced neighbours at no cost. Hosts who choose to participate have their space listed on the Airbnb disaster response portal.

In the same way people who are willing to share their homes with those who for some reasons need a place to stay. This can be the case of medical stays: hosts open their homes for people on the road to recovery. Typically these guests need housing while they receive treatment or when they travel for respite. The stays are coordinated by nonprofits who help patients get the care they need. And, of course, another category to get help in this way are the refuges: people moving to a new city and hoping to integrate into the community. The stays are coordinated by refugee relief organizations on behalf of their clients.

From its side, Airbnb not only provides the platform, but also run those who book against regulatory, terrorist, and sanctions watchlists. In the United States, and they also conduct background checks. Though accidents like property damage are rare, the company provides The Host Guarantee that will reimburse every host for qualifying property damages up to $1,000,000. Before any stay, agency representatives and guests booking directly in the event of a disaster must create an Airbnb account and will be asked to provide details, including a full name, date of birth, photo, phone number, email address and payment information thus providing much transparency to this operation.

Through Open Homes, hosts have already offered temporary housing to over 11,000 people.

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CHAPTER 5

* or how the Architects designed our homes in the last century

â&#x20AC;&#x153;The architecture of the large city depends essentially on the solution given to two factors: the elementary cell and the urban organism as a whole. The single room as the constituent element of the habitation will determine the aspect of the habitation, and since the habitations in turn form block, the room will become a factor of urban configuration, which is architectureâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s true goal.Reciprocally, the planimetric structure of the city will have a substantial influence on the design of the habitation and the room.â&#x20AC;?

Ludwig Hilberseimer, from Grossstadtarchitektur

Bauhaus a German art school that worked from 1919 to 1933 under first W.Gropius (1919-28), Hannes Meyer (1928-30), Mies van der Rohe (1930-33).

The key idea in the foundation of the school was the Gesamtkunstwerk (total work of art) in which all arts, including architecture, would eventually be brought together. The Bauhaus was one of the most influential currents of its time and had a profound influence upon subsequent developments in art, architecture, graphic design, interior design, industrial design, and typography.

CIAM International Congresses of Modern Architecture, was an organization founded in 1928 and disbanded in 1959, responsible for a series of events and congresses arranged across Europe by the most prominent architects of the time, with the objective of spreading the principles of the Modern Movement focusing in all the main domains of architecture.

Co-op Zimmer in his photographs of the corner of a room that is characterised at least as much by the absence of people, objects, and spatial features as by the distinctiveness of its design, Hannes Meyer gave expression to a radical, anti-bourgeois style of interior. Architecture and design were not meant to fulfil historically determined needs but to overcome these very constraints. Meyer’s Co-op Interieur was not a recommendation for a mode of interior design but rather a manifesto proclaiming an alternative principle of housing and “living” and, by extension, a new world.

Gesamtkunstwerk “total work of art”, “ideal work of art”, “universal artwork” - in architecture is used to signify circumstances where an architect is responsible for the design and/or overseeing of the building’s totality: shell, accessories, furnishings, and landscape.

After Art Nouveau a distinctly modern approach to the concept of architectural Gesamtkunstwerk emerged with the Bauhaus school where the figure of the architect was seen in a strict cooperation with the craftsmen.

Existenzminimum The 1929 conference of the Congrès International d’Architecture Moderne (CIAM) focused international attention on Frankfurt’s ambitious housing program and on international attempts to define the minimum habitable dwelling. The research to determine new standards for housing to ensure that minimum requirements for living. was a responce to the urgent need for housing for the working class following World War I and was in the centre of attention of all the prominent architects of that time.

Frankfurt kitchen a milestone in domestic architecture, considered the forerunner of modern fitted kitchens, for it realised for the first time a kitchen built after a unified concept, designed to enable efficient work and to be built at low cost. It was designed in 1926 by Austrian architect Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky for architect Ernst May’s social housing project New Frankfurt in Frankfurt, Germany.[1] Some 10,000 units were built in the late 1920s in Frankfurt L’Esprit Nouveau an important magazine for art and French architecture founded in March 1920 in Paris

by Le Corbusier and Amédée Ozenfant and published from 1920 to 1925. The magazine was a platform for architectural discussions and development of the most groundbreaking ideas of its time Neue Sachlichkeit in architecture, as in painting and literature, describes German work of the transitional years of the early 1920s in the Weimar culture, as a direct reaction to the stylistic excesses of Expressionist architecture and the change in the national mood. Eventually developped into the Neues Bauen movement: a movement, that flourished in the brief period before the rise of the Nazis. Architects such as Bruno Taut, Erich Mendelsohn and Hans Poelzig turned to New Objectivity’s straightforward, functionally minded, matter-of-fact approach to construction. The movement encompassed public exhibitions like the Weissenhof Estate, the massive urban planning and public hous-

ing projects of Taut and Ernst May, and the influential experiments at the Bauhaus. plan libre refers to an open plan with non load-bearing walls dividing interior space. In this structural system, the building structure is separate of the interior partitions. The method largely credits to Le Corbusier Raumplan a planning method based on discreet rooms and a dynamic section. This method places great emphasis on the scale of individual rooms and often requires steps into each room or cluster of rooms. The method largely belongs to the architect Adolf Loos and requires a high level of structural awareness and ability to model spaces. social housing an umbrella term referring to rental housing which may be owned and managed by the state, by non-profit organizations, or by a combination of the two, usually with the aim of providing affordable housing. Became widespread globally after the Second World War. Unité d’Habitation a modernist residential housing design principle developed by Le Corbusier: a communal living arrangement for all the inhabitants to shop, play, live, and come together in a “vertical garden city.”

Weissenhofssiedlung a housing estate built for exhibition in Stuttgart in 1927. It was an international showcase of what later became known as the International style of modern architecture. Two of its buildings, designed by Le Corbusier, as well as several of his other works, were inscribed as UNESCO World Heritage Sites Wiener Werkstätte a production community of visual artists in Vienna, Austria bringing together architects, artists and designers working in ceramics, fashion, silver, furniture and the graphic arts ; established in 1903 by Koloman Moser and Josef Hoffmann. Regarded as a pioneer of modern design, and its influence can be seen in later styles such as Bauhaus and Art Deco.

PRIVACY

#author’s observations

The Birth of Caterina Cornaro, unknown author, Venice, 16th century The house in the Medieval ages was a busy and bustling place always full of guests, servants, family members and others.

The Western concept of privacy as we know it now in was born in the XVII century. And that is where the history of the modern house starts.

Before that, in the middle ages, people shared communal living space and lived most of their lives publicly in the midst of other people. And it regards also the wealthiest of them. People didn’t have rooms for specific functions, rather the function was given by moving and arranging the furnitures according to the needs. In the medieval houses there weren’t enough separate rooms for all so the houses were often overcrowded by family members, servants and guests, staying all in same rooms. Even individual beds are a modern invention. As one of the most expensive items in the home, a single large bed became a place for social gatherings, where guests were invited to sleep with the entire family and some servants.

With the pre-industrial revolution (1600–1840), partly thanks to the technological advancements, which made the construction of houses with separate spaces affordable, partly because of the understanding of the dangers of the overcrowding (Europe experienced the Plague epidemics one after the other, the Black Death alone killed over 100 million people), the home becomes private. Family members and servants start living in close quarters but already in separate spaces.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF MODERN HOUSING

end of 19th century to 1914

from crisis to crisis

The foundations for the architecture of the modern dwelling were laid down in the late 19th century by the perception of the house as a work of art. A notable project to define this concept is the Red House at Bexleyheath, England, designed

by Philip Webb for W.Morris and the Arts and Crafts movement in general. In Continental Europe the same concept was reflected in the Art Nouveau, headed by the works of Victor Horta and especially the Hôtel Tassel in Brussels, Belgium, built in 1892-3.

The perception of the house as a work of art was a natural outcome of the Industrial revolution and an opposition to the mass-production and stylistical imitation it had provoked.

The XX century started in the same mood of architects opposing the Gesamtkunstwerk concept to the mass-taste. In 1903 Joseph Hoffman and Moser form the Wiener Werkstätte a production community of visual artists in Vienna, bringing together architects, artists and designers working in ceramics, fashion, silver, furniture and the graphic arts.

In this same period Adolf Loos does his research on main notions in architecture.

He publishes his groundbreaking “Ornament and Crime” in 1908, and experiments by applying the concepts he has on the houses he gets commisioned (Haus Steiner, Haus Scheu 1910-12). By 1912-13 Loos comes with his idea of Raumplan - a planning method based on discreet rooms and a dynamic section. This method places great emphasis on the scale of individual rooms and often requires steps into each room or cluster of rooms. Although the outcome was extremely interesting when applied to architectural projects (for example Loos’s post-war projects such as Rufer House (1922) and Mueller House (1930)), unfortunately, this design method is not destined to become a mainstream for the following decades.

1914-18 The First World War starts. The architectural research freezes, construction stops and gives way to the overall chaos and destruction.

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After the Industrial revolution many people moved to towns and cities to find work and usually rented their homes from private landlords. The most poor lived in overcrowded slum housing.

There was very bad hygiene and disease.

Shortages of land meant that large numbers of people were crammed into small spaces.

If the situation with the housing in Europe before WWI was already tense, after it everything got even worse: it became clear that Europe was facing an acute shortage of housing.

The next decade saw the architects focusing mainly on the question of dwelling.

The most progressive ideas of the time get published in the magazine L’Esprit Nouveau during 1920-1925. In the same period, in 1923, Le Corbusier publishes his “Vers une architecture” which will be translated to English couple of years ago.

That will be the no-coming-back point in the architecture.

Architects continue to manifest the need of freeing up the house from all the unnecessary stuff and at the same time to provide the basic society unit: the nuclear family, with a habitation that has everything needed for life.

interwar years

Building costs were inflated and this, combined with a scarcity of materials such as bricks, cement and wood - and labour, made it impossible for private developers to provide houses with rents within reach of the average working class family.

Housing became the focus of governments’ attention and responsibility: for the first time the idea of social housing was introduced.

The interwar period was particularly crucial for urban policies in Europe because it was characterized by an intense architectural and programmatic debate concerning the form of the city and the production of social housing. Of the European experiences Das rote Wien (Vienna, 1919-1934) and Das neue Frankfurt (Frankfurt am Main, 1925-1933) developed the most important typological solutions in answer to postwar housing problems. * image: Paris after the WWI. Archive photograph from 1918

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interwar years

In 1926 Ernst May presented his “Das Neue Frankfurt” with a set of new standards based on the progressive architectural visions and new hygenic norms. This is the first time when the Frankfurt Kitchen designed by Grete Lihotzky is introduced.

This was a milestone in domestic architecture and it is considered the forerunner of modern fitted kitchens, for it realised for the first time a kitchen built after a unified concept, designed to enable efficient work and to be built at low cost.

Some 10,000 units were built in the late 1920s in Frankfurt based on the proposed scheme.

In the same year the Swiss architect Hannes Meyer, who soon will become the second director of the Bauhaus school, publishes a series of photographs entitled Co-op. Interieur and depicting a corner of a room, characterised by the absence of people, objects, and spatial features and by the distinctiveness of its design, For its time, it is an expression of a radical, anti-bourgeois style of interior. Meyer’s Coop Interieur was not a recommendation for a mode of interior design but rather a manifesto proclaiming an alternative principle of housing and “living” and, by extension, a new world.

Same year in the architectural critic Adolf Behne in his essay for a popular Berlin monthly magazine writes about it: “Extreme. A modern room, which will not be to everyone’s taste.”

Already the next year - in 1927 two crucial housing developments are built: the Weissenhofssiedlung in Stuttgart by a collaborative effort of the periods most progressive architects (P. Behrens, Le Corbusier, J.Frank, W.Gropius, L.Hilberseimer, J.P.Oud, Mies van der Rohe, Scharoun, B.Taut and others) and the Kiefhoek Housing Development in Rotterdam by Oud. Two years later, in 1929, (the interwar period is really intense for architectural breakthroughs) Mies designs his German Pavillion in Barcelona manifesting the modern way of living for the few ones who could afford it, and the same year CIAM (The International Congress for Modern Architecture) holds its 2nd Congress at Frankfurt-am-Main with the topic: Die Wohnung für das Existenzminimum (Apartment for the Minimal Dwelling).

The architects do an attempt to define the minimum habitable dwelling and to determine new standards for housing to ensure that minimum requirements for living.

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From that moment on everything that the family may need gets fit into the small area of the apartment. Although the architects are putting an effort to place in the housing developments also some public facilities for communal use, the isolation of the society unit in its private apartment starts here.

Next year, in 1930, three important private house projects get realized: Villa Tugendhat in Brno by Mies, Villa Savoye in Poissy by Le Corbusier and Villa MĂźller by Loos. Same year the Stockhold Exhibition led by Asplund takes place.

And still in the same year, Karl Ehn designs the Karl Marx Hof housing in Vienna.

The coming years in Europe are seeing the architectural research to brake. The overall atmosphere gets tense and many important architects start to flee away.

And...

* image: Bauatelier Gropius photographed in 1927â&#x20AC;&#x201C;28

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postwar period 1945-1950-s

Chaos and destruction again, on even larger scale.

Now even on a more global level, the postwar world was facing an unprecedented housing demand. Only in Britain the government had to build more than a million homes in a couple of years to replace those destroyed by the war.

With cars being affordable to the middle class, real estate developers offered a new form of living: the car-oriented suburban living. It is now, that the most attractive to people ara again the urban centers. At that time, it was an attractive prospect to live in a quiet suburb of a polluted and crowded town.

The jump in manufacturing prowess through the WWI had helped auto companies to accelerated development of manufacturing methods. By the 1920s, cars would become affordable to the masses. By the 1930s, with affordable cars and abundant cheap oil, the auto and energy industries were seeking big outlet markets to capitalize. After the WWII that market was found: the housing demand.

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* image: Europe after WWII. source: Source: â&#x20AC;&#x153;Savage Continentâ&#x20AC;?, book by K. Lowe

Moving from the city centers to the quiet and clean periferies became the focus of attention of the times progressive architects.

Countless housing developments built quick and cheaply arise in the periferies of not only European towns, but also in the USSR and Asia. This result in monotonous, low-quality, not very durable housing districts in the suburbs of almost every big city. The criticism arises decades after. People want to live again in the city centers.

This results to a new wave of real estate speculations and high pricing.

1950-1980-s

It is in this context that Corbusier proposes his vision for the European city centers reconstruction and starts to research the mass-producted standardized housing options. By the 1952 Le Corbusier he comes up with the concept of a house as a living machine. The first Unité d’Habitation in Marseille is built. And it would become a model for housing development ever since. And while the original project is considering not only the private cells but also a large amount of public facilities and spaces, the developments built on that example later on have taken only the concept of standardized, maximally pre-fabricated, affordable living units of minimal dimensions.

From that point on the housing estate develops around this model. Gradually, with the economical development the living units start to get more spacious, the quality of the construction gets better and the public spaces in the housing developments become some dignity. Parallel to this process, the houses previously liberated from the useless stuff start to fill themselves again with things: the Capitalism enters in its Golden Age overall around the globe and affects any household

* image: collage by Le Corbusier about the Unité d’Habitation, 1952

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CONSUMERISM BOOM AND WHERE IT LED The postwar economic expansion, also known as the postwar economic boom and the Golden Age of Capitalism, was a period of strong economic growth beginning after WWII.The United States, Soviet Union, Western European and East Asian countries in particular experienced unusually high and sustained growth, together with full employment. This high growth also included many countries that had been devastated by the war, such as Japan (Japanese post-war economic miracle), West Germany and Austria (Wirtschaftswunder), France (Trente Glorieuses), Italy and Greek (Italian and Greek economic miracles), Taiwan (Taiwan Miracle) and South Korea (Miracle of the Han River).

The wartime production had helped to pull the local economies in action. From the late 1940s on the young adults saw a remarkable rise in their spending power.

Jobs were plentiful, wages were higher, and because of the lack of consumer goods during the war, people were eager to spend. During the same years, young couples were marrying and having children at unprecedented rates - this was also the period of Baby Boom. New and expanded government programs allowed many young families to purchase their own homes, often located in rapidly expanding suburbs.

The new ideology leading the society became the moto “more, newer, better”, advertisement thrived provoking unprecedented dynamic mass consumption economy boom. While this phase stopped soon in the Sowiet Union, giving place to the internal problems, in the countries of the Western world and in Asia, this was exactly the case.

People started to invest in items based around home and family life. At war’s end, the items people most desired included televisions, cars, washing machines, refrigerators, toasters, and vacuum cleaners: the machines that would help them modernize their lives. The life cycle of things became shorter in order to satisfy the ever growing appetites. Television and car sales skyrocketed in the 1950s.

With the massive growth in suburban populations, automobiles were needed more than ever, and were within reach for many first-time buyers. Families of all income brackets were buying televisions and the television provided a potent medium for advertisers to reach inside peoples’ homes, creating desires for other products. The

browsing, selection and purchase of goods and commodities became one of the defining activities of the modern urban life.

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At first perceived as the American phenomenon, the consumerist lifestyle has soon spilled over to the rest of the world through globalization and the rise of the free market economy. Possessing things, more and more things like houses, vehicles, equipment, furniture, products: all this became an indicator of power and status in the modern society. The world entered in a period when the planet got most polluted and congested by the indequate and irresponsible consumption and as a consequence the waste production. This regards as the industries, as well as the side-effects produced by the cars. Today the results of this lifestyle are well known and have led to the biggest challenges the modern society is facing:

climate change and social unequality.

* image: US add from 1971

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THE CURRENT HOUSING CRISIS the big questions to ask And then...

The consumerism boom, first of all in the US, led to a situation when homes were built not by small developers, but mostly by large public home-building companies, which were building homes so quickly they outpaced the demand. The result was an oversupply of single-family houses for sale.

Mortgage lenders, which make money by charging origination fees and thus had an incentive to write as many mortgages as possible, responded to the glut by trying to put buyers into those homes. Soon they ran out of qualified buyers who could make the 20% down payment and had a high enough income to cover the monthly mortgage payments, with an interest rate determined by the borrowerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s credit score. There was still an immense quantity of homes to fill and so they started cutting corners. Banks went for subprime mortgages, mortgages to people with low credit scores, their down payment requirements gradually decreased to almost nothing. This led to a flow of people who couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t typically afford buying a house to get mortgages for it. The real estate investors helped inflate the housing bubble by buying houses, holding them for a brief period, and then flipping them for a tidy profit.

What began as ill-advised American mortgage lending became an unprecedented global financial crisis.

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One of the biggest consequences of the crisis of 2008 which was provoked by the real estate speculations is the global shortage of affordable housing.

The problem has been fuelled by a number of factors such as the rising population, changing lifestyles with more single occupancy, land availability and cost. At the same time, wages in many parts of the world and sectors of the economy have not kept pace with the growth in house prices. At the same time the rents grew, leaving people with even less available options for living.

Housing prices rose consistently, if not dramatically leading to increasing pressure on the existing stock of affordable housing. Just an example from Europe: a number of studies documents a nationwide deficit of 4.2 million social housing units in Germany. The questions is even more dramatic in the emerging countries, where the population is growing and the rural regions lose their attraction in favor of the big cities. So this will be the global issue to solve starting from right now and in the coming decade. But is the answer the same for the developed countries and for the developing ones? And which are the issues to adress?

The big question is wether to build huge amount of affordable social housing taking on the existing models or to revise the way we are used to think about the housing.

The most obvious: the quantitative housing question: to provide enough dwellings in cities or regions for the respective local demand and what is important here, to ensure it answers the needs of the various household types (singles/elderly/ families). The growth of one-person households increases the absolute demand for housing but rises also a social question: so we provide all of those singles with their own apartments. What is the impact on the society if it consists

of mainly solitarian autonomous homes?

Other question is where to locate those low-priced new stocks? Usually the solution are the periferies and mostly unattractive tresholds of the city. Is it possible to cover instead as many urban areas as possible to ensure the vitality of the city?

In the economically consolidated cities and economically booming regions, immigration and constant in- and out-flow of people becomes something to adress.

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“...Perciò ogni città ne contiene altre: le città che essa è stata, e che vi hanno lasciato impronte piú o meno marcate, ma anche le città potenziali che essa avrebbe potuto essere, e non fu, e che talvolta si vedono incarnate, per somiglianza o affinità, in altre città”.

77

Salvatore Settis “Se Venezia muore” 2014

CHAPTER 6 Of Venice and Shanghai and how they treat the Time differently.

f7

78

#authorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s observations #venice #shanghai

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THE TWO COSMOPOLITANS It is hard to predict the future of our cities and how a new network of dwellings, a totally new typology of housing, could make routes in different places. The processes of change in different cities have different speed and are affected by different local factors.

One evident way to categorize the cities would be their separation by cities of the Old World and cities of the emerging economies.

To track the immaginary diffusion of the new home-network on those two polarities, two very specific cities where chosen: Venice and Shanghai. Both are cosmopolotan, commercial cities in their DNA, both have thrived and enriched themselves thanks to the contacts with the outer world, to their openness and the ability to absorb cultural diversity and merge into their own identity. Both Venice and Shanghai have very special relation to the sea and both are crossed by a main water-artery.

Shanghai is a city that really fast-forwarded the time: in the last three decades, after opening the city to the international trade, the city exploded in both its size and population. Upon some reflection one can actually come to understanding, that this boom was nothing new for the city. Back in the 16th century it was a small, walled city closed to the world. When in the 19th century it opened to foreigners, they started to establish their concessions out of the city walls and gradually the city grew out of its initial walls and around the new concessions. Gradually it became one unique city with a controversial and international identity. What Shanghai is today is a result of international influence, market economy and of course, globalization. This city example is a condensed in time scenario of growth of the new cities in emerging economies.

On the other side of the world there is Venice. In its form it hardly changed since the last centuries. Partly, thanks to the specific natural conditions in which the city is built. Partly because of the Western, particularly Italian understanding of the value of beauty, culture and heritage. Anyway, almost frozen in time in its outer image, the city experienced the same globalization, as the rest of the world. And if cities of the new type are ready for it, they are feeding from it, in the case of the old historical cities this relation is more sophisticated. Venice feeds from globalization and mainly - mass tourism. But at the same time it faces huge problems because of it. And it is a problem of almost all historical cities, maybe on a less evident level, or maybe on a more early stage of the process.

* f7 artwork by Davide Bramante

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Shanghai

TIME FAST-FORWARDED 195.581 ha

468.872 ha

urban extent of Shanghai by 1991

urban extent by 2015

closed city

international city

map of 16th century Shanghai

opened to foreigners in 19th century

1987. view to the Pudong area

1984

aerial view of Shanghai

2014

* images: NASA Earth Observatory

2014. same, 27 years later

same, 30 years later

Venice

TIME ARRESTED

Venexodus residentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; protests

XVIII c. Canaletto times

1940-s

aerial view of Venice

2018

same, today

* on the left: wartime archive photograph, on the right: Google Maps image

XXI c. Our days

THE FLOATING POPULATIONS Shanghai

population growth 1980-2035 (in millions)

14.25 17.06 20.31 23.48 24.16 24.86 25.58 26.32 27.06 30.48 32.87

we are here

11.1

government set limit 25mln

15 mln

registered residents

10 mln

long-term migrants (with no registration)

5.9 7.1 8.6

300 mln

1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2025 2030

tourists annualy

floating population

rural migrants

students

tourists

visiting relatives

visiting for work

What Shanghai experienced ever since it opened the borders for the international trade and in-flow of foreigners, is an intensive population growth. In 1980-s the population of Shanghai comprised 5.9mln people. It grew every year and by today the population is more than 25 mln, which is the limit the government has set for the city, in order to keep it livable.

The population now consists of 15mln registered residents. And then there are another 10mln of people - long-term migrants with no registration. Those are mostly people who move to Shanghai for work from the rural areas and the students. Besides, the city is visited by 300mln tourists annualy. All of those together comprise the so called â&#x20AC;&#x153;floating populationâ&#x20AC;? of Shanghai. And all of this population needs housing adapted for what they need. This is a problem of big scale nowadays in Shanghai and is one of the main points to work on indicated in the official masterplan of Shanghai for the coming years.

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Venice

population decline since 1951

9.5 mln tourists

5.4 mln tourists

3.7 mln tourists

58 215 56 683 56 311 55 583 55 075 53 835

71 053 66 386 65 695 64 076 63 947 63 353 62 296 61 611 60 755 60 311 59 942 59 621 58 991

population after the plague 98000

1951 1955 1960 1965 1970 1975 1978 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019

174 808 167 069 145 402 123 733 111 550 104 206 99 189 95 222 86 072 2.5 mln tourists 78 165

we are here

floating population

daily commuters

creatives

students

overnight tourists

excursionists

Venice is experiencing exactly the opposite process. The city is losing its population: low birth and death rates are one of the reasons, but the biggest issue is that the redisents are leaving the city.

The population declined every year since 1951. At that time Venice had 174 808 inhabitants. By 1980 Venice got less population left, than the city had after the plague. Starting from the new millenium the city loses around 1000 inhabitants every year. Today it has less than 54000 inhabitants left.

At the same time the city is experiencing booming mass-tourism and a transformation provoked by it. The number of tourists grows from year to year. In the 1990 2.5mln tourists visited the city. In 2020 it was already 3.7 millions. In the next 10 years this number grew to 5.4 mln. In the year 2017 the city saw some 9.5 mln tourists coming.

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ABANDON IN VENICE Centro Storico 798 ha

87

total area

1/10 of the city results empty 74.8 ha abandoned

* Map by students of IUAV, acad. year 2014-15, course led by prof. Laura Fregolent

The natural outcome of residents leaving their city is the abandon of its spaces.

One of the reasons for the abandonment of the residential buildings of the Venetian historic center is the high cost of rents for working residents in Venice.

As the tourist presence grows, a remarkable growth experience also the receptive structures, not only hotels, but also bed & breakfasts and teh Airbnb apartments.

The real estate owners start to feel the convenience of renting their rooms and apartments for short periods rather than for long terms. As much the residents leave, the more it affects also the traditional businesses of the city. Some old commercial stores and family artisan shops close giving place to tourist-oriented shops. The life for people who are permanent residents becomes even more uncomfortable.

The abandoned stock becomes a subject for real estate speculations, but in a more optimistic scenario can become an opportunity for some redevelopment and reuse interventions that can adress the current problem in a new way.

Cannaregio

abandoned

8300sqm abandoned

11000sqm underutilized

underutilized

26000sqm

temporarily empty

temporarily empty 88

AIRBNB IN VENICE

The map of airbnb presence in Venice is quite shocking. The only spots, where there are no listings are either churches, museum or hotels. There is an Airbnb in practically every palazzo.

Currently there are around 6497 listings located on the Venetian islands. and the mainland has some modest 1.015 listings.

A relatively high percentage of listings on the mainland (47% or 472) are “private” rooms, suggesting that Airbnb hosts are residents there - however on closer inpection, one can see that more than onethird of them are multiple: where the host has more than one room listed, which usually implies that the hosts are not just sharing their home(s), but running a full-time business, renting out multiple rooms.

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* 2017 data from “Inside Airbnb” online, independent and non-commercial tool

Centro Storico 6497

listings in Venice (islands)

4413 (67.9%)

multilistings (up to 135 listings by one host)

Cannaregio 1584

listings in Cannaregio

5330 (82%)

entire homes/apartments

1113 (17.1%) private rooms

5447 (83.8%)

1050 (16.2%)

listings available all year round

listings with low availability

1235 (78%)

330 (20.8%)

entire homes/apartments

private rooms

On the islands of Venice, instead, with 5,012 listings, the vast majority (3,997 or 80%) are for entire apartments. That means that the hosts donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t live there. Almost 2,000 apartments (1,953) are estimated to be rented frequently (an occupancy of more than 90 nights per year) on average at â&#x201A;Ź131/night for 195 nights of the year. The average income of a host is estimated to be â&#x201A;Ź1,067 per month, which is higher than the average monthly income for the long-term rental. Cannaregio is the district which has the biggest amount of Airbnb stays during the year and is also the one that has experienced the biggest abbandon. There are currently 1584 listings available there with 78% of them being for entire apartments.

The situation seems unusual and alarming untill one looks to what happens in the other cities. Are the cities elsewhere experiencing the same?

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AIRBNB IN OTHER CITIES Europe Vienna 10337 listings 61.6% available all year 42.7% multilistings 7340 (71%) 2883 (27.9%) 114 (1.1%)

Copenhagen 20545 listings 37.6% available all year 12.6% multilistings 16576 (80.7%) 3854 (18.8%) 115 (0.6%)

Paris

60529 listings 31.5% available all year 19.5% multilistings 52647 (87%) 7361 (12.2%) 521 (0.9%)

Amsterdam

20114 listings 26.7% available all year 21.3% multilistings 16031 (79.7%) 4019 (20%) 64 (0.3%)

Lisbon

20493 listings 84.8% available all year 66.3% multilistings 15190 (74.1%) 4950 (24.2%) 353 (1.7%)

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* 2017 data from â&#x20AC;&#x153;Inside Airbnbâ&#x20AC;? online, independent and non-commercial tool

Global Brussels 6192 listings 57.8% available all year 36% multilistings 3997 (64.6%) 2112 (34.1%) 83 (1.3%)

Milano

17986 listings 73% available all year 39.3% multilistings 12837 (71.4%) 4756 (26.4%) 393 (2.2%)

Berlin

26295 listings 27.2% available all year 22.4% multilistings 13705 (52.1%) 12280 (46.7%) 310 (1.2%)

Barcelona

17221 listings 64.2% available all year 58.7% multilistings 6925 (40.2%) 10129 (58.8%) 167 (1%)

London

49348 listings 58.8% available all year 40.9% multilistings 25285 (51.2%) 23357 (47.3%) 706 (1.4%)

New York 47542 listings 45.5% available all year 27.3% multilistings 23870 (50.2%) 22546 (47.4%) 1126 (2.4%)

San Francisco 7072 listings 57.9% available all year 27.3% multilistings 4366 (61.7%) 2524 (35.7%) 182 (2.6%)

Los Angeles 39672 listings 57.6% available all year 51.2% multilistings 24125 (60.8%) 13856 (34.9%) 1691 (4.3%)

Sydney

33481 listings 36.5% available all year 34.1% multilistings 20324 (60.7%) 12579 (37.6%) 578 (1.7%)

MontrĂŠal

10619 listings 64.5% available all year 31.4% multilistings 6377 (60.1%) 4092 (38.5%) 150 (1.7%)

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Different cities treat Airbnb differently.

Amsterdam Amsterdam was heralded as the first city in the World to pass an “Airbnb-friendly law”, and Airbnb vowed to send an e-mail twice a year to hosts reminding them of the local laws. In February 2014, Amsterdam created a new category of housing, a “Particuliere Vakantieverhuur”, or “private vacation rental” which allows short term vacation rentals to tourists under the following conditions: - Only the registered, main occupant of a dwelling may rent out a property.

- The owner is the only person that can rent out the property, in most cases Amsterdam leases prohibit a tenant renting to others.

- The dwelling must not be rented for more than two months a year in total - No more than 4 people can rent a property at a time Anyway even the friendly law is not enough to keep up with the trend. There are currently 6,183 “Entire homes/apartments” (33% against the total number of listings) that were estimated to be booked for more 60 nights a year (and against the law). 1,299 listings that are available to accommodate more than 4 people (and against the law - this is underestimated, because it doesn’t account for multiple listings in the same apartment).

Paris Paris has the largest number of Airbnb listings than any other city in the world.

More than 52,000 listings, and 86% of them entire homes, while in almost the same period that Airbnb has been active in Paris, it has been estimated that about 20,000 apartments have disappeared from the traditional rental market.

The “Bill ALUR”, a national housing law, signed by the President of France in March 2014, allows for the rental of a property owner’s “primary residence” without asking permission from local city agencies. In Paris, this means it is legal to rent out your primary residence only if the owner lives there for more than four months out of the year.

For residential properties where the property owner does not permanently live, it is illegal to rent out the property for less than a year at a time unless it is registered as a commercial property with the city. City officials, estimate that around half of properties advertised on Airbnb are not primary residences and that only a 93

tiny fraction of owners bother to register them as commercial properties. Those caught renting out unlicensed secondary apartments, or renting out their primary residences for more than four months, face fines of up to 25,000 euros, or follow the “rule of compensation”, be required to acquire a commercial property and turn it into a residential one.

Barcelona The Catalan Tourist Act requires that homes used for tourist stays of less than 30 days are required to be registered with the Catalan Tourist Office prior to commencing operation. The registration number must be displayed when advertising the home. But the data shows that 78% (11,520 out of 14,699 listings) have no license number displayed and are probably unlicensed and illegal.

In July 2014, Airbnb was fined €30,000 along with 7 other internet sites for a “serious” breach of local laws.

New York This is a city where the platform really gained its first momentum, and a city where the battle against Airbnb is at its hottest point. New York is a city of renters, vacancy rates are at crisis levels, and rents continue to rise. Income levels for the average New Yorker haven’t kept pace, and affordability is at record lows. The accusation posed to Airbnb it that it addresses the demand for tourist accommodation and creates an income stream for “hosts,” and ignores both the need for and loss of housing. Airbnb is accudef of covering the unlicensed, unregulated and untaxed hotels in residential neighborhoods and in promoting gentrification.

The company strikes back with making its data open, making the voice of its hosts community to be heard and with active lobbying and marketing campaigns to force the city and state to legitimize their business model and legalize Airbnb hosts’ activities.

So the laws are quite strict but it doesn’t stop most of the Airb-nb hosts to rent out they property, or the place that they are currently renting. What is it that makes so many people around the globe to share their homes? What makes tens of tousands people to break the law? Can it be just the greed or there is something else in it?

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THE NEW TYPE OF CITY DWELLER

#authorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s observations

Now, one can tell that Venice is losing its residents. But in reality the city is always full. We can change the way we look at the situation. What if Venice is not losing residents, but has got a new type of a city dweller?

A mix of a local, permanent resident that was living there for ages, and another one: the transient dweller, the one that is always present in the city, but changing its person every moment.

Isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t it the same happening elsewhere, but in a more spread, less concentrated way? Our cities are full of people who come for work or leisure and are eager to feel local even for the short period of their stay.

The challenge is to understand how the locals and the transients can coexist in a peaceful, balanced and symbiotic way.

And the solution may well be the confrontation. For the permanent residents have a lot to share about their city and the way they live it, and the transients shouldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t be seen as an unevitable evil. Well, unevitable - yes, but rather a source of something new, be it the profit they bring, or their working energy or a new culture and diversity.

95

End of vol. I

Vol.I “Zero to one: Notes on startups, or how to build the future”.

Thiel P. A., Masters B. Broadway Business, 2014

“Gallagher L. The Airbnb Story: How Three Ordinary Guys Disrupted an Industry, Made Billions... and Created Plenty of Controversy”.

“The corrosion of character: The personal consequences of work in the new capitalism”.

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017

Sennett R. WW norton&company, 1998

“The sharing conomy: The end of employment and the rise of crowdbased capitalism”.

“What’s mine is yours: The rise of collaborative consumption”.

“The age of access: The new culture of hypercapitalism”.

Sundararajan A. Mit Press, 2016

Botsman R., Rogers R. Collins, 2010

Rifkin J. Penguin, 2001

“Capitalist realism: Is there no alternative? ”.

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Attali J. Fazi editore, 2016

Samir A. Punto Rosso, 2009

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Abandoned spaces in Venice. IUAV research

Fisher M. John Hunt Publishing, 2009 “Se Venezia muore”.

Settis S. Torino : Einaudi, 2014

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FOR NOTES

Milano 2019