Rental proptech platforms: Changing landlord and tenant power relations in the UK private rental sector?

IF 4.6 1区社会学 Q1 ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES

Environment and Planning A-Economy and Space Pub Date : 2022-10-13 DOI:10.1177/0308518X221126522

T. Wainwright

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引用次数: 4

Abstract

The structure of the UK's private rental sector (PRS) is being disrupted by a new series of rental proptech platforms (RPPs). These start-ups are adopting technologies including artificial intelligence and algorithms which draw upon ever broader datasets to automate and mediate the relationships between tenants and landlords. Only recently have researchers turned to examine new RPPs, which are challenging existing processes within the PRS, through their attempts to digitise all aspects of renting, from a tenant's initial search and application, to end-contract management. This paper seeks to provide two contributions: first, to uncover how platform entrepreneur views of ‘ideal’ tenants shape the algorithms and scripts that run within their start-ups, and how they shift to accommodate the demands of external venture capital funding. Second, it seeks to examine how landlords are falling under the gaze of technological surveillance and automated judgements, as well as tenants, to illustrate how fragmented and uneven data topologies create inequalities through automated ordering and judgements.

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租赁技术平台:改变英国私人租赁行业的业主和租户权力关系?

英国私人租赁行业(PRS)的结构正在被一系列新的租赁技术平台(rpp)所颠覆。这些初创企业正在采用包括人工智能和算法在内的技术，这些技术利用越来越广泛的数据集来自动化和调解租客和房东之间的关系。直到最近，研究人员才开始研究新的rpp，这些rpp试图将租赁的各个方面(从租户的初始搜索和申请到合同终止管理)数字化，从而挑战了PRS中的现有流程。本文试图提供两个贡献:首先，揭示平台企业家对“理想”租户的看法如何影响其初创企业中运行的算法和脚本，以及它们如何转变以适应外部风险投资资金的需求。其次，它试图研究房东如何受到技术监控和自动判断的关注，以及租户，以说明碎片化和不均匀的数据拓扑如何通过自动排序和判断产生不平等。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Environment and Planning A-Economy and Space Multiple-

CiteScore

9.50

自引率

9.50%

发文量

100

期刊介绍： Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space is a pluralist and heterodox journal of economic research, principally concerned with questions of urban and regional restructuring, globalization, inequality, and uneven development. International in outlook and interdisciplinary in spirit, the journal is positioned at the forefront of theoretical and methodological innovation, welcoming substantive and empirical contributions that probe and problematize significant issues of economic, social, and political concern, especially where these advance new approaches. The horizons of Economy and Space are wide, but themes of recurrent concern for the journal include: global production and consumption networks; urban policy and politics; race, gender, and class; economies of technology, information and knowledge; money, banking, and finance; migration and mobility; resource production and distribution; and land, housing, labor, and commodity markets. To these ends, Economy and Space values a diverse array of theories, methods, and approaches, especially where these engage with research traditions, evolving debates, and new directions in urban and regional studies, in human geography, and in allied fields such as socioeconomics and the various traditions of political economy.