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
“Of Millennials
and of their
unusual
manner of
living.”
Chapter II
“How
Millennials
grew up with
Technology and
where it leads
them.”
Chapter III
“Of the manner
the things are
shared, swapped,
traded and rented
in the Sharing
Economy”
p.05
p.23
p.35
Chapter IV
“Of Airbnb, or
How to belong
Anywhere ”
Chapter VI
“From
Existenzminimum
to Existenzmaximum,
Or how the Architects
designed our homes
in the last century”
Chapter VII
“Of Venice and
Shanghai and
how they treat
the Time differently”
p.51
p.67
p.77
Vol.III
# From Venice to Shanghai and back
Chapter I
“Of Home
as a Network”
Chapter II
“How a Palazzo
in Venice got
transformed”
Chapter III
“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
“How Hakka
people built
earthen
building and
lived ”
Chapter II
“What manner of
dwelling
the Yanomami
have”
Chapter III
“Of the manner the
Iroquis, the Viking
and the Austronesian
Longhouse is made”
p.05
p.17
p.29
Chapter IV
“How the Qala
Residents hid
their houses
from the
Strangers’ eyes”
Chapter V
“How people in
Kommunalka
set their own
rules and of their
manner of living”
Chapter VI
“How Migrants
used to dwell
in Boarding
Houses”
p.57
p.69
p.77
Chapter VII
“How the Squats
are vanishing
everywhere and
how people in Køpi
resist”
Chapter VIII
“How communal
dinners stopped
taking place in
Kollontai”
Chapter VII
“Of Venice and
Shanghai and
how they treat
the Time differently”
p.95
p.109
p.121
# Author’s observations
Legal Issues
v.I, p.57
Privacy
v.I, p.66
The two
cosmopolitans
v.I, p.80
The new type
of city dweller
v.I, p.95
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
have a blurred boundary between life and work
tend to work while commuting or travelling and
combine business trips with leisure
1928
1945
1964
age in 2018:
73-90
53-73
Silents born
Baby Boomers born
Gen.
1910 1920 1930
1940 1950 1960 197
07

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.
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.
1980
1996
2019
37-53
22-37 1-22
X born
Millennials born
post-Millennials born
0 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%)
9 of 100
of young adults
aged 18-34 in Italy (EU) live with their parents
(2016 data)
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
12

#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 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.
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
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 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.
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.
16 * Alamo Family Vacation Survey 2016
17

URBAN DOMESTICITY feeling home anywhere 18
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

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
58% of millennials lives in Asia
Iran has the highest proportion of
millennials: 1/3 of its population
385 mln millennials in India
Chinese millennials outnumber
the whole USA populaton
Italy has the smallest share of
millennials of any major economy:
16.9%
Almost 60% are concentrated in Asia. The
Chinese millennials alone outnumber the
entire population of the US. The highest
proportion of millennials has Iran: more
than 1/3 of the population; in China, it’s 1/4.
While millennials outnumber both Boomers
and Gen Xers in the US, this is not the
case in many other advanced economies: in
Japan they comprise 17.2% of the population,
17.8 % in Spain. Italy, ith just 16.9%,
has the smallest share of millennials of any
major economy.
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 %
AFRICA
of people
cities the size of New York have to be built
will live
every six months for the next 13 years to house
in cities
the increasing population
World Population
Population
by region (2018)* Region
(2013)
1. Asia
4.545.133.094
2. Africa
1.287.920.518
3. Europe
742.648.010
4. Latin America and the Carribbean 652.012.001
5. Northern America
363.644.490
6. Oceania
41.262.212

Urban Population
Growth
total
258 mln
international
migrants
58mln
In the last 2 decades the number of international
migrants grew by 85mln
78mln 80mln
Asia and Europe have the largest
immigrant population
refuges
10 %
(25.9 mln)
10mln
25mln
8mln
median age:
39
*gets younger
with every
year
In Europe, instead of
growing by 2%, the
population would
have fallen by 1% in
the absence of a net
inflow of migrants.
106mln of total
258mln int.migrants
were born in Asia.
61mln of total int.
migrants were born in
Europe.
Land Area
(km2)
Density
(p/km2)
Migrants
(net)
Fertility
rate
Median
age
Urban
Pop. (%)
31.033.131
29.648.481
22.134.900
20.139.373
18.651.660
8.488.460
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%
22

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
advances in 3D printing and other enabling
technologies mean that product components can
be made lighter and for less cost.
Airbnb
a global community of hosts and travelers.
Founded in 2008 by Brian Chesky, Joe Gebbia
and Nathan Blecharczyk and headquartered in
San Francisco it operates an online hospitality
service offering a variety of short-term lodging
rentals and hosted music and tourism events
(experiences). The pioneer of the sharing
economy as we know it today
augmented reality
virtually augmenting what we can see with our
own eyes with data and hidden systems can be
immensely powerful when it comes to process
and product improvement.
autonomous systems
robotics and artificial intelligence have evolved
to a point where systems can operate to high
standards on various tasks without constant
human intervention.
big data
businesses can create huge volumes of data
without realising it and this data can be a source
of untapped value for business improvement and
growth
BlaBlaCar
an online marketplace for carpooling, which
connects drivers with empty seats and people
travelling the same way. Founded in 2006
c2c
consumer-to-consumer
cloud computing
IT services are increasingly being provided by the
‘cloud’ to generate cost and space savings as well
as to offer innovative use models.
collaborative 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 consume.
*see also “sharing economy”
*read R.Botsman&R.Rogers “All What’s
Mine is Yours”
Couchsurfing
a hospitality and social networking service
launched in 2004, accessible via a website
and mobile app. Members can use the
service to arrange homestays, offer lodging
and hospitality, and join events. A part of
gift economy
crowd-based capitalism
a new model of capitalism, where large,
disconnected groups of people pool their
assets, capital or labor on a shared platform,
for the consumers to find and utilize these
resources, thus bypassing the traditional
company-consumer interraction
*read A. Sundarrarjan “Crowd-Based Capitalism,
Digital Automation, and the Future
of Work”
crowd-funding
the practice of funding a project or venture
by raising small amounts of money
from a large number of people, typically
online. A form of crowdsourcing
crowd-sourcing
a sourcing model in which individuals or
organizations obtain goods and services
such as ideas and finances, from a large,
relatively open and often rapidly-evolving
group of internet users; it divides work
between participants to achieve a cumulative
result.
cyber security
connected systems require optimised and
current security so that your assets and
information are safe from intrusion
Ebay
online marketplace for buyers and sellers,
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
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)
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-
effective to trial something in
the virtual world than to make
a physical prototype for each
variable being tested
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
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
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 1989-
90. 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 today’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.
33

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
3 economic realities
4
monetize excess of idling capacity
increase financial flexibility
financial uncertainty
influx of VC funding
2
values shift
desire for community
access over ownership
untethered way of living
blurred live-work boundaries
environmental pressures
increasing population density
need for more resources
dissatisfaction with consumerism
efficient use of assets
As millennials—the generation most comfortable with sharing as a means to save
money—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*.
2015
sharing economy sector
15 bln
335 bln
traditional rental sector
240 bln
335 bln 2025
peer to peer lending
and crowdfunding
online staffing
equipment rental
B&B and hostels
peer to peer
accommodation
car sharing
music and
video streaming
book rental
car rental
DVD rental
* Pew Research Center
f5 anti-consumerism graffiti, photograph found somewhere on the web
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 people
the technologists
the established
the influencers
the new
occasional roles
of the consumer
39

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.
40

WHAT IS SHAREABLE?
#spaces
pretty much anything
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 Lyft’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 don’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, they’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
43
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.

#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 childrens’
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
Economic
provider
Economic
motivation
50%
car
sharing
25%
Environmental
tool
sharing
ride
sharing
50%
accommodation
sharing
meal
sharing
25%
50%
Social
car
sharing
Environm.
tool
sharing
ride
sharing
meal
sharing
Reasons to participate in different sectors of the sharing economy
50%
25%
50%
accommodation
sharing
25%
50%
Social
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 “smart locks” 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 provider’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
won’t completely displace traditional economic networks anytime soon. It’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.
49
PRO-s & CON-s OF S

-
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 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 architects’ or urban planners’ 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 hosts’ 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
2012
2015
1 million bookings on Airbnb
network effect starts to work
5 millions bookings
6 months later
145 millions bookings ings
10 millions
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 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 stranger’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.
54

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”.
55 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 planners’ 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.
56

LEGAL ISSUES
#author’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
economy’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 users’
right overall.
57

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 companies’ 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.
58

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.
59

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.
60

CHAPTER 5

* or how the Architects designed
our homes in the last century
“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 architecture’s true goal.Reciprocally, the planimetric structure of the city will have a substantial influence on the design of the
habitation and the room.”
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 housing
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
from crisis to crisis
end of 19th century to 1914
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.
67

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.
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 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.
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.
interwar years
* image: Paris after the WWI. Archive photograph from 1918 68

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.
interwar years
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.
69

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
Müller 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 1927–28
70

Chaos and destruction again, on even larger scale.
postwar period 1945-1950-s
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.
71 * image: Europe after WWII. source: Source: “Savage Continent”, 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.
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.
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.
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
1950-1980-s
* image: collage by Le Corbusier about the Unité d’Habitation, 1952
72

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.
73

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 74

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 borrower’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 couldn’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.
75

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.
76

“...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

#author’s observations
#venice #shanghai
79

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 80

Shanghai
TIME FAST-FORWARDED
195.581 ha
urban extent of Shanghai by 1991
468.872 ha
urban extent by 2015
closed city
map of 16th century Shanghai
international city
opened to foreigners in 19th century
1987. view to the Pudong area

1984 aerial view of Shanghai
2014 same, 30 years later
* images: NASA Earth Observatory
2014. same, 27 years later

Venice
TIME ARRESTED
Venexodus
residents’ 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)
we are here
27.06
30.48
32.87
15 mln
registered residents
government set limit
25mln
7.1
8.6
11.1
14.25
17.06
20.31
23.48
24.16
24.86
25.58
26.32
1980 5.9
1985
1990
1995
2000
2005
2010
2015
2016
2017
2018
2019
2020
2025
2030
10 mln
long-term migrants
(with no registration)
300 mln
tourists annualy
floating population
rural migrants students tourists visiting relatives visiting for work
85
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 “floating population” 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.

Venice
population decline since 1951
we are here
1951 174 808
1955
167 069
145 402
123 733
111 550
104 206
2.5 mln tourists
99 189
95 222
86 072
78 165
3.7 mln tourists
71 053
66 386
65 695
64 076
63 947
63 353
62 296
61 611
60 755
5.4 mln tourists
population after the plague
98000
60 311
59 942
59 621
58 991
58 215
56 683
56 311
9.5 mln tourists
55 583
55 075
53 835
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
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.
86

ABANDON IN VENICE
Centro Storico
798 ha total area 74.8 ha
1/10 of the city results empty
abandoned
87
* 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
8300sqm 11000sqm 26000sqm
abandoned underutilized temporarily empty
abandoned underutilized 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.
89
* 2017 data from “Inside Airbnb” online, independent and non-commercial tool

Centro Storico
6497
listings in Venice (islands)
multilistings
(up to 135 listings by one host)
5330 (82%)
entire homes/apartments
listings available
all year round
1113 (17.1%)
private rooms
4413 (67.9%) 5447 (83.8%) 1050 (16.2%)
listings with
low availability
Cannaregio
1584
listings in Cannaregio
1235 (78%)
entire homes/apartments
330 (20.8%)
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 don’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 €131/night for 195 nights of the
year. The average income of a host is estimated to be €1,067 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?
90

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%)
91
* 2017 data from “Inside Airbnb” 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%)
New York
47542 listings
45.5% available all year
27.3% multilistings
23870 (50.2%)
22546 (47.4%)
1126 (2.4%)
Milano
17986 listings
73% available all year
39.3% multilistings
12837 (71.4%)
4756 (26.4%)
393 (2.2%)
San Francisco
7072 listings
57.9% available all year
27.3% multilistings
4366 (61.7%)
2524 (35.7%)
182 (2.6%)
Berlin
26295 listings
27.2% available all year
22.4% multilistings
13705 (52.1%)
12280 (46.7%)
310 (1.2%)
Los Angeles
39672 listings
57.6% available all year
51.2% multilistings
24125 (60.8%)
13856 (34.9%)
1691 (4.3%)
Barcelona
17221 listings
64.2% available all year
58.7% multilistings
6925 (40.2%)
10129 (58.8%)
167 (1%)
Sydney
33481 listings
36.5% available all year
34.1% multilistings
20324 (60.7%)
12579 (37.6%)
578 (1.7%)
London
49348 listings
58.8% available all year
40.9% multilistings
25285 (51.2%)
23357 (47.3%)
706 (1.4%)
Montréal
10619 listings
64.5% available all year
31.4% multilistings
6377 (60.1%)
4092 (38.5%)
150 (1.7%)
92

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?
94

THE NEW TYPE OF CITY DWELLER
#author’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.
Isn’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 shouldn’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”.
Houghton Mifflin
Harcourt, 2017
“The corrosion of
character: The personal
consequences of work
in the new capitalism”.
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? ”.
“Breve storia del futuro:
Rivista e aggiornata a
dieci anni dalla crisi”.
“La crisi: uscire dalla
crisi del capitalismo o
uscire dal capitalismo in
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Fisher M.
John Hunt Publishing,
2009
Attali J.
Fazi editore, 2016
Samir A.
Punto Rosso, 2009
“Se Venezia muore”.
“Inside Airbnb”
-online, independent
and non-commercial
tool
Abandoned spaces in
Venice. IUAV research
Settis S.
Torino : Einaudi, 2014

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FOR NOTES

Milano 2019