ABSTRACT

This paper explores the cultural mediation of short-term rental (STR) platforms in US cities. While many STR advocates emphasize ‘authentic’ cultural experiences and the support of local economies, less obvious are the ways that STRs like Airbnb can erode communities by transforming homes into hotels and neighbours into strangers. STR platforms have significantly disrupted many communities through increased gentrification, resident displacement, racial discrimination, and reduced city tax bases for the provision of services. As with all technological systems, STR platforms embody a politics that shapes human activities and relations. The platforms, in other words, present a set of scripts for the organization of practices and the configuration of space, tending, by design, toward impersonal commercial exchange and conceptions of neighbourhoods as resources for such exchange. I argue that as public infrastructures are absorbed into and recoded as platforms, the emerging ensemble normalizes market- over rights-based orientations to city spaces and services. The process supports the formation of platform cultures that cast precarious gig-economy relations as necessary and enabling while obscuring the social inequalities and human suffering engendered by those arrangements. In attending to the mediation of STRs by communities and to contestations over platform meanings, politics and power relations become visible, allowing for the problematization of destructive platform configurations.

摘要

本文探讨了美国城市短租（STR）平台的文化中介作用。虽然许多 STR 倡导者强调“真实”的文化体验和对当地经济的支持，但不太明显的是，像 Airbnb 这样的 STR 可以通过将房屋变成酒店，将邻居变成陌生人来侵蚀社区。STR 平台通过加剧高档化、居民流离失所、种族歧视和减少提供服务的城市税基，严重扰乱了许多社区。与所有技术系统一样，STR 平台体现了一种塑造人类活动和关系的政治。换句话说，这些平台提供了一套用于组织实践和空间配置的脚本，照料，通过设计，朝着非个人的商业交流和社区的概念作为这种交流的资源。我认为，随着公共基础设施被吸收并重新编码为平台，新兴的整体使城市空间和服务的基于权利的市场导向正常化。该过程支持平台文化的形成，将不稳定的零工经济关系视为必要和有利的，同时掩盖这些安排造成的社会不平等和人类苦难。在参与社区对 STR 的调解和对平台意义的争论时，政治和权力关系变得可见，从而允许破坏性平台配置的问题化。新兴的整体使城市空间和服务的基于权利的市场导向正常化。该过程支持平台文化的形成，将不稳定的零工经济关系视为必要和有利的，同时掩盖这些安排造成的社会不平等和人类苦难。在参与社区对 STR 的调解和对平台意义的争论时，政治和权力关系变得可见，从而允许破坏性平台配置的问题化。新兴的整体使城市空间和服务的基于权利的市场导向正常化。该过程支持平台文化的形成，将不稳定的零工经济关系视为必要和有利的，同时掩盖这些安排造成的社会不平等和人类苦难。在参与社区对 STR 的调解和对平台意义的争论时，政治和权力关系变得可见，从而允许破坏性平台配置的问题化。