This looks like a very interesting talk, and I am sure many of you may want to attend this.

Best Regards, Ishtiaque

Syed Ishtiaque Ahmed Assistant Professor Department of Computer Science University of Toronto, ON, CA Ph: +1 647 220 3482 Skype: syed.ishtiaque.ahmed web: https://www.ishtiaque.net/ My Availability: Google Calendar Link https://calendar.google.com/calendar/embed?src=ishtiaque.uoft%40gmail.com&ctz=America%2FToronto

---------- Forwarded message --------- From: Christoph Becker christoph.becker@utoronto.ca Date: Wed, Sep 4, 2019 at 3:50 PM Subject: FW: DCI talk Sep 12 - Prof. David Wachsmuth "Data and the lack of data in the politics of the platform economy" To: Steve Easterbrook sme@cs.toronto.edu, Ishtiaque Ahmed < ishtiaque@cs.toronto.edu>

Hello Steve, hello Ishtiaque,

I think this talk is of a lot of interest to you and other folks – would you spread the word and consider coming?

And do you have any contact at the School of Cities that I could share this with?

Christoph

*From:* Christoph Becker *Sent:* September 4, 2019 3:48 PM *To:* 'ISCHOOL-FAC-REG-L@listserv.utoronto.ca' < ISCHOOL-FAC-REG-L@listserv.utoronto.ca>; phd-ischool-l@listserv.utoronto.ca *Subject:* DCI talk Sep 12 - Prof. David Wachsmuth "Data and the lack of data in the politics of the platform economy"

Dear colleagues and students,

I hope you are all having a good start into the term. At the DCI, we are hosting an exciting talk next week that I want to make sure you are aware of. Many of you will have been following the discussions around short-term rental’s impact on housing across the world and in Canada. One person who you’ll have seen cited frequently in this context is McGill’s David Wachsmuth, who has done some of the most innovative and impactful work on the impact of Airbnb. David is Canada Research Chair in Urban Governance and author of several in-depth studies on the impact of Airbnb on cities including New York, Montreal, and Toronto. He was just featured in the Star’s article on Airbnb about the province’s Local Planning Appeal Tribunal ( https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2019/08/30/new-rules-would-put-a-third-of-a... )

I have followed his work for a while both because of airbnb’s structural impact on our life and because of the innovative methods he has used to reveal it. I asked him to talk about these methods, but I’m sure the conversation will get broader than that. As Costis would say, this is also a case of ‘curation in the wild’, the theme of this year’s DCI series. We will combine a talk with a more conversational part. Please join in: Thursday Sep 12, 4pm in BL 528. Event webpage: https://wp.me/p6lxwc-Gz

*Data and the lack of data in the politics of the platform economy*

*David Wachsmuth, McGill University*

How does data structure the political economy of Airbnb, Uber, and other leading “platform economy” firms? In this presentation, I answer this question through a spatial-big-data examination of short-term rentals, relying on a complete dataset of all worldwide short-term rental activity on Airbnb and HomeAway since 2015. Platforms rely, of course, on having data, but equally crucially rely on others not having data. I discuss this two-sided nature of data availability, first of all by arguing that data should be understood as a key source of platform rents, and second by arguing that data is the key to effective platform regulation. I then provide two case studies from my ongoing research on short-term rentals to illustrate the tensions of data availability. The first is an investigation using spatial analysis of “ghost hostels” on Airbnb: apartments which have been entirely converted into clusters of private-room rentals but masquerade as a series of spare bedrooms. The second is a reconsideration of the efficacy of existing short-term rental regulations. I conclude by arguing that an increasingly central asset of platforms is control over who gets to know what they are doing, and thus that data is not just the currency of platform urbanism, but rather a medium of struggle.

*Prof. David Wachsmuth* is the Canada Research Chair in Urban Governance at McGill University, where he is also an Assistant Professor in the School of Urban Planning and an Associate Member in the Department of Geography. He directs UPGo http://upgo.lab.mcgill.ca/, the Urban Politics and Governance research group at McGill, where he leads a team of researchers investigating pressing urban governance problems related to economic development, environmental sustainability, and housing markets. He is the co-lead of the Adapting Urban Environments for the Future theme of the McGill Sustainability Systems Initiative, where he is part of a broad interdisciplinary team developing new ways of conceptualizing, measuring, and improving urban sustainability.

A major focus of his work has been explaining a transition in policy and planning from identifying the city as a global sustainability problem to identifying the city as a solution to global sustainability problems. He is one of the world’s leading experts on the impacts of short-term rental platforms such as Airbnb on cities around the world, and consults widely with municipalities and community organizations on designing appropriate regulations. Dr. Wachsmuth has published widely in top journals in urban studies, planning and geography, and his work has been covered extensively in the national and international media, including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Associated Press, and the Washington Post. He is the Early Career Editor of the journal Territory, Politics, Governance and serves on the editorial boards of the journals Urban Geography and Urban Planning.

Best,

Christoph

Prof Christoph Becker

Associate Professor, Faculty of Information, University of Toronto

- on research leave, July 2019 - June 2020 -

https://twitter.com/ChriBecker