Skip to main content

Search

(Non)Sharing Economies

mwenda

I am interested in the Macro scale and the macro effects evident at a city-scale level. I remember visiting New Orleans in 2016 and vividly remember seeing several signs with a large 'No' symbol drawn and the text  "neighbors not tourists" printed on the sign. Recently, as part of my research into New Orleans, I stumbled on this piece by the Guardian on how short-term rentals through platforms such as Airbnb are leading to gentrification in New Orleans. Highlighted in the article is how several Airbnb hosts do not reside on the listed premises. I remember the place we stayed, as we were a large party, having a 617 prefix number.  The prefix stood out as I knew the code 617 represented Boston and was curious what someone with ties to Boston doing in New Orleans as a host. In a similar vein, the article also highlights the problem of absentee hosts, hosts who acquire property for the sole purpose of setting up the property as an Airbnb site.

To tackle the problem, one councilwoman passed a law that required any Airbnb hosts in residential zones to have a homestead exemption verifying they live on site. In this case, a city-wide measure was taken and passed into law affecting the micro. It is common to have one host having several properties in different residential areas in New Orleans. From a technical standpoint, it could be viewed that Airbnb as technology is developed and presented as a scalable product. With no limits to reproducibility. Meanwhile, real-life discontinuities exist in the form of such homestead laws. It is impossible to live in more than one homestead at the same time. In other words, the concept of the human is not scalable.
Likewise, neither is cultural heritage. The city of New Orleans positions its self as a city with great cultural heritage. It is through this heritage that they seek to draw more and more tourists. How do cities think of scaling up successful initiatives and how do they navigate the political, social, ecological, or economic entanglements. At what point is downscaling necessary? Is culture scalable?

[1]https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/mar/13/new-orleans-airbnb-trem…

QUOTIDIAN ANTHROPOCENES: NEW ORLEANS

mwenda

I am currently a Ph.D. student interested in exploring the entanglements of scale, especially in the context of environmental sensing.  My primary research seeks to engage in discourse around the value of scalability that is presented as inherent in computation. While the term scale-up is almost synonymous with computation, sustainability; on the other hand, is known as a problem of scale. Take for example, the discourse on climate change where the actions required to combat climate change requires interventions at different scales. In this context, demanding changes at individual scales while no corresponding changes happen at larger scales would not yield much.

In looking at New Orleans, I came across a video on IoT cameras developed by Cisco, the networking giant. What struck me other than the apparent rise of surveillance capitalism was the narrative of one of the police officers highlighted in the video. The officer mentions that it is not feasible for the city to place police officers on every corner. In the context of scale, the police officer is implying that cameras are useful as they extend the police officer's ability to surveil the city. In other words, cameras and the networks help scale up the police officer, making it possible for them to cover a larger scale than before.

One of the police officers, in the video, also mentions that New Orleans is a tourist and hospitable town. Which brings up the question at any given period, what scale of visitors can New Orleans support without stretching the city's resources? Several other cities in the world have made efforts to limit visitors, in order not stretch city resources. The recent crisis at Mount Everest is an excellent example of what happens when resources are stretched to accommodate the increasing number of local visitors. How could something of this nature similarly impact New Orleans?

At the communication center where the video feed is analyzed, the IT manager provides reasons as to why they chose Cisco as their vendor. One of the reasons he gives was that the system is easily expandable, allowing the ability to scale out/up the network.

pece_annotation_1475201124

tamar.rogoszinski

This policy applies to any persons who are considered refugees. Because this was after the Second World War, it was at first limited to people fleeing within Europe. Since then, its scope has widened and applies to people fleeing persecution and can be used today with respect to the current refugee problem. 

pece_annotation_1475439224

tamar.rogoszinski
  1. I looked into the currently immigration and visa laws in France and found that when it comes to people seeking asylum, French law recognizes rights to asylum or political refugee status for a foreign-born person. They also use the rules of the Geneva Convention to come to this conclusion.
  2. I looked at a comparison of Obamacare and the French health system. One aspect of the French healthcare system that would be relevant to currently public health issues in the US (ie, epipen costs) is the presence of an organization called the CNAMTS that monitor spending for services across the country. This organization can reduce the price of a drug or service (if it recognizes that the spending for it is too high) in order to make it more accessible.
  3. I researched how France is dealing with the Syrian refugee crisis. Despite terrorist attacks that have occurred in France due to members of the Syria-and-Iraq-based terror group ISIL, the French president promised to take in 30,000 refugees by 2017.

pece_annotation_1475605395

tamar.rogoszinski

With a very long bibliography, it can be assumed that a lot of research was put into this paper in order to strengthen the argument. The authors clearly did a lot of research, citing not only governmental sources, but other researchers as well. Variety in the articles present in the bibliography can be seen.

pece_annotation_1478039577

tamar.rogoszinski
  1. "The sufferers and their administrators were also supported by the nonsuffering citizens, who paid a 12 percent tax on their salaries to support compensations"
  2. "Today, approximately 8.9 percent of Ukraine is considered contaminated."
  3. "When I returned in 2000 to Kyiv to conduct further research, I discovered that cur- rent democratic politicians, many of whom drafted the original compensation laws as sovereignty-minded nationalists, now saw the Cherobyl compensation system as a dire mistake that has "accidentally" reproduced a socialist-like population."
  4. "Specific cases illustrate how these economic and state processes, combined with the technical dynamics already described, have laid the groundwork for such "counter- politics."29 Citizens have come to depend on obtainable technologies and legal proce- dures to gain political recognition and admission to some form of welfare inclusion."

pece_annotation_1479072917

tamar.rogoszinski

Dr. Good primarily used case studies and interviews to help shape the argument and show how narratives of illness are shaped by many aspects of a person's life, specifically their culture. He also used statistics and other research to analyze these interviews and create a stronger understanding.