Data Stories Workshop: The Data Politics of Planning and Housing

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On the 2nd and 3rd of September 2024 a group of academics, practitioners and activists gathered at Maynooth University for a two-day workshop to examine the data politics shaping and underpinning housing and planning. With material drawing from case studies on Ireland, Australia, the US, UK, Kenya, South Africa and the Netherlands, the presentations featured a variety of regional perspectives.

Professor Rob Kitchin opened the workshop with an introduction to the Data Stories project. He discussed key points of data politics, and key ‘data debates’ relating to housing, planning His opening was followed by five themed sessions: 1) Property information; 2) Planning; 3) Financialisation, platforms, residential/commercial real estate; 4) Renting, landlords, evictions, vacancy; and 5) Data activism and counter-data activism. We concluded the workshop with a panel discussion summarising overarching issues/themes of the workshop.

This blog post outlines key topics that arose throughout the workshop, structured around each of the themed sessions and the final panel discussion.  

Day 1 

Property information  

In the session, Dr Mariana Reyes presented the work of herself, Dr Dennis Muthama and Prof Ayona Datta on the development control aspect of the planning system in Kenya, a system in transition after the introduction of automation. While the automation process is billed as improving efficiency, reducing corruption, speeding up the planning process and increasing investment, the transition has not been simple due to developers using multiple strategies to avoid planning processes, including constructing buildings at night. This presentation was followed by Dr Elsa Noterman, who discussed the concept of ‘data deferral’ through recounting the arduous process of submitting a freedom of information act request. This concept assists in naming a variety of strategies that hinder access to what is ostensibly ‘public’ data, as those seeking to access the data are continuously denied, redirected and delayed.

Dr Daan Bossuyt examined the processes and techniques resulting in the privatisation of public property through analysing how the Dutch Central Real Estate Agency and the Ministry of Defence deal with public real estate. Contrary to expectations, Dr Bossuyt found that the sale of public land held by the Ministry of Defence is not oriented towards the financialised nature of assets, but rather focused on cost metrics and replacement value. This focus leads to attention on short-term outcomes and avoiding high maintenance costs. Finally in this session, Dr Juliette Davret presented the work of herself, Dr Samuel Mutter, Dr Carla Kayanan, Prof Rob Kitchin and Mel Galley. Dr Davret examined processes of commodification of open data, considering the implications of open data being scraped, cleaned, put together with other datasets by private companies and then sold – sometimes back to those who originally produced the data.

Planning

Through an analysis of a metropolitan strategic plan, Prof Stephanie Dühr examined the political framing of data needs within such plans. Questions that arose included – what data is needed to meaningfully evaluate strategic policies? How does this compare with the datasets that are already available? Can the mismatch between the two point to instances of ‘policy based evidence making’? Then, Dr Carla Kayanan discussed work done along with Dr Juliette Davret, Dr Samuel Mutter and Prof Rob Kitchin on the data mobilities and data politics of planning. By examining the evolution of Ireland’s data ecosystem, the presentation sought to move beyond questions of inequalities that arise from access to technology, to consider how data practices and day–to–day operations demonstrate alternative forms of inequality and power dynamics.

Continuing the discussion of strategic planning, Dr Claire Daniel considered the unintended consequences of open planning data and analytics. Whilst the open data movement began with (and continues to espouse) the values of transparency and citizen empowerment – this does not capture the full view of open data. In reality, it can be difficult to use, invoke neoliberal models of individual agency and have unintended harmful consequences. Dr Daniel considered whether the use of open data by intermediaries, such as consultants, in effect makes the planning processes less transparent. Finally for the planning session, Dr Scott Markley discussed the rise of ‘municipal data solutions startups’ – startup companies offering a supposed solution to the problems arising from the highly fragmented, scattered, vague and confusing zoning system in the US. These companies are proliferating, claiming to, as one company’s tagline states, ‘empower the property industry’. The data these companies produce appear to be replete with errors and inconsistencies, as is the source data they are working with, due to zoning boundaries being poorly digitised and sourced from different places, at times not matching up. It is not clear how companies handle these issues, and someone, somewhere in the company must make (potentially arbitrary) decisions about where a boundary falls, or how a region is zoned. In some of these cases, as Dr Markley said, ‘to make a decision is to become the authority’.

Financialisation, platforms, residential/commercial real estate

Kick starting this session, Dr Julien Migozzi discussed how urban housing markets drive digital capitalism, and how digital capitalism upholds wealth inequalities and segregation within the context of global real estate networks. Dr Migozzi considered this through three key dimensions: legal, algorithmic and financial. Looking at this through public facing housing property portals in South Africa, Dr Migozzi found these portals recode housing inequalities, recycling apartheid boundaries for neighbourhood boundaries. PropTech, he argues, is RentTech – it fosters a traditional rentier model through the market, creating algorithmic rents from data services and software, and brings housing into the information economy. Next, Dr Sophia Maalsen discussed working with social media content creators to advocate for tenants’ rights, research done with Drs Peta Wolifson and Dallas Rogers. Dr Maalsen considered the difficulty of navigating multiple relationships with non-academic peers, as well as external partners, alongside the benefits of sharing academic research through storytelling on non-traditional platforms such as TikTok and Instagram. These considerations were made in the context of a project considering the (im)possibility of tenants having as much information about their landlords, as landlords have about tenants. The project advertised a fictional app, Know Your Landlord, that would allow tenants to vet their landlords.

Then Dr Maedhbh Nic Lochlainn discussed the transformation of Dublin’s Docklands drawing on Erin McElroy’s theory of siliconization. Examining the history of the area through various data sources, Dr Nic Lochlainn recounted the increasing financialisation of the area in the particular context of how Ireland was marketed as a safe, secure, desirable, English speaking location to invest in. In continuing to examine how the increasing financialisation of the city has been, and continues to be possible, Dr Nic Lochlainn found that doing this critical urban research ‘is partly like solving a crime that happened long ago, and partly like watching a very long and very slow car crash’. Closing out the day Dr Richard Waldron discussed work done in collaboration with Dr Declan Redmond and Dr Bernie O’Donoghue-Hynes examining the intricacies of understanding emergency accommodation use patterns of homeless families in Ireland. This is not straightforward work, as how this is recorded is not consistent (for example, in some cases children are not recorded at all, or are not recorded as part of a family unit so appear separately). Dr Waldron considered whether administrative data from emergency accommodation providers assist in monitoring presentation by families.

After a delightful dinner at Maynooth’s Pugin Hall and some well-earned rest, attendees gathered again bright and early for Day 2 of the workshop.

Day 2

Renting, landlords, evictions, vacancy

Dr Rachel Slaymaker opened up the second day of the workshop discussing the changing data landscape in the Irish Private Rental Sector (PRS). Slaymaker demonstrated how two new metrics included in the data collected by the Residential Tenancies Board (RTB) can help better understand trends in PRS. However, Slaymaker cautioned that certain challenges remain in the data collection and analysis process, such as frequent housing policy changes and slow administrative changes related to data collection. Dr Erin McElroy then brought our focus to the various types of data methods tenant and housing organisers employ, mostly in San Francisco but also in other cities across the US and the globe, to identify corporate ownership trends and organise multi-building tenant associations and unions. McElroy’s presentation served as a powerful demonstration of the role of collective resistance against evictions, and how data stories can highlight issues of displacement contribute to resistance. An existing challenge to Ireland’s inability to address housing availability is the flattened categorisation of what constitutes as ‘vacant’ in Irish policy. Dr Cian O’Callaghan and Dr Kathleen Stokes grapple with this issue in their research. Their presentation provided a critical reading of how vacancy is understood in Ireland and the different narratives that emerge based on these interpretations. Providing additional empirics on the role of policy shaping the data landscape, Prof Michelle Norris closed off the session with findings from the analysis of Ireland’s Social Housing Assessments Report (SSHA) and Housing Assistant Payment (HAP) data sets from 2016 – 2022. The work, undertaken alongside Dr Cliodhna Bairéad, charts the increased reliance on data to inform policy, but the problematic that emerges in relation to data analysis in a period when housing and its accompanying policy is politicised, scrutinised and contested. Prof Norris was at pains to stress the troublesome issues that emerge with data analysis when fickle policy can change the direction of collection.

Data activism and counter-data actions  

In the final session, Dr Juliette Davret and Dr Samuel Mutter presented work completed with artists Joan Somers Donnelly and Augustine O’Donoghue, outlining similarities and divergences between the tactics of direct action and lobbying as data activism. They discussed the potential of these two approaches to resist neoliberal urbanism and defend the right to housing, and considered whether social movements could be thought of as data infrastructures. Wonyoung So, Asya Aizman and Chenab Navalkha presented on work completed with Catherine D’Ignazio, examining the motivations behind various housing data projects and the possibility of making data useful. They found some actors take a position of ‘strategic neutrality’, portraying a neutral position in order to be taken seriously in certain circles, and to have greater potential for influence (e.g. with policy makers). They called for more equitable and justice oriented housing data infrastructures.

Dr Danielle Hynes examined the implications of increasing datafication of processes of participation for social housing tenants, and considered whether datafication impedes the possibility of political voice and genuine listening for tenants. Finally, Jillian Crandall presented their research, examining how dispossession, displacement, and disenfranchisement of low-income Black communities is perpetuated through housing speculation and financialisation. Jillian outlined how cadastral mapping has caused disaster – echoing the findings of Dr Migozzi in outlining how cadastral mapping is tied to redlining, inequitable taxation and has been used as a tool of colonialism.

Final panel

The workshop concluded with a panel discussion between Prof Rob Kitchin, Dr Daithi Downey, Prof Michelle Norris, Dr Sophia Maalsen and Dr Erin McElroy. The panel members reflected on some themes repeated throughout the workshop, and then all attendees engaged in discussion around these themes. The discussion touched on:

  • The fragmentation and harmonisation of data.
  • The importance of understanding the contexts of power.
  • Access to, usability and translatability of data.
  • Potential harms of open/opening data.
  • The inescapability of certain data infrastructures: Amazon, Google, and the contradictions that throws up when undertaking anti-capitalist data projects.
  • The limited nature of our workshop internationally – the majority of research (with some exceptions) presented was based in Ireland, the UK, US or Australia.
  • Digitalisaiton and datafication are processes that are incomplete and still underway in Ireland, and different departments are at different stages in this process.
  • The tension between a simple narrative that can form part of lobbying/communicating a message effectively, and fully telling a nuanced story, or communicating all the nuances related to a dataset.
  • Instances of people strategically using numbers that they know are not correct in order to further their argument.

Finally, many questions were considered as part of this discussion, including the following:

  • What could community control of data look like?
  • What problems that we see as data problems are new/unique to data, and what already existed but are easy to chalk up to issues of contemporary technology?
  • Within the activist realm especially – what are the affective dimensions of this data work? How does energy and community grow? How does this relate to datafied processes? Is this something that can’t be datafied?
  • What are the different genres of (housing) data? How are data stories told?

The Data Stories team would like to thank all the presenters for their insightful presentations. We are also grateful to the Irish stakeholders who took time out of their busy schedules to attend and contribute to developing the conversations. A special thank you is very much reserved for Orla Dunne, who dealt with all the travel and lodging logistics. Over the coming months, we will compile many of the presentations into an edited book. Keep an eye out! For now, most of the presenters have given us permission to share their slides with the public.

Presentation Slides

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