Podcast appearances and mentions of desiree fields

Join us for an eye-opening episode as we dive into the world of urban geography and technology with Dr. Desiree Fields, an esteemed scholar, and researcher. Drawing from her extensive expertise, Dr. Fields shines a light on the tangible effects of digital platforms, uncovering the stark socio-economic disparities they bring to our cities.In this engaging conversation, we explore the real-life implications of digital technologies on urban governance and policy-making. Dr. Fields emphasizes the need to understand how algorithms, data-driven decision-making, and smart city initiatives shape our communities, perpetuating inequalities in the distribution of crucial resources.Follow along as we explore the real-life consequences of digital platforms, from housing challenges and affordability issues to technological inequalities faced by marginalized communities. Leilani, Fredrik, & Dr. Fields discuss the need for inclusive policies that address the negative impacts of digital platforms, promote equitable access to technology, and prioritize the well-being of all urban residents. Listen in to gain insights on the impacts of digital platforms and discover how we can foster a more inclusive and equitable future for our cities.Check out Dr. Fields' paper of the same name: "Automated Landlord: Digital Technologies and Post-crisis Financial Accumulation" and her other work on technology and financialization here.Support the show

Recorded on April 27, 2022, this panel discussion brought together members of the UC Berkeley Social Science Matrix Research Team on Digital Transformations in Property and Development to discuss how state, corporations, and grassroots actors are employing digital technologies to remake global land, housing, and property. Panelists included Hilary Faxon, Ciriacy-Wantrup Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management at UC Berkeley; Elizabeth Resor, PhD student in the UC Berkeley School of Information; Julien Migozzi, Research Associate in the School of Geography and the Environment at the University of Oxford; Luis F. Alvarez León, Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography, Dartmouth College; and Jovanna Rosen, Assistant Professor of Public Policy at Rutgers University-Camden. The panel was moderated by Desiree Fields, Assistant Professor of Geography and Global Metropolitan Studies at UC Berkeley. The event was co-sponsored by Global Metropolitan Studies and the Network for a New Political Economy (N2PE).  

In this episode, Professor Michael Watts interviews Desiree Fields, an assistant professor of Geography and Global Metropolitan Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. Fields' research explores the financial technologies, market devices, and historical and geographic contingencies that make it possible to treat housing as a financial asset, and how this process is contested at the urban scale. At the heart of her work is an interest in how economic and transformations unevenly restructure urban space and social relations, with a particular concern for how urban struggles for justice coalesce around these changes. Within this broadly defined area, she examines two transformations as they relate to housing, a crucial vector of urban inequality and terrain of grassroots political contestation. First, the shift to a finance-oriented political economy; second, the growing global reach and power of digital platforms. She is currently studying how platform business models are being developed for rental housing markets in San Francisco, London, and Berlin, and how activists are developing counter-platforms in pursuit of housing justice. A recent project investigated the emergence of corporate landlords in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, their development of new financial assets backed by rent checks, and how the tools of the post-2008 tech boom aided this process. Fields has published widely on the relationships among housing financialization, movements for justice, and digital platforms in journals like Economic Geography; Housing, Theory, and Society; International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, and; Urban Studies. She also regularly publishes reports, working papers, and essays with community groups like Right to the City and Greater Manchester Housing Action, and in venues ranging from the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco to Public Books. The National Science Foundation, British Academy, and Independent Social Research Foundation have supported her work.

In this episode: - Desiree Fields, Lecturer in the Department of Geography at The University of California, Berkeley, talks to Julie Lawson from Housing, Theory and Society about how digital platforms are changing housing markets and how housing researchers can get to grips with the logics underpinning these platforms. - Beth Watts sits down with Hal Pawson and Ed Ferrari, the incoming Editors at Housing Studies and then Dallas Rogers from the International Journal of Housing Policy catches up with the outgoing editor, Richard Ronald from the University of Amsterdam. Richard talks about an upcoming Special Issue that brings a new approach to how we think about multiple property ownership, and we hear about the changing publication landscape in housing studies and pick up some publishing tips for Early Career Researchers from Hal, Ed and Richard. Housing Journal Podcast is a collaboration of the leading housing journals; International Journal of Housing Policy, Housing Studies, and Housing Theory and Society. Subscribe to the podcast: itunes.apple.com/au/podcast/housi…d1442996022?mt=2 Follow us on Twitter: @IJHPEditors for the International Journal of Housing Policy @HousingJournal for Housing Studies @HousingTheory for Housing Theory and Society

When a new tech innovation comes to town, we can't always know what its impacts will be before it floods the market. And yet, increasingly, some city governments and residents are having a particularly strong reaction to certain kinds of tech startups: Shut. It. Down. Is that the right reaction? Why exactly is that our impulse? And does it even matter what kind of tech we're talking about? On this episode, we look at what happens when a new tech idea creeps into one of the most fundamental parts of society: Housing. We examine the case of tech start-up Rentberry, a rental bidding platform, in Seattle.  Molly talks with Desiree Fields, an expert on the relationship between digital platforms and housing at the University of Sheffield; and Molly and Jim both chat with Nick Carr, acclaimed author of many books on the unexpected ways tech is messing with our lives. 

This is a story about how the financial industry and governments turned a housing foreclosure crisis for everyday Americans into a financial opportunity for institutional real estate investors. And like all good stories, it involves the management of the new post-GFC housing asset class with digital technologies and algorithms. Say hello to The Automated Landlord. We talk to Desiree Fields about a new housing asset class that emerged from other side of the GFC in the United States. The period leading up to the GFC saw the banks reducing their lending standards for home loans in the United States. The financial industry bundled up these loans into mortgages backed securities and sold them off to investors around the world. And in a now familiar tale, this eventually lead to the subprime mortgage crisis and the GFC. When people could no longer afford to pay their mortgages, a lot of these properties wound their way through the process of foreclosure and finally settled on the balance sheets of the banks. The United States government famously bailed out some of the banks by buying up their so-called ‘toxic debt’. But according to Desiree, what emerged on the other side of the GFC was a new housing asset class that was underwritten by two opposing forces. On the one side, the banks were sitting on a lot of property and financial institutional don’t like to own or manage physical assets, like family homes. On the other side, Americans were having a hard time getting mortgages after the crisis because of tighter mortgage lending standards, and many were turning to renting. This created the ideal conditions for property investors, who thought, “ah ha… we can buy these properties for a low price, we can rent them out to people, who are kind of locked out of the homeownership market”, says Desiree. But before the institutional investors could bundle these houses up to create the new housing asset class, the government and the financial institutions needed to sell the idea of the single family rental to the public. Today, the management of this new post-GFC housing asset class is increasingly undertaken with digital technologies and algorithms. Desiree Fields is an urban geographer who theorises the rise of financial markets, actors and imperatives as a contemporary process of global urban change. With a particular focus on housing, Desiree is interested in how the link between real estate and finance is being reconstructed since the 2007-2008 global financial crisis, how residents experience this process, and its implications for housing policy and advocacy. https://cityroadpod.org/2018/02/01/automated-landlord-2/

This is a story about how the financial industry and governments turned a housing foreclosure crisis for everyday Americans into a financial opportunity for institutional real estate investors. And like all good stories, it involves the management of the new post-GFC housing asset class with digital technologies and algorithms. Say hello to The Automated Landlord. We talk to Desiree Fields about a new housing asset class that emerged from other side of the GFC in the United States. The period leading up to the GFC saw the banks reducing their lending standards for home loans in the United States. The financial industry bundled up these loans into mortgages backed securities and sold them off to investors around the world. And in a now familiar tale, this eventually lead to the subprime mortgage crisis and the GFC. When people could no longer afford to pay their mortgages, a lot of these properties wound their way through the process of foreclosure and finally settled on the balance sheets of the banks. The United States government famously bailed out some of the banks by buying up their so-called ‘toxic debt’. But according to Desiree, what emerged on the other side of the GFC was a new housing asset class that was underwritten by two opposing forces. On the one side, the banks were sitting on a lot of property and financial institutional don’t like to own or manage physical assets, like family homes. On the other side, Americans were having a hard time getting mortgages after the crisis because of tighter mortgage lending standards, and many were turning to renting. This created the ideal conditions for property investors, who thought, “ah ha… we can buy these properties for a low price, we can rent them out to people, who are kind of locked out of the homeownership market”, says Desiree. But before the institutional investors could bundle these houses up to create the new housing asset class, the government and the financial institutions needed to sell the idea of the single family rental to the public. Today, the management of this new post-GFC housing asset class is increasingly undertaken with digital technologies and algorithms. Desiree Fields is an urban geographer who theorises the rise of financial markets, actors and imperatives as a contemporary process of global urban change. With a particular focus on housing, Desiree is interested in how the link between real estate and finance is being reconstructed since the 2007-2008 global financial crisis, how residents experience this process, and its implications for housing policy and advocacy.