Urban grey markets: Rental sector transformation under platform capitalism
Presentation by Amber Howard, Postdoctoral Researcher, University of Bristol (IUR Visiting Researcher 2025)
This event will be hybrid in Niagara C1029 and on Zoom (register for the Zoom link here).
Abstract
The convergence of acute urban housing pressures, intensified commodification of rental sectors, and digital platform development has created fertile ground for the expansion and reconfiguration of rental housing, particularly in urban areas. ‘Grey markets’ – rental arrangements that either operate outside of formal rental housing regulations, standards and letting practices, or violate them – have become increasingly important in the provision or urban housing. Despite this, these subsectors remain largely absent from mainstream data sources, and therefore disconnected from mainstream literature on rental sectors. As a result, we know relatively little about them.
This seminar will share the early workings of a proposal seeking to explore the production of urban grey markets under processes of platform capitalism. Its aspirations are three-fold. First, it will investigate how grey markets operate between providers and consumers, altering the distribution of precarity and power that plays out in various ways. Second, it will assess how digital infrastructures and property platforms reconfigure these dynamics, transforming the scale, scope and reach of grey markets. Third, it will analyse how they take different forms across contexts, shaped by policy environments, institutional frameworks, and political priorities, both on national and local levels.