How digitalisation influences neighbourhood change

Abstract

Despite much research on the societal and individual consequences of new digital communication technologies, little attention has been paid to the neighbourhood as a locus of impact. This paper investigates how the growing influence of social media and real estate platforms will likely shape the process of neighbourhood change and the geographic distribution of population and financial resources. The investigation is grounded on a model of neighbourhood dynamics based on flows of households and property investments across metropolitan space, which are guided by imperfect information about housing market opportunities. Decision-makers receive information passively (increasingly through local and non-local social media) and when uncertainty about course of action becomes intolerable they turn to active search (increasingly involving online real estate platforms). Based on this conceptual framing, the article synthesises extant research to draw implications on how the expanding use of these new technologies is affecting neighbourhoods by changing the composition of decision-makers and the information that underpins their decisions. It concludes that digitalisation reduces neighbourhoods residential stability, social capital and diversity, while rendering their dwellings less well-maintained and more expensive.