Fairbnb

The increase of short-stay apartments in Amsterdam has affected the city, causing nuisance in neighbourhoods and a rise in housing prices, where the market was already inflated. Despite Amsterdam’s regulation and the efforts to pursue illegal rentals, the enforcement of current regulation is impossible because companies like Airbnb refuse to provide the data of those hosts with illegal apartments.

We believe that any sharing economy platforms need to be transparent and accountable in order to be advantageous to citizens and the city. For this reason, we worked towards creating a 'Fairbnb' platform.

What is Fairbnb?

Fairbnb is a movement that seeks to encourage vacation rentals that comply with the principles of a fair, non-extractive and collaborative economy.

Some of the key questions are: How could these activities be managed to be beneficial to local initiatives and be kept from extracting values only for investors and speculators? How could they be managed so that visitors are encouraged to stay in those areas where they are not a disturbance, but beneficial to the neighbourhood?

Waag hosted a series of seven public events in which we worked towards a Fairbnb.

These were organised by Sito Veracruz, Urban & Smart Cities Consultant and Indre Leonaviciute, Human centered multimedia student from the University of Amsterdam.