Research by Professor Roger Burrows suggests New neighbourhood information websites 'risk widening the gap between rich and poor', as xPRESS Digest reports.
A new generation of internet information services that enable house hunters to select their 'ideal' neighbourhood have the potential to widen the divide between the richest and poorest places in Britain. A report for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation warns that sophisticated new Internet-based Neighbourhood Information Systems (IBNIS) could lead to a more segregated society by not only guiding buyers to the best schools or lowest crime figures, but also helping them choose areas with the kind of existing residents they would most want as neighbours.
The BBC in Internet could widen wealth gap has a quote:
"It is entirely possible that people will start using them to sort themselves out into neighbourhoods where their neighbours are less diverse and more like themselves," said Professor Roger Burrows, who led the JRF research team from the Universities of York and Durham.
"While no one would want to prevent public access to neighbourhood information, we should recognise the potential implications for disadvantaged neighbourhoods and the people who live in them," he added.
While over at Potlatch William Davis reflects:
It strikes me that the internet is likely to do for housing markets what networked computing has done for all sorts of other markets: make them more accurate as pricing mechanisms, but also more volatile in response to shocks. For instance, technology has more or less erradicated information assymetries in bond or insurance markets, because the distribution of information is more or less perfect. Human beings still exercise judgement and develop narratives, but they no longer distribute the facts and figures, which makes for more predictable markets. The same will eventually be true for housing markets: estate agents will be responsible for developing a narrative around a certain area (as if they don't give enough chat already...) but will no longer be sources of information on the housing market, which will be entirely transparent online.
But equally, networked computing can create volatility: think of how 'hot money' flooded out of South East Asia in 1997 with unprecedented speed. The tipping point between optimism and pessimism is far more dramatic, once everyone else is more accutely aware of market tendencies, and has a speedier opportunities to act. Vicious and virtuous circles ensue. I guess what Burrows is arguing is something along these lines, that the new agility and transparency that is available to house-buyers means that those with market power can take ever better decisions, thereby further weakening the market position of those without the same power.
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