Social conflicts in the ‘short-term city’
Platform capitalism and the contentious politics of short-term rental housing regulation in Europe
Date: 3 March 2026
Time: 12:30pm - 2pm
Location: Sociology Seminar Room
Across the globe, there has been mounting discontent about the impacts of the visitor economy on urban spaces and residents, in the context of growing socio-spatial inequalities in cities.
This talk will focus on the socio-political conflicts that have arisen in European cities around the rise of short-term term rental accommodation mediated by digital platforms, based on a recently published book (jointly authored with Thomas Aguilera and Francesca Artioli) that draws on political sociology, urban sociology and comparative political economy.
The book unpacks and compares the politicisation, conflicts, policy responses and implementation challenges around the regulation of short-term rentals and digital platforms in 12 European cities (Amsterdam, Barcelona, Berlin, Brussels, Lisbon, London, Madrid, Milan, Paris, Prague, Rome, Vienna). It explains why and how city governments have, over the past 10 years, developed different forms of regulation whose scope, stringency and fields of action differ from city to city.
The book maps out the various stakeholders who have been advocating, or opposing, regulation, to show how social and economic interests have been reconfigured through new coalitions, conflicts and relationships between public authorities, corporate platforms, professional short-term rental organisations, associations of hosts, the hotel industry, residents’ associations and social movements.
This political sociology of a particular ‘object’ of urban conflict contributes to broader debates, in urban studies, on the contentious socio-political regulation of transnational capitalist firms, of human mobility flows, and of globalised and financialised housing markets.
Speaker biography:
Claire Colomb is Professor of Land Economy (Planning, Public Policy and Urban Studies) at the University of Cambridge. She has a first degree in Social and Political Sciences (Sociology Major) from Sciences Po Paris (1998), a PhD in Town Planning from University College London (2008), and an MSc in Politics (South Asia) from SOAS University of London (2024). She is elected Fellow of the UK Academy of Social Sciences (FAcSS) and chartered Member of the Royal Town Planning Institute (MRTPI). Her research interests span urban and political sociology, urban studies, urban politics, planning and public policy in an international comparative perspective. She is the Co-President (2023-2027) (with Prof. Alberta Andreotti) of the International Sociological Association (ISA)’s RC21 - Research Committee on the Sociology of Urban and Regional Development (the leading international scientific network in urban sociology and urban studies). She is the author of the book Staging the New Berlin: Place Marketing and the Politics of Urban Reinvention post-1989 (Routledge, 2011); co-author of Housing under Platform Capitalism. The Contentious Regulation of Short-Term Rentals in European Cities (University of California Press, 2025, with Thomas Aguilera and Francesca Artioli), and co-editor of Protest and Resistance in the Tourist City (Routledge, 2016, with Johannes Novy).
Access note: Historic building. The seminar room is accessed via two flights of steps/a lift and then a further two flights of stairs accessed through a heavy set of doors. There is no step-free access. The lift is not accessible to wheelchair users, but may assist with other mobility issues.