Wrong Move - 2023
Materials: Private Rental Market data of Greater London / Unity / Blender / Clojure, C# & Python
> What is more valuable to the private rental market in Greater London?
Garden, chef, chandeliers, swimmming pool, marble floors, or step free access?
> What does £275,000.00 a month for a private, non-commercial rental property say about this market?
> What value is important to a market driven by money?
Perfect, calm, quiet, peaceful, luxury, exclusive or accessible?
> How much accessible rental property exists in London?
In a market spiralling out of control, information on accessibility (even the lack of it) by the online property platforms, the estate agents and landlords is simply not worth enough money to care. This is what happens without enforced regulation, capital wins over access.
> Has technology improved accessibility or replicated the existing in-equalities?
From a collection of 1 month of rental properties within Greater London in April 2023 a presentation of what private rental markets value.
Video Alt: An angled, downward view on an opaque glass like surface which is shaped like Greater London's perimeter. The River Thames cuts through the middle of the city and spans from the far right to the far left. The surface is floating in a fog and then darkness. Motes of light, a cloudy sky and stars are slightly reflected in the surface in this night scene. Rectangular brick buildings of various proportions cover the surface, with them most dense in Central London, around the River Thames. The video plays through different keywords and grows and shrinks the buildings using lights to reflect which buildings contain those keywords. Some example keywords: Luxury, Personal, Communal, Fashionable, Trendy, Gym, Swimming Pool, Chef & Marble floors. The core point and a returning focus is the comparison with properties that mention accessibility info and everything else. 0.072% of the properties mention anything about accessibility. At one point when showing the keyword “wheelchair access” the camera does a low, flying pass through the city, trying to recreate the oppressive and overwhelming feeling of trying to find somewhere to live in this city as a wheelchair user.
A Bag of words
The analysis of property text does not consider if a property is actually wheelchair accessible or not. It simply looks for presense of the word "accessible" in a bag of words (without context of other words). Since there are only 52 properties with accessible matches its easy to check most contain the text "Not wheelchair accessible". Knowing a property is not accessible is just as valuable as knowing it is. Especially so in London where rental property moves so fast, by the time you find out if a property is accessible through phone or email its already been rented.
- Hello, Does this property have a lift? I use a wheelchair and want to check access before a visit. Thanks
- I'm sorry the property is no longer on the market.
Examples of some of the text containing access information:
- "The home has steps in the hallway and therefore may not be suitable for wheelchair users or those with limited mobility."
- "Potentially wheelchair accessible, ground floor."
- "This home requires guests to use stairs to access it and may not be suitable for wheelchair users or those with limited mobility."
Stills





