AI-generated summary
Anita Roth of Airbnb highlights a pressing challenge: by 2050, cities worldwide will need between 200 million and 1 billion new homes to accommodate a projected global population of 9.7 billion. A major issue exacerbating housing shortages is gentrification, where wealthier individuals move into central neighborhoods lacking sufficient services, driving up housing prices and displacing long-term residents. Jens Schulte-Bockum from MTN Group warns that demographic shifts combined with uneven wealth distribution could drastically reshape urban social dynamics.
To address housing access, innovative solutions such as hybrid working models are gaining traction. Remote work reduces the necessity for people to live in expensive urban centers. Kyle Corkum, CEO of LStar Ventures, notes that new paradigms in transportation, accommodation, and work—exemplified by companies like Uber, Airbnb, and WeWork—have the potential to transform cities. Ultimately, as urban populations grow, proactive policies are essential to promote social cohesion and ensure affordable housing access for disadvantaged groups, helping cities remain inclusive and sustainable amidst rapid change.
The cities of the future face the challenge of access to housing and gentrification.
According to Anita Roth, head of policy research at Airbnb, it is estimated that cities will need between 200 and 1 billion new homes by 2050, when the UN expects the world’s population to reach 9.7 billion souls. Gentrification, which consists of wealthy citizens settling in central neighborhoods, but little equipped with services or with some urban abandonment, produces an increase in the price of housing and makes the natural inhabitants of such neighborhoods have to move away or relocate. Gentrification happens because people are continually looking for better and cheaper places to live.”The combination of large demographic trends and the distribution of wealth can lead to a radical change in the social development of cities,” says Jens Schulte-Bockum, head of operations at South African telecommunications company MTN Group and patron of the Bankinter Innovation Foundation.
Some of the solutions to access to housing go through hibric-working, as it contributes to more and more professionals working remotely, so that they do not need to move to large cities. “Uber, Airbnb, Wework… We are creating new paradigms for transport, accommodation or work that can transform cities,” says Kyle Corkum, co-founder and CEO of developer LStar Ventures.
If more and more people are going to live in cities, it is necessary to carry out active policies that promote social cohesion, facilitating access to housing for the most disadvantaged groups.
Directora de Policy Research en Airbnb
