Beyond the hype: Digital transformations in global land, housing, and property

Abstract

This theme issue investigates how 21st-century digital innovations are changing the nature and value of land, housing, and property. Contributors bring together an array of cases to understand how digitization is remaking land and housing on a global scale and, in turn, how existing property relations structure digital transformations in particular geographies. In this introduction to the theme issue, we outline how hype can be used as an analytical entry point to characterize the collection’s contribution, demonstrating how hype elides unequal relations of land and labor while stoking speculation in immovable property, even as it creates new markets for less tangible assets—whether rental data or virtual plots—that usher in new global connections and familiar market dynamics.