Dr Tatiana Moreira de Souza, a lecturer in Planning in the Department of Geography and Planning, has received the Sir Peter Hall Award for Excellence in Research and Engagement from the Royal Town and Planning Institute (RTPI), jointly with Professor Claire Colomb from UCL, for a report they co-authored on short term rental regulations across Europe.
The RTPI award recognises high-quality research that is likely to make an immediate impact beyond academia. Dr Moreira de Souza was presented with the award by RTPI’s President Dr Wei Yang at the UK-Ireland Planning Research Conference 2022.
Produced with the support of the Property Research Trust, the report compares regulations to control short-term rentals in 12 large European cities including London, Paris, and Barcelona.
It found that the regulations vary widely taking multiple forms and degrees of stringency, ranging from relative laissez-faire to strict control. Difficulty in enforcing regulations was a common theme across all 12 cities, mainly due to the reluctance of corporate platforms to release precise data on individual short-term rentals. Access to this data is key for planning policy and enforcement in this field.
The study was led by Professor Colomb from UCL’s Bartlett School of Planning and the report, ‘Regulating short-term rentals. Platform-based property rentals in European cities: the policy debates’ can be found here: https://www.propertyresearchtrust.org/short_term_rentals.html
Dr Moreira de Souza gave evidence to the House of Lords Built Environment Committee earlier this year on short term rental regulations issues. You can view this here: https://committees.parliament.uk/work/6503/shortterm-lettings/