This paper scrutinises the effects that the financialisation of land has on the land use planning process. Although finance is increasingly penetrating not only real estate but also land planning and ...development, there are few in-depth case studies describing and analysing this process. Contemporary urban development is characterised by the clustering of investments, the relocation of projects into peripheral areas and an instrumental approach to planning. These trends are expressions of a change in the development process, characterised by the increased detachment between land use planning processes at the local level and financial investor logics located at other scales. We call this the de-contextualisation of land capital. An in-depth analysis of the internal economic mechanics of an urban project in the Milan area is provided to illustrate these trends. We conclude by reflecting on the challenges that the conditions of financialised land capital pose to local and national governments.
In the literature, it is argued that the Fordist regime of accumulation has gradually been replaced by a finance-driven regime. We argue that the contemporary regime in the UK could be best ...characterized as a finance- and real estate-driven regime. Like Fordism, the new regime is thought to fuel the economy by propping up consumption, but unlike the Fordist regime it does not seek to do so through job creation or high and steady wages, but rather through private money creation and real estate price inflation. The reliance of the economy on private housing debt rather than public debt—‘privatized Keynesianism’ (Crouch, 2011)—is a key element of the new regime. The state has not simply facilitated the rise of the new regime but has put its faith in the financial and real estate sectors—both residential and commercial—to prop up the economy. Different layers of the UK government have favoured real estate development and investment, in part enabled by disintermediation and lobbying. For a while, the finance- and real estate-driven regime seemed to create economic growth. Although the regime appeared fragile during the financial crisis of 2007–2009, the neoliberal mode and its accompanying finance- and real estate-driven regime were saved and the dominance of finance and real estate have deepened. This paper is based on the analysis of publicly available statistics, policy and advocacy documents and 39 in-depth interviews with real estate professionals.
Belgium is a typical homeowner society where homeownership is not only the largest but also the 'normalized' form of tenure. The origins of the Belgian homeownership ideology go back to the early ...days of industrialization but the discourses surrounding the ideology are reproduced in the 21
st
century. Our investigation of the largest region of Belgium, Flanders, reveals four main homeownership discourses: affordable homeownership, conservative housing finance, asset-based welfare and tenure neutrality. With a nod to Kemeny's 'The Really Big Trade-Off Between Homeownership and Welfare', we demonstrate that there is also a 'Really Big Contradiction' between the discourses that support homeownership as the 'normalized' form of tenure in Belgium and the reality of declining affordability, progressively less conservative housing finance, the fractions and inequalities of housing-based wealth, and the lack of tenure neutrality. In short, we argue that the financialized homeownership model is undermining the stability of homeowner realities and practices, but not so much the discourses and ideologies that support and reinforce the homeowner society.
Despite the growing power of finance over cities and housing, the relationships between finance, climate risk management, and urban governance have yet to be examined from a climate gentrification ...perspective. Putting the practices of a wide array of property finance stakeholders in conversation with the foundational concept of the rent gap, we identify two real estate rent dynamics that are emerging against the prospect of climate-driven urban restructuring: risk rents, or new forms of value capture crafted against future risk, and rent at risk, or the anticipated loss of rent due to risk. We in turn illustrate how climate risk-rent dynamics constitute new or intensified processes of gentrification in Greater Miami, Florida. Through three vignettes, we show how configurations of real estate and finance climate risk management produce variegated yet interrelated opportunities for devaluation and revaluation, displacement, and downgrading. Such strategies push the gentrification frontier into new physical as well as institutional spaces. The Greater Miami story underscores the need for new forms of knowledge, coalition building, and integrated urban climate risk management practices that directly confront underlying financial drivers of housing and spatial injustice in risky real estate markets.
Javier Moreno's "Residential Accumulation: A Political Economy Framework" does a great job at distilling how two opposite logics - capitalist production and rent extraction - are at work in housing ...markets. What I am missing from the framework is room for noise, for variation and variegation, for an 'and+and' story, for allowing geographical and market specificity, for different expressions of residential accumulation rather than the assumption that specific forms are the 'normal' or pure forms of capitalist accumulation. Many assumptions and generalisations are made. Some of these may be necessary to construct the ideal type of housing provision under capitalism, but there is a point where the ideal type becomes a specific rather than a general or abstracted type, that is, specific to one set of capitalist relations rather than generalizing from a common, or even majority, form of capitalist relations.
The Financialization of A Social Housing Provider Aalbers, Manuel B.; Loon, Jannes Van; Fernandez, Rodrigo
International journal of urban and regional research,
July 2017, 2017-07-00, 20170701, Letnik:
41, Številka:
4
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Why does a social housing provider bet on interest rate fluctuations? This article presents a case study of the financialization of both housing and the state. Social housing in the Netherlands is ...provided by non‐profit housing associations that have since 1989 been set apart from the state. Many associations started developing housing for profit, borrowing on global capital markets or buying derivatives. Whereas other semi‐public institutions moved into the world of finance due to financial constraints, housing associations did so to capitalize on the possibilities offered by their asset‐rich portfolios. Vestia, the largest of them all, is an extreme––but not exceptional––case of what can happen when public goals are left to be realized by inadequately supervised and poorly managed private organizations. As a result of gambling on derivatives, Vestia had to be bailed out to the tune of over 2 billion euros. To recoup the losses, housing was sold off and rents were raised. Almost half of Dutch housing associations used derivatives, although most refrained from using them purely speculatively. The changes in the housing sector that led to its financialization cannot be separated from the wider financialization of the state.
Financialization can be characterized as capital switching from the primary, secondary or tertiary circuit to the quaternary circuit of capital. Housing is a central aspect of financialization. The ...financialization of mortgage markets demands that not just homes but also homeowners become viewed as financially exploitable. It is exemplified by the securitization of mortgage loans, but also by the use of credit scoring and risk-based pricing. In the past century, mortgage markets were transformed from being a ‘facilitating market’ for homeowners in need of credit to one increasingly facilitating global investment. Since mortgage markets are both local consumer markets and global investment markets, the dynamics of financialization and globalization directly relate homeowners to global investors thereby increasing the volatility in mortgage markets, as the current crisis shows all too well.
In this article we analyze the historical roots of neoliberal housing policies, mottos, and principles in Italy and Spain, two countries with a Mediterranean welfare regime, showing how they are ...embedded in the twentieth-century fascist-dictatorial regimes of Mussolini and Franco. To stimulate economic growth in a situation of autarchy, both regimes saw the construction sector and the promotion of homeownership as keys to fuel the accumulation process while believing this guaranteed social order. After acknowledging these long-standing roots, we show how the current phase of neoliberalism, characterized by severe austerity policies, relies on similar principles, the main reforms approved in both countries proceeding mainly toward cuts to service provisions and resources, whereas the promotion of homeownership remains unchallenged.
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