Demolishing the Present to Sell off the Future? The Emergence of ‘Financialized Municipal Entrepreneurialism’ in London

This article introduces a new mode of urban entrepreneurialism in London through a study of the state‐executed, speculative development and financialization of public land. In response to an intensifying housing crisis and austerity‐imposed fiscal constraints, municipalities in London are devising entrepreneurial solutions to deliver more housing. Among these ‘solutions’ can be found the early signs of the state‐executed financialization of public housing in the UK with the use of speculative council‐owned special purpose vehicles (SPVs) that replace existing public housing stock with mixed‐tenure developments, creating ambiguous public/private tenancies that function as homes and the basis for liquid financial assets. Drawing together parallel literatures on the financialization of urban governance and housing, and combining these with original empirical research, we situate these developments in contrast to earlier modes of governance, identifying a distinct mode of entrepreneurial governance in London: financialized municipal entrepreneurialism. The local state is no longer merely the enabler—limited to providing strategic oversight of the private sector—but financializes its practice in a reimagined commercialized interventionism, as property speculator. This article concludes that while the architects of this new mode of entrepreneurialism extol the increased capacity and control it provides, any such gains must be set against longer‐term financial, democratic and political risks.     

Cooperative Islands in Capitalist Waters: Limited‐equity Housing Cooperatives,Urban Renewal and Gentrification

Improving the habitat of residents in central‐city neighbourhoods without simultaneously gentrifying these is becoming a pressing dilemma in right‐to‐housing and right‐to‐the‐city agendas, both in the global North and the global South. This article explores what possibilities limited‐equity housing cooperativism can bring to the table. Insights are drawn from two urban ‘renewal’ processes in which limited‐equity housing cooperatives have played an important role: in Vesterbro (Copenhagen) and Ciudad Vieja (Montevideo). The article analyses the everyday politics within and around these cooperatives through a broader institutional and political‐economy lens. This approach sheds light on mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion that operate within these cooperatives, as well as on the processes through which they have been directly and indirectly implicated in the displacement of low‐income neighbours. Despite providing a grassroots housing alternative for local ‘non‐owners’, individual cooperatives participate in, and are vulnerable to, urban transformations that traverse multiple scales. They are inserted, moreover, within wide‐ranging unequal social structures that the cooperative's formal equality has limited tools to offset. The ways in which cooperatives interlink as a sector and how this sector relates to the state are two key dimensions to be considered in challenging capitalist‐space economies.     

Urban Ecological Enclosures: Conservation Planning,Peri-urban Displacement,and Local State Formations in China

Across contemporary China, city governments are unevenly territorializing peri-urban villagers’ land and housing by creating new urban ecological conservation sites. I analyze this emerging form of what I call ‘ecological territorialization’ through three interrelated spatial practices: comprehensive urban–rural planning, peri-urban ‘ecological migration’, and the distribution of institutional responsibility for conservation site financing, construction and management. Detailing this triad of territorializing practices renews attention to the relationship between conservation classifications that justify state intervention, uneven displacements of people from rural land and housing, and site-specific capitalizations that collectively consolidate urban government control over rural spaces. These practices emerge stochastically as state, private, and semi-state institutions capitalize on conservation projects in the context of legally and constitutionally underdefined land use rights and ecological land designations. In the current post-socialist moment of urban ‘greening’, these practices are key to producing frontiers of land-based accumulation and extending local state control across the peri-urban fringe. Urban ecological enclosures not only remake city-level state power but also shape rural people's relationships to land, labor and housing.     

The Right to Rent: Active Resistance to Evolving Geographies of State Regulation

Drawing on recent qualitative research on the UK's Immigration Act 2016, this article sets out to explain the opposition of social housing professionals to the imposition of the Right to Rent. By locating this policy intervention within the evolving geographies of state regulation, it is possible to account for the mechanisms through which housing professionals can resist the extension of duties that were previously the remit of border agents and immigration officials. Synthesizing Bourdieu's critical sociology with Boltanski and Thevenot's sociology of critique helps explain not only the governmental underpinnings of contemporary immigration rhetoric, but also the forms of resistance for which housing professionals display a strong justification in exercising. The universal nature of ‘classification struggles’ within and beyond state institutions extends the relevance of this research to encompass most, if not all, welfarist regimes operating within actually existing neoliberal orders. The analysis of the findings of this research has wider implications that reach beyond housing and urban studies while immigration persists as one of the most significant contemporary political issues, almost without geographical exception, right across the globe.     

Being Good Parents or Being Good Citizens: Dilemmas and Contradictions of Urban Families in Middle‐Class Enclaves and Mixed Neighbourhoods in Germany

In recent years, cities have become ever more attractive to middle‐class families. On the one hand, middle‐class families tend to withdraw into (often newly built) socially homogeneous middle‐class neighbourhoods. On the other hand, they are also known to move into inner‐city and socially mixed areas, thus triggering processes of gentrification. Academic literature has often denounced these housing choices as being either ‘separatist’ or ‘revanchist’, more broadly categorized as strategies of ‘middle‐class disaffiliation’. Although there is a grain of truth in these interpretations, the reality is certainly more complicated. In our research on middle‐class parents’ housing and neighbourhood choices as well as their patterns of neighbourhood use, carried out in each of the two types of residential area mentioned above, we have only very rarely found an explicit desire to draw boundaries that exclude those ‘beneath’ them. We rather argue that the housing choices and neighbourhood‐related activities of middle‐class family households are heavily influenced by the specific dilemmas the interviewees face as (working) urban parents. While a significant number of respondents worry about the social sustainability, justice and cohesion of urban society, they are also concerned about the future prospects of their children. Many find it difficult to reconcile these conflicting normative demands under the prevailing circumstances.     

Conflict and Commensuration: Contested Market Making in India's Private Real Estate Development Sector

Newly constructed high‐rise housing and malls, soaring land prices and violent confrontations over land testify to the massive urban transformations underway in India today. Having secured an expanded role in urban development from the state, the private sector helps to shape urban restructuring; however, few scholars have studied private real estate development in India or revealed the factions that underlie an analytically unitary ‘private sector’. This article sheds light on private sector real estate industry members' efforts to develop an internationally familiar real estate market in India. Foreign investors and consultants have been collaborating with Indian real estate developers, who are now active intermediaries in the flow of capital into India. Drawing on participant observation and data from interviews, this article finds, however, that foreign financiers and Indian developers struggle to form partnerships on account of differences on issues like land valuation. The outcome of such conflicts will define the contours of Indian real estate development and its integration with international markets in the future.     

公共财政支持住房保障的政策研究——以浙江省为例

随着我国城镇住房市场化水平的提高,急剧攀升的地价和房价使得部分中低收入家庭的住房支付能力不足,住房困难问题日益突出,迫切需要加大公共财政支持保障房建设的力度。本文通过分析浙江省利用公共财政支持住房保障的现状、保障房建设资金来源,对其资金需求进行预测,建议加大财政支持力度、搭建省级融资平台、建立保障房基金,采取BOT或BT形式的财政投资合作建房模式提高财政使用效率,因地制宜根据各地房地产市场发展程度采取适合的保障方式,并加快制度和机构建设。     

Formalization by the State,Re‐Informalization by the People: A Gecekondu Transformation Housing Estate as Site of Multiple Discrepancies

This article demonstrates residents' transformative practices and discusses attendant outcomes to contribute to an understanding of state‐built housing estates for people affected by urban transformation projects. It draws upon ethnographic fieldwork conducted in a social housing estate (K‐TOKI) in the Northern Ankara Entrance Urban Transformation Project (NAEUTP). It addresses questions on why formalization of informal housing takes place today, under what conditions it is countered by re‐informalization practices, and what the outcomes of this process are. As informal housing became formalized by NAEUTP, gecekondu dwellers were forced into formalized spaces and lives within K‐TOKI, which was based on a middle‐class lifestyle in its design and its legally required central management. Informality re‐emerged in K‐TOKI when the state's housing institution, in response to the estate's poor marketability, moved out, allowing residents to reappropriate spaces to meet their needs and form their own management system. When cultural norms that are inscribed in the built environment and financial norms that treat residents as clients conflict with everyday practices and financial capabilities, the urban poor increasingly engage in acts of informality. I argue that the outcome of this informality in a formal context is a site of multiple discrepancies.     

Seeing Like a City‐State: Behavioural Planning and Governance in Egypt's First Affordable Gated Community

Haram City is Egypt's first ‘affordable’ gated community, hosting both aspirational middle‐class homeowners and resettled poor urban residents. Amidst legal ambiguity during Egypt's 2011–2013 revolutionary period, the management team of this public–private partnership was tasked with creating a ‘fully self‐sufficient’ city. While Haram City is the product of top‐down ‘seeing like a state’ master planning (Scott, 1998 ), the day‐to‐day resolution of class vulnerabilities and disputes over ‘reasonableness’ in city life requires forms of interpersonal adjudication otherwise addressed through local urban law—‘seeing like a city’ (Valverde, 2011 ). This article uses ethnography of management techniques aiming to ‘upgrade behaviour’ to theorize that a private entity, in a strategically indeterminate relationship with the state, reconciles future‐oriented planning and storied prejudices by merging two visions of governance. Imitating the repertoire of urban law, managers plan the very realm of bottom‐up decision making. They then adapt top‐down urban planning to bottom‐up dispute resolution to spatially consolidate the ‘consensual’ outcomes of a rigged game. Evoking both colonial Egyptian vagrancy laws and neoliberal paternalist welfare, ‘seeing like a city‐state’ governance amounts to authoritarianism that conceals itself within custom, appearing neutral so as to plan streets, codes and inner lives at once.     

Reproducing low‐wage labour: capital accumulation,labour markets and young workers

Drawing on evidence from Greater Manchester, this article examines how structural changes in capital accumulation have created particular labour market outcomes, which have led to young people becoming a source of cheap labour for the growing low‐wage service economy. Greater Manchester has been selected as a case study because of the sectoral composition of its labour market and because levels of low pay for young workers are above the national low‐pay average of 40 per cent. The research reveals that it is necessary to move beyond sociological explanations that concentrate on the ‘essential youthfulness’ of young people and instead draw on analytical categories from political economy in order to understand the structural causes of young people's material circumstances.     

‘It is the People that Have Made Glen Innes’: State‐led Gentrification and the Reconfiguration of Urban Life in Auckland

Public or state housing has ordinarily been viewed as an impediment to the forces of gentrification, as private property owners or developers are limited in their ability to purchase, renovate or redevelop houses in otherwise desirable areas. As a result, neighbourhoods with significant proportions of state‐housing and low‐income residents have often been able to establish unique identity and character, sense of place and belonging and strong social support networks. This article examines changes underway in Glen Innes, a central suburb of New Zealand's largest city, Auckland. Here, established norms around community and urban life are being rapidly and radically reworked through a wave of state‐led gentrification. We focus on experiences of displacement, the disruption of long‐established community forms, and the reconfiguration of urban life. Our particular contribution is to consider the speed and trauma of gentrification when the state is involved, the slippage between rhetoric and reality on the ground, and the challenges of researchers seeking to trace the impacts of gentrification in the lives of those who have been displaced.     

‘So Long as I Take my Mobile’: Mobile Phones,Urban Life and Geographies of Young People's Safety

Mobile phone ownership has spread rapidly among young people in the UK. This article contributes to an expanding body of literature which is examining the consequences of this phenomenon for urban life. Our focus is the impact of mobile phones on young people's geographies, particularly their own and their parents’ fears about their safety in public spaces. Quantitative and qualitative findings are presented from two research projects in Gateshead, north‐east England on crime victimization and leisure injury risk for young people, in which the role of mobile phones in managing and negotiating safety emerged as significant. The article highlights the different ways in which young people and parents are using mobile phones for this purpose, and asks whether they are best viewed as technologies of surveillance or empowerment. We also raise questions about the efficacy of mobile phones in protecting young people from risk and fear, in particular examining the mobile as a new site of victimization. Throughout, we emphasize the social unevenness of the uses and impacts of new technologies, which is often underplayed in research. We conclude with the suggestion that although they offer some empowerment to young people in their use of public spaces and their negotiation of risk, mobile phones appear to be reshaping rather than reducing moral panics about young people's presence there. Au Royaume‐Uni, le téléphone mobile s’est répandu rapidement parmi les jeunes. Cet article s’ajoute aux documents en nombre croissant qui étudient les conséquences de ce phénomène sur la vie urbaine. Il s’attache à l’impact des mobiles sur la géographie des jeunes, notamment sur leurs craintes personnelles et celles de leurs parents quant à leur sécurité dans les espaces publics. Il présente des résultats quantitatifs et qualitatifs provenant de deux projets de recherches à Gateshead (nord‐est de l’Angleterre) sur le risque pour les jeunes d’être victimes d’un acte criminel et de se blesser durant un loisir, cas où les mobiles semblent jouer un rôle important pour gérer et négocier la sécurité. L’article met en lumière les différents modes d’utilisation des mobiles à cette fin, par les jeunes et les parents, en se demandant si ces téléphones sont d’abord considérés comme des technologies de surveillance ou de responsabilisation. Il interroge également l’efficacité des mobiles pour protéger les jeunes contre risques et craintes, notamment en envisageant ces téléphones comme nouveau terrain de victimisation. Dans son ensemble, ce travail souligne l’irrégularité sociale des usages et impacts des nouvelles technologies, souvent minimisée dans la recherche. La conclusion suggère que, même s’ils offrent une certaine responsabilisation aux jeunes dans leur utilisation des espaces publics et leur négociation du risque, les téléphones mobiles semblent remodeler, non réduire, les paniques morales liées à leur présence dans ces lieux.     

Impacts of Privatization of Customary Land Rights in Zambia: A Comparative Study of Rural and Peri‐urban Locations

In its quest for development, Zambia is pursuing a land policy that facilitates privatization of customary land. This article investigates the effects of privatization in terms of how it shapes people's behaviour and perception of private tenure and related tenure dynamics. Findings have shown that the appetite to privatize land is growing stronger in peri‐urban areas as land becomes more scarce. Furthermore, privatization of land appears to be a threat to traditional political structures as allegiance and loyalty towards chiefs diminish and tension and struggles over land in peri‐urban areas increase. Similarly, privatization of land erodes people's faith in the role that cultural and ancestral beliefs play in traditional land management. Also, people in rural areas tend to favour private tenure more if ‘privatization of customary land’ means allocation of land to outsiders. If, by contrast, the phrase is taken to mean communities registering their own land, peri‐urban communities tend to have a stronger desire to register land. Furthermore, rural communities were found to be less informed about land policy and seemed less keen to be involved in land policy processes when compared to peri‐urban residents. However, rural people may have no reason to inform themselves about land policy until they realise that the policy is likely to affect them.     

Late Neoliberalism: The Financialization of Homeownership and Housing Rights

Over the last few decades we have witnessed a global U‐turn in prevailing housing and urban policy agendas, spread around the world by the driving forces of globalization and neoliberalism. The new paradigm was mainly based on the withdrawal of states from the housing sector and the implementation of policies designed to create stronger and larger market‐based housing finance models. The commodification of housing, together with the increased use of housing as an investment asset within a globalized financial market, has profoundly affected the enjoyment of the right to adequate housing. Taking the World Bank's 1993 manifesto as a starting point and the subprime crisis as its first great international flashpoint, this essay traces some key elements of the neoliberal approach to housing and its impact on the enjoyment of the right to housing in different contexts and times. The reform of housing policy — with all its components of homeownership, private property and binding financial commitments — has been central to the political and ideological strategies through which the dominance of neoliberalism is maintained. Conversely, the crisis (and its origins in the housing market) reflects the inability of market mechanisms to provide adequate and affordable housing for all.     

Why gender and ‘difference’ matters: a critical appraisal of industrial relations research

Through a critical rereading of key UK workplace case studies this article explores why gender analysis matters to studies of people at work. We argue that the field of industrial relations could benefit from a greater engagement with feminist‐influenced methodologies. In particular, we analyse three methodological approaches that can assist in understanding the lives of workers; a framework that recognises intersectionality; an account that accommodates both material and cultural explanations; and a research process that is reflexive and recognises positionality. These are identified as intrinsic to a gender‐sensitive analysis, and through a comparison of key texts it is possible to highlight why their absence leads to much research in this field remaining ‘gender blind’.     

‘Gentrification Without Displacement' and the Consequent Loss of Place: The Effects of Class Transition on Low‐income Residents of Secure Housing in Gentrifying Areas

The increasingly disputed concept of gentrification‐induced displacement is combining with the argument that the poor benefit from social mix to produce a theoretical case for ‘positive gentrification'. The notion that new middle‐class residents not only attract more investment but bring opportunities for ‘upward social mobility' to low‐income people who manage to stay in gentrifying areas has become policy orthodoxy. While there are scholarly challenges to the extent of these benefits, the disadvantages of imposed social mix on low‐income communities even where they are not physically displaced remain under‐researched. This article helps to fill this gap by reporting on research into the experience of long‐term low‐income residents of gentrifying neighbourhoods who managed to stay put. The research explores notions of social mix, place and displacement among residents of secure community housing in Melbourne, Australia (the equivalent of small‐scale social housing in Europe and North America) with the object of establishing whether the absence of physical displacement is sufficient to ameliorate gentrification's negative impacts. The findings demonstrate that transformations in shops and meeting places, and in the nature of local social structure and government interventions, cause a sense of loss of place even without physical displacement.     

Financialization of Housing in Brazil: New Frontiers

The financialization of housing has been increasingly identified as an important driver of social and economic change in contemporary capitalism. Focusing on the Brazilian context, this article considers the extent to which recent changes in housing regulations, policies and markets confirm or challenge narratives about the financialization of housing in the international academic debate. I argue that while many of the trends stressed in the literature are apparent, more extreme processes of financialization within the Brazilian housing sector remain limited––not only because of institutional and regulatory constraints, path dependence or political resistance, but also because of fundamental structural conditions of Brazil's position as a peripheral economy. Three different but mutually reinforcing processes are scrutinized in order to evaluate the financialization of housing and its limits in Brazil: the re‐regulation of the real estate financial sector initiated in the 1990s; the changing funding patterns among real estate companies since the mid‐2000s; and the increasing commodification of housing induced by a large‐scale and heavily subsidized housing program launched in 2009.     

The Financialization of A Social Housing Provider

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.