Diversification by Urbanization: Tracing the Property‐Finance Nexus in Dubai and the Gulf

This article explores the role of liberalized real estate markets in shaping financial‐sector development in the Arab Gulf region. Since 2001, record oil revenues and the inflow of repatriated wealth into the region have generated immense demand for new, productive destinations for surplus capital. Gulf Cooperation Council states have subsequently undergone rapid growth that is intimately tied to the regulatory transformation of urban real estate markets and the circulation of surplus capital from oil rents to the ‘secondary circuit’ of the built environment. With an emphasis on the city of Dubai, we employ the notion of diversification by urbanization to trace the re‐regulation of real estate markets and highlight how these strategies have subsequently shaped Gulf financial markets. Through an examination of the impacts of real estate mega‐project development on local banking credit, equities and Islamic financial markets, we reframe recent urbanization in the region as a process of financial re‐engineering, and identify the emergence of capital groups whose accumulation activities are tightly connected to both the real estate and financial circuit.     

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.     

Financing China's Suburbanization: Capital Accumulation through Suburban Land Development in Hangzhou

China's rapid urbanization has resulted in substantial suburbanization over recent decades. However, limited research has been conducted into how land‐based capital is mobilized, accumulated and circulated within the circuits of the capital accumulation process, or how land‐based capital is used to finance massive investment in suburbanization by China's local governments, especially since the trend in land commodification during the 2000s. We examined the capital switching experience in the city of Hangzhou and our findings indicate that local governments have attempted to simultaneously strengthen housing development and industrial growth. In contrast to experiences of suburbanization in Western countries, a real estate boom during the early days of suburbanization in Hangzhou was not necessarily the result of diversion of excess capital from over‐accumulated investments in the manufacturing industry. Rather, it was a consequence of capital accumulation facilitated by land‐reserve systems and land‐based financing of infrastructure orchestrated by local government. Local governments and their affiliated land‐reserve centers and local investment platforms have acted as entrepreneurs by using profits from suburban property development to subsidize industrial investments and fund the infrastructure‐supported expansion of outer suburbs. These findings highlight the potential risks of land‐centered accumulation and provide important reflections upon the theory of David Harvey in the context of urban China.     

The Market as the New Emperor

In recent years readers of urban studies journals have been regaled with articles on urban development in China. Contrary to expectations, what we read is not a multiplicity of accounts, but instead a repetition of one story: (a) the land market has emerged in China; (b) however, the market is imperfect; (c) therefore the best policy is to define property rights. It is surprising how uncritically scholars have accepted the idea that the land market has emerged, without defining the concept of the market. Perhaps even more surprising is the approval of the recommendation to define property rights, without asking what the ideology behind such a recommendation is and what social and political consequences it might have. This article will examine and criticize studies of this type. First, I will reconstruct what seems to be a new fashion in real estate and urban development studies, and then criticize its weaknesses, which are connected to the ambiguity of the concept of the market, insufficient empirical evidence, and ontological and ideological problems.     

旁地产价格增长是否阻碍城镇化进程——基于我国31个省级单位面板数据的经验分析

通过对我国31个省级单位面板数据进行实证研究，发现从全国整体来看，房地产价格上涨对城镇化进程体现出正向促进作用，但是根据地区层级上的分析，在中西部地区房地产价格增长对城镇化具有显著的负向抑制作用。可见，现阶段房地产价格显然在阻碍城乡间劳动力要素流动方面扮演了重要角色。不断增长的房价增加了城镇化成本，对于农村劳动力转移起到阻碍作用。因此，为了保障新型城镇化的实现，必须通过土地、财政、金融等制度变革与其他市场化手段相结合，遏制房地产价格继续过快上涨，从而实现房地产市场与新型城镇化的协调发展。     

Financialization,Urban Governance and the Planning System: Utilizing ‘Development Viability’ as a Policy Narrative for the Liberalization of Ireland's Post‐Crash Planning System

Drawing upon the Irish case, this article explores the interaction between the financialized economy and the urban planning system. While considerable scholarship has examined the financialization of real estate, it remains unclear how planning systems are being repurposed to facilitate a finance‐led regime of urban growth or how the ‘real estate–financial complex’ seeks to enact planning policy transformations that support its interests. This article explores how such actors have advanced the concept of ‘financial viability of development’ as a means of influencing the post‐crisis re‐regulation of Irish planning policy. This group has argued that housing construction in post‐crash Ireland is unviable given the high development finance costs, onerous planning gain contributions and the lack of development certainty in the planning process. As such, housing construction has been at an all‐time‐low, leading to a new crisis in affordable housing provision. In response, a complicit state has further liberalized the planning system, introducing an array of policies that are evermore facilitative of development interests. Empirical findings, based on interviews with developers, lobbyists and planners, emphasize the importance of informal access to policymakers, the wielding of ‘expert knowledge’ and media management to co‐opt the state into adopting financial viability within planning policymaking.     

浅论影响我国房地产市场的因素及因素的影响

本文主要通过分析影响我国房地产市场继续上扬的因素,包括我国宏观经济将持续保持良好势头、城市化水平的迅速提高、人民币仍处于升值通道中等;以及促使房地产市场回归理性的因素,包括加息、加大保障性住房的供给力度、提高房贷首付、房地产开发及土地储备贷款受到严格管控、开征物业税等;并且具体分析了它们是如何影响市场的,并最终得出结论。     

居住用地价格高涨的负面影响

近年来城镇居住用地价格持续高涨给地方政府带来可观收入,但其引发的弊端广泛而深远,包括助长房价高涨和贫富分化、地产投机与土地闲置、城镇化战略受阻与区域竞争力下降、虚拟经济膨胀和金融风险加大、政府行为扭曲和公共形象受损等五个方面。充分认识这些弊端的消极影响,是以科学发展观为指导,调整房地产调控思路的必要前提。     

房地产税的价格效应——基于人口城镇化的区位粘性视角

本文从城镇化进程中人口流动的区位粘性这一全新视角，将房地产税负引起的价格效应与公共服务的区位偏好相结合。通过相关参数估计，以京津冀地区为例，模拟出同一税率下不同城镇化发展阶段的城市房地产价格走势差异。结果表明，北京和天津已经进入城镇化后期阶段，开征房地产税能够适度抑制房价，河北省这一作用则不明显。此外，本文还回答了人口城镇化、地方公共服务以及房地产市场的内在机制，并在此基础上探寻各地区开征房地产税的最佳时机。     

Impacts of Land Use Rights Reform on Urban Development in China

The opening of China's urban land market has seen a growing interest internally and internationally in land and real estate development. Due to the monopolized ownership of land, this interest brings in substantial income for the government. Because of this new source of income, governments at various levels are able to finance urban development to different extents. This paper examines the outcomes of the reform that created a market mechanism for urban land and real estate, and the correlation of urban developments with the land and real estate market.     

Three Dimensions of Capital Switching within the Real Estate Sector: A Canadian Case Study

This article analyzes capital switching practices in the real estate development sector. The leading practitioners in Canada, the Canadian‐based real estate companies, are the subject of this inquiry. The tradability and divisibility of real estate properties enhance the growing similarity between real estate properties and other financial assets. It is appropriate to talk about portable real estate portfolios because companies constantly rearrange their property composition. This article emphasizes the ‘three dimensions of capital switching’. These dimensions unpack significant corporate considerations in the deployment and redeployment of capital, namely, mode of operation, property type and location. With respect to office development, the trajectory of the major real estate companies over the last 20 years has accommodated two notable shifts. First, these companies have focused on larger and newer properties, disposing of their smaller and older assets. Second, they have funneled a growing share of their capital assets into the top‐tier cities of the Canadian urban system, reducing investment in other metropolitan areas and disinvesting in the small‐to‐medium sized cities.     

The Real Estate Frontier

Africa's major cities are experiencing dramatic transformation as a result of growing real estate investment. This article explores whether existing theories can explain the dynamics of urban redevelopment in an African context, and how African cases can inform new theorizations of real estate driven urban transformation. Examining the utility of theories of gentrification and speculative urbanism for understanding urban redevelopment in Accra, Ghana, it argues that urban redevelopment in this city has been shaped by its particular (post)colonial history of state land acquisition and urban planning. Rather than simply identifying empirical variation on established theories, however, the article draws on recent research on commodity frontiers to propose an original theorization of urban redevelopment in Accra in terms of the production of a ‘real estate frontier’. This real estate frontier is characterized by the incremental and contested commodification of state land to enable the growth of the real estate sector in the city. The article concludes by calling for a comparative research agenda to better understand real estate frontiers globally.     

我国城市化进程中的宏观调控问题

我国目前正处于城市化高峰时期,为协调有序地实现城市化进程,避免先行国家走过的历史弯路,必须以科学发展现为指导,切实加强宏观调控,作者对中国城镇化的相关宏观问题──最终城镇化目标和最终城镇人口总量问题,实现最终城市化目标的时间跨度问题,城市人口密度与城市建设用地问题,城市规模和城市数量问题,城市布局的空间选择问题,调控政策和调控机制建设问题等进行了讨论.     

PROPERTY-LED INFORMALITY: Shifting Informal Land Development from Popular Housing to Middle-Class and Elite Speculation in Belo Horizonte

Recent decades have seen a rising interest in the peripheral nature of urbanization processes. While research has put the spotlight on large-scale, transnational and financialized real estate actors, less attention has been paid to informal land developers. Addressing that knowledge gap, this article underscores the key role of land developers in informal urbanization through a case study of Belo Horizonte, Brazil. A mixed-methods approach provides new evidence of the widespread, variegated and spatially uneven development of irregular and clandestine subdivisions over the last two decades, revealing a heterogeneous landscape of informal developers. The study shows that informal development has been shifting from the typical popular and peripheral subdivision, which provided precarious yet affordable housing for working-class families, to new forms of speculative investment for the middle and upper classes, such as country homes and gated communities in peri-urban and rural areas. I argue that this shift is explained by both national and local changing regulatory frameworks and processes of economic restructuring, urban neoliberalism and housing financialization in the periphery. In light of this, I propose the notion of ‘property-led informality’ to refer to a regime of informal urbanization increasingly dominated by commodified, rentiership and speculative land dynamics in the sprawling metropolises of the global South.     

中国土地市场化程度及其影响因素分析

在评价和分析1992-2005年中国土地市场化程度及其发展趋势的基础上,深入探讨了土地市场化程度与土地市场政策、社会经济发展以及城镇化发展等因素之间的关系,剖析了上述各因素对土地市场化程度的影响机理,并利用相关统计数据进行相应的模型估计.研究结果表明,土地市场政策变量、非农产值比、城镇化率、房地产业的发展与土地市场化程度正相关,第一产业的发展和城镇居民恩格尔系数与土地市场化程度负相关.最后,在上述研究的基础上提出提高中国土地市场化程度的政策建议.     

Urban Fortunes and Skeleton Cityscapes: Real Estate and Late Urbanization in Kigali and Addis Ababa

In many parts of Africa, societies that remain primarily rural are experiencing accelerated urban growth and highly visible booms in property development. In the absence of significant industrialization, investment is pouring directly into what Lefebvre and Harvey characterized as the ‘secondary circuit’ of capital. Debates about the drivers of investment in real estate are longstanding in relation to the global North, but have given little consideration to low‐income and late‐urbanizing countries in Africa. Yet such contexts offer important opportunities to reflect on existing theory. Focusing on Kigali and Addis Ababa (both transformed virtually beyond recognition over the past two decades), this article explores the drivers and consequences of investment in urban real estate in countries striving to structurally transform their economies. It argues that a range of formal and informal incentives and constraints have led to high‐end real estate being viewed as the ‘safest bet’ for those with resources to invest, even where demand is limited and governments are promoting other kinds of investment. While some people are reaping urban fortunes in largely untaxed rents, much of the construction is purely speculative, creating landscapes of unused and underused high‐end properties in contexts where investment is desperately needed elsewhere.     

浅谈公共事业建设中的房地产市场发展--以近代北京学校建设为例

对城市中已有房地产的开拓和使用是近代公共事业建设的基础，对现代城市建设具有重要的启示意义。以北京学校建设为切入点，依时代顺序分别考察不同时期北京城市土地制度、房地产市场发展以及学校对房地产的使用情况。近代城市功能的演变带动了房地产市场的形成与发展，房地产市场的引入又进一步推动了近代公共事业的发展。     

中国城镇化的战略问题

论述了中国城镇化面临的速度与目标、人口与土地、城乡人口结构及城乡居民点结构、城镇化政策的重点等战略问题,并以对两个方案的对比分析对这些问题进行讨论,得出须从体制、机制层面更多地激励中小城市及小城镇集约合理地使用土地资源;面向原乡村居民发展低成本房地产业,吸引其落户,应成为重要的政策导向.     

调控新政下上市房企应对策略评析

一、新政后上市房企的应对策略表现特征 2010年第一季度房地产市场的过快发展,直接导致4月份房地产调控政策的密集出台,沪深港三地的上市房企面临新的挑战,纷纷采取不同策略予以应对,主要表现有以下三个特征。     

新型城镇化下县域房地产发展思路试探--广东云浮市新兴县实证研究

随着县域经济发展水平的不断提高,县域房地产市场方兴未艾。在国家推进新型城镇化战略及美丽乡村建设的背景下,未来中小城市和县域的经济社会将面临更为有利的发展环境,县域房地产业的发展前景广阔,但需探索新的发展思路。以新兴县三家房地产企业为例,剖析它们各具特色的发展方式,总结县域房地产业在推动产业升级发展以及促进工业化、信息化、城镇化、农业现代化同步发展的模式,提出县域房地产业助力新型城镇化发展的思考及建议。