Seeing like an investor: urban development planning,financialisation, and investors’ perceptions of London as an investment space

There is a growing orthodoxy that since the global financial crisis European policy-makers and planning systems have become more dependent on inward investment and the availability of global finance to fund welfare services and projects. This process of financialisation, it is claimed, is driven by the needs of developers and investors, who are focused on maximizing returns and limiting their social and economic liabilities. Planning agencies and traditional territory-based arrangements are viewed with increasing suspicion, as standing in the way of investment and acting as a brake on much needed house-building and regeneration. However, in this paper, drawing on detailed research with investors and developers in London, we argue that there needs to be a stronger focus in academic and policy writing on the multiple, variegated, and diverse calculations and framings that private sector actors take when making investment decisions. Too often their perspectives are caricatured and/or over-simplified. We show that and imaginations of planning and regulation are complex and that many firms have realized that market success results from becoming more deeply embedded in the local political, social, and regulatory environments in which they are investing. A greater understanding of these multiple forms of calculation, in turn, opens up opportunities for the maintenance and/or implementation of more effective forms of territorially-based soft and hard regulation. The paper concludes by outlining a broader research agenda for planning and urban studies.     

On voodoo economics: theorising relations of property, value and contemporary capitalism

This paper reflects on how we can productively theorise the contemporary treatment of property, by a range of different economic agents, as a locus for the attempted creation of economic value. Its argument is that the theorisation offered by David Harvey (1982) in The limits to capital has a continued and arguably even heightened relevance in the present-day context, but that this theorisation can be embellished with insights from the sociology of finance, particularly in regard to the power of representation. This argument is developed with reference to two parallel empirical 'stories' from early twenty-first century capitalism: the economist Hernando de Soto's influential thesis about the 'mystery of capital' and his related policy ideas; and the attempts of western-based financiers to extract profit from companies with significant real estate assets by separating those property assets from the operational side of the businesses in question.     

Teardowns,popups, and renovations: How does housing supply change?

Cities grow in layers over time. As population and land values increase, older, smaller buildings are replaced with higher density, higher value structures. However, direct costs of redevelopment and institutional barriers such as zoning may constrain replacement of older structures, leading to alternate forms of supply adjustment. In this paper, I use data on building permits in Washington DC to examine three different forms of residential investment: new construction, expansion of existing structures, and renovation. Results suggest that new construction accounts for a relatively small part of residential investment and is highly concentrated in a few neighborhoods. Expansions and alterations of existing structures are more frequent and more evenly dispersed across space. Recent increases in housing values are correlated with more new construction, but only among neighborhoods with relatively more permissive zoning. Additions and alterations are more prevalent in neighborhoods with high property values, older housing, and more restrictive zoning.     

The Precarity of Young People’s Housing Experiences in a Rural Context

Young people’s housing, economic and labour market circumstances have become increasingly insecure due to the combined effects of the 2007/2008 economic crisis, neoliberal welfare reforms, rising costs of higher education and the shortage of affordable housing. Discussions of young peoples’ experiences in these domains have largely neglected their spatial variability but evidence suggests that young people living in rural parts of the UK have distinctive experiences of housing, which are closely connected to labour markets and educational opportunities. By drawing on qualitative data from young people and housing professionals, this article explores some of these rural distinctions and frames them within theoretical debates about the ‘precariat’. It argues for a more theoretically informed and geographically nuanced understanding of contemporary housing issues as rural youth potentially face greater precarity than their urban peers.