Call for papers

Geography of finance and real estate

Guest editors

This issue is coordinated by Dr Sabine Dörry from the Department of Geography at the Centre for Population, Poverty and Public Policy Studies in Luxembourg, and by Dr Michael Handke from the Institute of Geography at the University of Heidelberg, Germany.

Presentation

‘City building’ is a versatile process, fuelled by the liberalisation of financial markets, accelerated by the increasing transparency of local property markets, and stimulated by the tight relations between city planners and (inter-)national investors. As the built environment decides on a city’s economic prospect and determines future planning and development opportunities, the consequences of city building processes are multifaceted. Financial processes of urban (re)development, for example, are discussed as cutting edge of a larger process of uneven development, which is rooted in the structure of the capitalist mode of production and fuels controversial debates on the ownership of the city.

In the aftermath of the recent crashes of interwoven financial and real estate markets, best observed in countries like the US, Spain, or the UK, it became clear that most debates on financial issues of real estate markets have so far rather led a shadowy existence, especially in the discipline of geography. Questions like “Who owns the city?” or “How do specific property regimes determine and/or limit trajectories of cities?” provoke different answers depending on who asks them where and when. Even to whom these questions are directed is important as property rights of houses or real estate assets are shared, transformed and mobilized in modern financial markets.

The Call for Papers at hand aims to attract further attention to the complex of financial matters and the production of the built environment with the intention to locate both more centrally within geography, planning, and economics

We invite innovative conceptual and first empirical full paper contributions, which take up positions on geographically and factually heterogeneous real estate markets in a wider perception. Paper contributions might, for instants, aim at:

• Examining the output of the excessive ‘loan economy’ (due to the liberalisation of the financial markets) and the ongoing financialisation processes in the real estate sector;
• Deepening our understanding of the underlying development paths of interactions between the different actors in financial markets, the real estate industry, and/or city planning;
• Discussing the ‘new’ flexibility of city planning and the dynamism of urban property markets, e.g. caused by large-scale projects and their underlying personnel relationships between politicians and investors, project developers and the owners of construction firms;
• Considering the continuing spatial re-orientation of real estate investments due to the appearance of financially powerful (institutional) actors and the wider impacts on the respective urban economy;
• Illuminating resistance and negotiation processes of the civil society concerning ‘urban privatisation’ in general or foreclosure-practices of banks in times of crisis.

Submission

We welcome abstracts of 200-250 words along with the title of your proposed paper and the names/affiliation of author/s

no later than October 14th 2011.

Please send inquiries and abstracts to the guest editors: Sabine Dörry, CEPS/INSTEAD Luxembourg (sabine.doerry@ceps.lu), or Michael Handke, University of Heidelberg/Germany (handke@uni-hd.de).

Further proceedings: proposed deadline for the full papers: 27th April 2012. Double blind reviews and paper revisions: May to July 2012. Final online publication: August/September 2012.