Financialisation of Urban Development and its Alternatives [FUDA]

Overview

Financialisation of the built environment has gradually become a key political and academic debate both in developed and developing countries, especially after the Global Financial Crisis. The concept generally refers to the expanding “role of financial motives, financial markets, financial actors and financial institutions” (Krippner 2011:27) and its relation to the economy. However, the extent to which this process poses a problem is contested and the driving force behind the variety of disciplinary and methodological approaches to the topic. The cluster aims to become a recognisable group in this debate.

The FUDA cluster critically examines the impacts of financialisation on people and places. It explores the way financialisation shapes the development and regeneration of contemporary urban built environments. In this way, it adopts an interdisciplinary approach, combining the fields of real estate, regulation studies, urban studies, and just urbanism. Through this collaboration, the cluster expects to make significant contributions to academic and policy writing on: understandings of financialisation and the changing nature of global capitalism(s); the role of planning regulation in shaping and directing urban investment processes; the changing character of investment landscapes; and the rights of citizens to shape the places they live in.

The cluster will address timely topics and themes including but not limited to:

• The longer-term impacts of the pandemic on the financial models that shape urban development and urban regeneration projects and programmes;
• How longer-term risks from climate change and/or structural geopolitical shifts are influencing the models that shape investment processes;
• The changing balance between different forms and sources of urban investment;
• The growing challenges faced by state agencies and planners (in terms of capacities and resources) and what this means for the regulation of urban regeneration/development projects;
• The new forms of conflict that these processes are generating in cities and how these are governed.

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Photo by Dr Sonia Freire Trigo