Capital’s welfare dependency: Market failure, stalled regeneration and state subsidy in Glasgow and Edinburgh

Abstract

Comparing case studies of long-term, large-scale urban regeneration projects in Glasgow and Edinburgh, Scotland, this paper brings together two addendums to the rent gap model in the shape of the ‘reputational gap’ and the ‘state subsidy gap’. These neologisms are mobilised to clarify the risk-laden centrality of the state’s role in both the formation and potential closure of rent gaps in large-scale areas of disinvestment and devalorisation. Whilst such projects often appear as expressions of capital’s state-mediated extractive power over the built environment, we consider them as examples of capitalist failure or fragility – for even with striking levels of public subsidy to address ‘market failure’ the land and property market has not been reinvigorated according to plan. This highlights the need, we argue, for further critical scrutiny of failed or stalled urban regeneration projects as a means of foregrounding the instability, rather than the omnipotence, of contemporary urban capitalism.

Project Loops, “Edgelands” and the Permanent Reimagining of Landscape

“…During the 1960s and 1970s, it suffered from severe industrial and economic decline, but since 2000 it has been celebrated as a significant site of "regeneration" for the city and in the early to mid-2000s was targeted intensely for redevelopment. However, the first phase of this, undertaken by Waterfront Edinburgh Limited, left much of the former dockland's landscape in a state of dereliction (Kallin 2021;Gray and Kallin 2022), and over time, subsequent projects have left increasing amounts of waste in their wake subsequent to their abandonment -particularly construction detritus, including concrete blocks, temporary, often mangled security fencing (see Figures 1, 2, 3 and 4) and several paved roads to nowhere, sometimes blocked by large boulders and rusting metal barriers for years at a time (Figures 1 and 3). This debris punctuates the spaces between what were from 2008 to roughly 2019 partially occupied blocks of flats that had been touted as luxury apartments for young professionals in the Waterfront Edinburgh project "masterplan" (see Figure 7).…”