Connecting country and city: The multiple geographies of real property ownership in the US

Abstract

In this review, we bridge recent studies on the political economy of urban and rural real property ownership, focusing on the US. While there are many parallels and interlinkages between urban and rural phenomena, we note that the field generally produces a different literature for each space: one largely about urban housing and another about rural land. We argue that foregrounding their common legal status as “real property” can help develop new and important analyses that unravel the urban/rural binary. Such an approach suggests, for instance, that gentrification and amenity migration are simply urban and rural manifestations of similar underlying dynamics. This awareness also helps enable the search for institutions that connect country and city, such as investors that target real property across multiple geographies. Thus, we broadly outline the points of overlap and divergence between studies of urban and rural real property ownership in order to open up space for more comparative and relational analyses. Finally, we conclude by suggesting two sets of literature that offer resources for unraveling the urban/rural binary: the work of Doreen Massey and Indigenous geographies.

Reconsidering the real estate state

“…Corporate landlords have increased their ownership of land and housing since the 2008 global financial crisis, making financial firms, not individuals, the largest property owners in many markets. In the United States, scholars have demonstrated an increasing concentration of corporate ownership of housing and land (Ashwood et al, 2022;Charles, 2020;Tapp and Peiser, 2022;Van Sant et al, 2023). Consolidated ownership of housing in the hands of investors leads to higher prices (Linger et al, 2022), higher rates of eviction (Raymond et al, 2021;Seymour and Akers, 2021), and worsening living conditions for tenants (Fields, 2017).…”

“…Not quite. Look to the Alaska Permanent Fund's ownership of a luxury apartment building in Chicago as an example of innovative public financing already in practice (Williams, 2021). States could also make stronger equity claims, particularly in joint ventures.…”

Environmentalizing Urban Sociology

“…Generative explorations of material entanglements, political relations, and conceptual synergies across country and city are just beginning (Ghosh and Meer 2021; Paprocki 2020; Van Sant, Shelton, and Kay 2023), and we are eager to see where these lead, analytically and institutionally. In the last century, epistemological and political assumptions had institutional consequences.…”

Fiscal geographies between the crisis and the pandemic

“…Tax shapes the economic logic of property in and across urban and rural landscapes (Kay and Tapp, 2022). Bridging these arbitrary boundaries has also been a significant topic of interest to fiscal geographers working on housing and land in recent years (Van Sant et al, 2023). For example, Casellas Connors and Rea (2022), through their engagement with the Pittman-Robertson Act, show how US geographies of conservation are increasingly bound up with revenues generated from increased sales of guns and ammunition.…”