How Subordinate Financialization Shapes Urban Development: The Rise and Fall of Warsaw's Służewiec Business District

Abstract

This article studies the development of Warsaw's Służewiec neighbourhood, Poland's largest business district, as a case of real estate financialization. We argue that the neighbourhood's chaotic 'de-contextualized' growth was shaped by Poland's semi-peripheral position in the global economy on the one hand--enabling a process of subordinate financialization--and legacies of state socialism on the other. In so doing, we mobilize research on peripheral financialization and global economic hierarchies, and studies of post-socialism to enhance debates about real estate financialization. Commercial real estate--and office development in particular--is a crucial domain in which contemporary core-periphery structures are produced and negotiated. A key function of subordinate financialization is to absorb globally mobile capital--the product of financialization in the core. The case of Służewiec shows that only by considering the interplay of global hierarchies (Poland's position as capital absorbent), local dynamics ( fragmented urban development, which was characterized by competition among these unequal municipalities, with local growth coalitions in some municipalities, but not in others) and specific historical legacies (Warsaw's socialist-time functional organization and its transformation, which weakened the city) can we fully understand the specific dynamics that shape real estate financialization in different places.

Cuban migrants and the making of Havana’s property market

“…Current trends in the Cuban housing economy offer a unique opportunity to study actually existing "market making" processes and practices in a socialist context where private homeownership was historically predominant, but with restrictions for buying, selling, and investing (Grein, 2015). Our findings therefore also dialogue with the literatures on "market making" and "marketization" in general (Boeckler & Berndt, 2012;Corpataux & Crevoisier, 2016;French et al, 2011;Hall, 2010), on real estate in particular (Hofman & Aalbers, 2019;Searle, 2014;Waldron, 2018;Wijburg & Aalbers, 2017), and on situations of emerging market socialism or (post-)socialism more specifically (Bitterer & Heeg, 2012;Bohle, 2014;Büdenbender & Aalbers, 2019;Büdenbender & Golubchikov, 2017). Our findings also sharpen existing debates on financial globalization, uneven development, and dependency theory in an increasingly connected "world of cities" (Brenner & Schmid, 2014;Robinson, 2016).…”

Financial geography III: The financialization of the city

“…But it would be too easy to conclude that the financialization of the city is exclusively a Global North phenomenon. On the one hand, these processes are theorized in terms of the subordinate or peripheral financialization in the semi-peripheries of the Global North, for example Portugal and Central- and Eastern-Europe (Becker et al, 2010, Büdenbender and Aalbers, 2019; Pósfai, 2018; Rodrigues et al, 2016) and the Global South, especially in Latin America (Fernandez and Aalbers, 2019; Socoloff, 2019). On the other hand, the literature on financialized state strategies that favour real estate development and investment are primarily coming from middle-income countries that are typically seen as part of the Global South (Buckley and Hanieh, 2014; Hsing, 2010; Krijnen, 2016; 2018; Mosciaro et al, 2019; Özdemir, 2011; Smart and Lee, 2003).…”

“…Whereas some municipalities are able to route global investment into local government plans (Anselmi, 2015; Theurillat and Crevoisier, 2013) – the ‘negotiated city’ (Theurillat et al, 2016) – others merely facilitate the needs and wishes of an ever-changing set of investors (Savini and Aalbers, 2016; cf. Ward and Swyngedouw, 2018) or play a passive role (Büdenbender and Aalbers, 2019) – the ‘financialized city’ (Theurillat et al, 2016). More commonly, local government officials note that investors increasingly call the shots and redraw urban plans to suit financial interests rather than vice-versa (Anselmi, 2015; Hofman, 2017; Kaika and Ruggiero, 2016; Mosciaro, 2018; Waldron, 2019).…”

Financing urban development, three business models: Johannesburg, Shanghai and London

“…Thus, close comparative analysis of the diverse governance arrangements and territorialised institutional architecture for enabling urban development outside of the theoretically saturated focus on certain circuits and histories has been somewhat neglected. Careful attention has certainly been paid to specific developments as evidence of contextual variation of the wider transnational processes shaping urban development (for example, Budenbender & Aalbers, 2019 ), explaining the distinctive outcomes in specific cases. Studies have also demonstrated how specific urban developments can themselves become important sites for the transformation of wider globalised processes such as urban governance, or finance ( Buckley & Hanieh, 2014 ; Moulaert et al, 2003 ).…”