Land financialisation, planning informalisation and gentrification as statecraft in Antwerp

Abstract

This article offers insight into the role of the state in land financialisation through a reading of urban hegemony. This offers the basis for a conjunctural analysis of the politics of planning within a context in which authoritarian neoliberalism is ascendant across Europe. I explore this through the case of Antwerp as it underwent a hegemonic shift in which the nationalist neoliberal party the New Flemish Alliance (Nieuw-Vlaamse Alliantie; N-VA) ended 70 years of Socialist Party rule and deregulated the city’s technocratic planning system. However, this unbridling of the free market has led to the creation of high-margin investment products rather than suitable housing for the middle classes, raising concerns about the city’s gentrification strategy. The consequent, politicisation of the city’s planning system led to controversy over clientelism which threatened to undermine the N-VA’s wider hegemonic project. In response, the city has sought to roll out a more formalised system of negotiated developer obligations, so embedding transactional, market-oriented informal governance networks at the centre of the planning system. This article highlights how the literature on land financialisation may incorporate conjunctural analysis, in the process situating recent trends towards the use of land value capture mechanisms within the contradictions and statecraft of contemporary neoliberal urbanism.

Affordability Crisis and Gentrification in FDI Export-Led Economies: Prices in the Demanddriven Housing Market of Cluj-Napoca

“…The treatment of urban land, housing and urban properties as investment vehicles has contributed to a "global affordability crisis" (Wetzstein, 2017), even for those middle classes who previously benefited from the "planetary rent gap" (Slater, 2017). While recent literature has highlighted the complex relation between gentrification and financialization (Ward, 2022), we suggest that financialization does not exhausts the whole range of effective demand that produces gentrification. Specifically, the diminishing stock of affordable housing can be linked to middle class savings, still benefiting from gentrification in economies driven by outsourced non-manual jobs (Peck, 2018).…”

“…On the one hand, from the perspective of land financialization of particular importance in the VoC literature (Fernandez, 2016), and, on the other hand, through the perspective of gentrification of particular interests for the fluidity of property literature (Aalbers, 2019). The two theoretical standpoints should not be distinctly considered since they overlap in the ongoing process of housing provision (Ward, 2022).…”

From homes to assets: Transcalar territorial networks and the financialization of build to rent in Greater Manchester

“…Whilst Manchester City Council is currently in the process of embarking on a new affordable housebuilding programme, this activity is largely focused outside of the city-regional centre (Manchester City Council, 2018). The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed pre-existing trends towards online working that, in the context of rising city centre rents and a looming cost of living crisis, may hold the potential to threaten occupancy rates as younger generations are priced out of urban areas (De Fraja et al, 2021; Ward, 2021). Simultaneously, a rise in interest rates by central banks in response to inflation holds the potential to increase the costs of capital for developers, undermining the economic conditions that have overseen Greater Manchester's post-crisis residential boom.…”

The Zinshaus market and gentrification dynamics: The transformation of the historic housing stock in Vienna, 2007–2019

“…The question arises whether we can ‘conceptualise gentrification as a generic notion while avoiding the two opposing traps of travelling theory: overextending categorical generalisations or “reification of contextual epiphenomena” [meaning a misplaced concreteness]’ (Clark, 2015: 453f.). Particularly in Europe with its variety of urban systems and forms of statehood (Le Galès, 2002), it seems vital that gentrification as a context-bound theory has to be seen within the framework of specific national and regional regulations, and within the path dependency of the built environment (Franz and Torri, 2017; Ward, 2021).…”

“…Particularly in Europe with its variety of urban systems and forms of statehood (Le Gale`s, 2002), it seems vital that gentrification as a context-bound theory has to be seen within the framework of specific national and regional regulations, and within the path dependency of the built environment (Franz and Torri, 2017;Ward, 2021).…”