Unbanking urban real estate: critique in purgatory

Résumé :

Real estate investment trusts (REITs) are today appearing in cities across the world. Critical scholars have interpreted this situation as ‘financialization’, a concept that often serves as a metonym for global financial domination. In this commentary, we suggest an alternative approach to analysing urban financial instruments like REITs. Rather than detail and denounce the power that such instruments come to hold over an ever-increasing cornucopia of urban objects (real estate markets, municipalities, housing, the urban economy, the built environment, etc.), we stand this approach on its head. We ask: how is it that these financial instruments come to be framed as solutions to a wide array of urban problems? Our argument is that research on finance and space will benefit from deeper engagement with a minor tradition of pragmatist philosophy. This engagement will allow scholars to see critique as an object more than an end of research. It will offer a clearer comparative understanding of how urban financial instruments like REITs continue to gain widespread appeal and how they transform as they circulate across the world.