Ludovic Halbert

Bio

My research focuses on the transformation of space in relation to changes in contemporary capitalism and public policy. Trained in geography and urban and regional planning, and an advocate of ‘mixed’ methods, I draw on the tradition of critical social sciences by bringing together questions from radical geography, political geography, political economy and political ecology, as well as political sociology.

My research focuses on the dynamics of metropolisation and its link to the restructuring of a globalised, financialised and urbanised capitalist system. The analysis is carried out at various scales, ranging from the intra-regional restructuring of the Paris metropolitan area to the concentration of metropolitan activities and functions at European and global levels. More recently, I have explored the challenges to metropolisation and developed an integrative analytical framework that sheds light on the roles and place of metropolises in global urbanisation, in the light of the geographies of capital accumulation.

I am also studying the relationship between ‘financial infrastructure’ and the production of space. Several approaches have been employed: a cross-analysis of different financing channels within a single sector (the rental property market in France); a comparative analysis of the financialisation of urban development in various international geographical contexts – in Europe (France, Italy), South Asia (India) and Latin America (Mexico, Brazil); and an extension of the inquiry beyond urban spaces, with a reflection on the dialectic between financial markets and socio-ecological relations in the broadest sense.

Finally, as part of a long-term research programme on austerity in cities, my work has helped to identify the varying geographical patterns of urban austerity and to analyse how a regime of fiscal consolidation has shaped the greening of environmental policies in France over the past fifteen years or so.