CITIES FOR SALE

Urban Financialization in Comparative Perspectives

March 16-18

City Debates 2020 explores the materialization of financialization schemes on urban fabrics (e.g. housing, public space) in multiple national contexts where “the city” and/or some of its ingredients are being stripped of their social value and grabbed instead to serve as the substance for investments. By bringing together scholars researching the urban transformations that have resulted from the financialization turn of the global economy in our region (e.g. Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Dubai) and beyond (e.g. India, South Africa), we first seek to document the profiles of various actors engaged in the translation of capital in the built environment (e.g. developers, bankers, public policy-makers). Furthermore, by delving into the actual case studies, we hope to explore comparatively the “actually existing” patterns of financialization, understanding how regional and local factors (e.g. ethnic conflicts, sectarian divides, oil wealth, remittances) affect the flow of capital and its penetration in cities. We hence seek to complicate the basic narrative of seamless flows of capital by studying the mediation of capital agents from and within specific situated contexts. We further seek to acknowledge the ways in which city dwellers respond to the threat of gentrification or eviction, making claims and organizing to resist eviction (successfully or less so). Finally, and connecting these transformations to the practice of planning, we seek to reflect on the implications of these transformations on planning thought and practice. How do these transformations change the premises and assumptions of our profession? To what extent do the claim of “common priorities” and an interest in the protection of “shared commons” actually allow us to recover some of the ways in which financialization is encroaching on cities? What are the possible lessons that can be derived from ongoing movements to fight vacancy, impose value capture taxations, and more?

The exhibition Beirut: Building a Database opens on Monday, March 16 at 5pm and will run in parallel to the conference. The exhibition features one of the projects currently piloted by the Beirut Urban Lab, mapping Beirut’s contemporary urbanization through social, spatial and environmental patterns.