Since the classic work of Henri Lefebvre and David Harvey, the 'secondary circuit of capital' has been a focal point for debate among critical urban scholars. Against the background of contemporary debates on financialization, this article investigates the institutional and political roots of the subprime mortgage crisis. Empirically, the article situates the current turmoil of the US mortgage sector with reference to a series of ad hoc legal and regulatory actions taken since the 1980s to promote the securitization of mortgages and expand the secondary mortgage market. Securitization is a process of converting illiquid assets into transparent securities and is a critical component of the financialization of real estate markets and investment. Specifically, I examine the crucial role played by the US Treasury Department's Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) and the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) in creating the polices and legal-regulatory conditions that have nurtured the growth of a market for securitizing subprime loans. Theoretically, the article examines the subprime mortgage crisis as an illustration of the contradictions of capital circulation as expressed in the tendency of capital to annihilate space through time. Copyright (c) 2009 The Author. Journal Compilation (c) 2009 Joint Editors and Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
This paper examines the process of 'tourism gentrification' using a case study of the socio-spatial transformation of New Orleans' Vieux Carre (French Quarter) over the past halfcentury. Tourism gentrification refers to the transformation of a middle-class neighbourhood into a relatively affluent and exclusive enclave marked by a proliferation of corporate entertainment and tourism venues. Historically, the Vieux Carre has been the home of diverse groups of people. Over the past two decades, however, median incomes and property values have increased, escalating rents have pushed out lower-income people and African Americans, and tourist attractions and large entertainment clubs now dominate much of the neighbourhood. It is argued that the changing flows of capital into the real estate market combined with the growth of tourism enhance the significance of consumption-oriented activities in residential space and encourage gentrification. The paper contests explanations that view gentrification as an expression of consumer demands, individual preferences or market laws of supply and demand. It examines how the growth of securitisation, changes in consumption and increasing dominance of large entertainment firms manifest through the development of a tourism industry in New Orleans, giving gentrification its own distinct dynamic and local quality.
Recent urban scholarship on the rise of the tourism industry, place marketing and the transformation of cities into entertainment destinations has been dominated by four major themes: the primacy of `consumption' over 'production'; the eclipse of exchange-value by sign-value; the idea of autoreferential culture; and, the ascendancy of textual deconstruction and discursive analyses over political economy critiques of capitalism. This paper critically assesses the merits of these four themes using a case study of the Mardi Gras celebration in New Orleans. The analytical tools and categories of political economy are used to examine the rise and dominance of tourism in New Orleans, explore the consequences of this economic shift and identify the key actors and organised interests involved in marketing Mardi Gras. 'Marketing' is the use of sophisticated advertising techniques aimed at promoting fantasy, manipulating consumer needs, producing desirable tourist experiences and simulating images of place to attract capital and consumers. The paper points to the limitations of the 'cultural turn' and the 'linguistic turn' in urban studies and uses the concepts of commodification and spectacle as a theoretical basis for understanding the marketing of cities, the globalisation of local celebrations and the political economy of tourism.
Many studies have examined the role of racial prejudice and discrimination in the creation of racial residential segregation in US cities. Yet few researchers have situated early twentieth-century meanings of race and racism within broader processes of urban development and the emergence of the modern real estate industry. Using a case study of Kansas City, Missouri, this article examines the organized efforts of community builders and homeowner associations to create racially homogeneous neighborhoods through the use and enforcement of racially restrictive covenants. Racially restrictive covenants encoded racial difference in urban space and helped nurture emerging racial prejudices and stereotypes that associated black residence with declining property values, deteriorating neighborhoods and other negative consequences. I argue that the cultivation and development of this segregationist ideology was simultaneously an exercise in the "racialization of urban space" that linked race and culturally specific behavior to place of residence in the city. As the twentieth century progressed, the identification of black behavior and culture with deteriorating neighborhoods became an important impetus and justification for exclusionary real estate practices designed to create and maintain the geographical separation of the races and control metropolitan development. I conclude with a discussion of how the linkage between race, racism and urban space helps to explain why racial residential segregation remains a persistent and tenacious feature of US metropolitan areas despite the passage of fair housing and numerous anti-discrimination statutes over the past decades. Copyright Joint Editors and Blackwell Publishers Ltd 2000.
Recent critiques of conventional poverty research have highlighted the need to move beyond the conceptual limitations of "neighborhood effects" models and the use of the tropes of "adaptation" or "resistance" to explain the behaviors and actions of the urban poor. We use ethnographic field observations and interviews with publichousing residents to address these limitations in the poverty literature, assess competing explanations of poor people's agency, and provide insight into the importance of space as a mediating link between macrostructural constraints and locally situated behaviors. We theorize agency and identity as spatial phenomena-with spatial attributes and spatial influences-and examine how different spatial meanings and locations enable or constrain particular forms of social action and behavior. Our ethnographic and interview data depict several strategies by which residents "use space" to provide a measure of security and protection, to designate and avoid areas of criminality and drug activity, and to challenge or support the redevelopment of public housing. From these data we show that urban space is not a residual phenomenon in which social action occurs, but a constitutive dimension of social life that shapes life experiences, social conflict, and action. INTRODUCTION In the last decade or so, poverty researchers have devoted considerable attention to identifying the demographic characteristics of the poor, their material survival needs, and the personal barriers they face to upward mobility (welfare dependency, drugs and alcoholism, mental illness, low education, and so forth). Many large-scale surveys and statistical analyses have viewed the problems of poverty from the perspective of the problems poor people pose for the larger community (e.g., low property values, criminality, and potential violence)
The last two decades have witnessed an explosion of empirical research on the role of space in group life at the same time scholars have lamented the under-theorization of space in sociology. In particular, mainstream poverty researchers have conceptualized space as a neutral backdrop against which action unfolds and viewed poor people's agency as passive and unreflexive. This article attempts to move beyond this space-as-container ontology and provide a more coherent view of how theorizing space and spatial issues can help us understand the actions of the urban poor. At the core of the paper is an attempt to theorize agency as a spatial phenomenon - with spatial attributes and spatial influences - and offer empirical insight into how different spatial meanings can enable or constrain particular forms of social action and behavior. My intent is to contribute to an understanding of the urban poor as spatial actors. I argue that the importance of space lies in understanding it as an object of political struggle, a constitutive component of human agency, and a facilitator as well as constraint upon action. Copyright Joint Editors and Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2003.
Research examining the impact of corporate interests, state structures, and class contradictions on the state policy formation process has been dominated by three major theoretical perspectives: business dominance theory, state-centered theory, and Marxian structuralism. I argue that these existing perspectives pay insufficient attention to race and racial discrimination as a central component in the formulation and implementation of state policy. This article uses the concept of racialization to reframe existing theories of the state to explain the origin of the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) through the Housing Act of 1934. As an integral component of New Deal legislation, the FHA was created for the purpose of salvaging the home building and finance industries that had collapsed during the Great Depression. I draw on government housing reports and analyses, real estate industry documents, and congressional testimony to examine the racial dynamic of the FHA's housing policies and subsidies. The analysis demonstrates the value of employing a racialization framework to account for the racial motivations surrounding the origin of state policies, the racial basis of corporate interests, and the impact of race and racial discrimination on the creation and development of state structures.
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