Land Speculation and Its Impact on American Economic Growth and Welfare: A Historiographical Review

Swierenga, Robert P.

doi:10.2307/966996

Cited by 22 publications

(6 citation statements)

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“…Critics of this view have argued that “no city in the world is really excellent and that livability is only a relative term” [ 80 ]. In the context of this paper, it is contended that land speculation is detrimental to a city’s livability (i.e., sustainability) in several ways as proclaimed by Swierenga’s [ 81 ] research on land speculation and impact on American economic growth and welfare. He states that land speculation gives rise to green pockets that are easily transformed into high crime areas fostering slum development by way of rural-urban migration and accentuating a lack of housing as a result of holding developable land.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…He states that land speculation gives rise to green pockets that are easily transformed into high crime areas fostering slum development by way of rural-urban migration and accentuating a lack of housing as a result of holding developable land. At length, Swierenga’s [ 81 ] findings parallel, to some degree, Shashemene’s reduced property tax base since a number of American municipality’s often do not tax vacant land or are not subject to property tax (i.e., they are subject to a tenement rate), which can result in a loss of potential sources of revenue.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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What Motivates Speculators to Speculate?

Gemeda

Abebe

Paczoski

et al. 2019

Entropy

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Land speculation that occurs on the urban border can be very problematic to the healthy development of cities—critical to economic growth. Speculative land investors, concerned with profits from trading in landed property, can especially affect developing countries where regulation is often poorly controlled and overly bureaucratic. An investigation into the factors motivating land speculators operating in the urban fringe of the city of Shashemene, Ethiopia is examined. The paper, in addition to contributing to the literature, is the second-known attempt and extension of the authors’ pilot research to study the behavior of land speculators in the urban fringe of a growing Ethiopian city. A theoretical framework and conceptual breakdown are put together with historical reference to early land speculation examples. Two questionnaires were separately administered with a representative random sample of 159 members from the local land developer association (i.e., investors) and 24 senior officials from the study area. A principal component analysis categorized the most significant dynamics in controlling land speculation procurements. Results indicated motivational reasoning as the prime cause for speculative activities. Evidence indicated that land speculation is a critical dynamic for self-worth especially with business-oriented persons. Entropy, the disorder of the communicative data, suggests a possible rethinking of the way government should intervene in the urban property market. As such, developmental smart cities in Ethiopia must thoroughly consider the dynamisms of speculative activities and its effects on local housing as it moves forward–in the 2020s.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

What Motivates Speculators to Speculate?

Gemeda

Abebe

Paczoski

et al. 2019

Entropy

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“…“Pure” speculation describes buying and selling that relies on anticipated price increases rather than the quality, usefulness, or earnings of an asset (Lowe 1975). Many observers note that commodity speculation can have significant benefits for markets (Foldvary 1998; Lowe 1975; Swierenga 1977) such as hedging risk (by transferring it from producers to speculators), increasing liquidity, improving market efficiency, and reducing price swings (Foldvary 1998). Land speculation, however, is a fundamentally different phenomenon because, unlike produced assets, land supply is fixed and sites are geographically unique.…”

Section: Land Speculation and Urban Regimesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Land speculation has been intertwined with land development throughout American history. Historians have documented the widespread prevalence of speculative land sales in the development of the nineteenth-century American frontier (Swierenga 1977), but they commonly influenced settlement in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as well (Glaeser 2013). Defined as maintaining ownership of land to profit explicitly from political economic changes affecting local land values, land speculation has been intertwined with the “growth machine” politics guiding development in frontier towns, suburban municipalities, and most recently, urban infill parcels ripe for “smart growth.” The article investigates the existence and public impacts of land speculation in Phoenix, Arizona, under the premise that speculative processes represent an underexplored but influential phenomenon in municipal political economies.…”

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confidence: 99%

Leveraging Public Land Development Initiatives for Private Gain

Stanley

2015

Urban Affairs Review

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Land speculation has been an integral component of the political economy of land development in American urban history. In the American Sunbelt, land speculation occurs amid progrowth governance regimes that engage in intermunicipal competition for capital investment. This article presents a mixed-methods case study of vacant land speculation in downtown Phoenix, Arizona, before, during, and after the mid-2000s property boom. Results indicate that land speculation represented a significant barrier to both public and private infill development efforts, and that some municipal development initiatives actually facilitated private speculative profits. Speculative strategies are enabled when weaknesses in the coordination and bargaining power of urban growth regimes, derived from conflict within and between governmental scales, can be exploited by individual market actors. The self-propulsive nature of speculative property market cycles, unconstrained by local regimes increasingly dependent on nonlocal capital investment, represents an autonomous force actively orienting entries into property markets and influencing the ability to enact sustainable infill development.

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“…33 In their promotional literature, companies claimed their activities had higher aims than simply to turn a profit. Such a stigma carried a pejorative association.…”

Section: The Annexation Questionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“That Magnificent Land of Sunshine, Health, and Wealth”: How U.S. Entrepreneurs Sold Cuba's Isle of Pines

Neagle¹

2012

J. gilded age prog. era

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At the start of the twentieth century, U.S. citizens began settling and investing on the Isle of Pines off the coast of Cuba. U.S. entrepreneurs who believed the Isle was or would become U.S. territory bought vast tracts from Spanish and Cuban landowners. They then subdivided the land and marketed it to farmers and middle-class Americans still in search of opportunity on a disappearing frontier. These landholding companies' promotions helped shape the assumptions and expectations of thousands of Americans who settled on the Isle over the next few decades. Companies portrayed the Isle as a tropical paradise safe for white settlement and ripe for development. They promised high returns-on-investment for those looking to engage in citrus production for export, as well as a healthful climate for those plagued by chronic illness. Some of these settlers publicly echoed landholding companies' portrayal and remained on the Isle for years. Others found the Isle's promise to be grossly exaggerated and returned to the United States feeling swindled by unscrupulous entrepreneurs. Although set in a foreign land, U.S. interest in the Isle reveals much about life in the United States, including the changing nature of expansion, the growing power of advertising, and middle-class discontent.

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Land Speculation and Its Impact on American Economic Growth and Welfare: A Historiographical Review

Cited by 22 publications

References 0 publications

What Motivates Speculators to Speculate?

What Motivates Speculators to Speculate?

Leveraging Public Land Development Initiatives for Private Gain

“That Magnificent Land of Sunshine, Health, and Wealth”: How U.S. Entrepreneurs Sold Cuba's Isle of Pines

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