Modern Capitalism and The Theory of Urban Rent: A Review

Ball, M.; Bentivegna, Vincenzo; Edwards, Mickey; Folin, M.

doi:10.4324/9781351026147-1

Cited by 4 publications

(7 citation statements)

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“…Previous attempts to base an analysis of urban development markets on the category of absolute rent were criticised for their mechanistic approach, and for inferring the existence of absolute rent from the low organic composition of capital in the housebuilding industry. Absolute rent cannot be imposed as a category; it can be applied only as a method of analysis that uncovers the role of ground rent in the urban development process (Ball et al 1985). Anne Haila's (2016) description of a financialised housing market in which the supply of completed homes is conditional on the rent generated from land provides a suitable starting point for this analysis and the theory of absolute rent delivers a convincing explanation of barriers to supply in the volume housebuilding industry in UK and Australia.…”

Section: The Return Of Absolute Rent: Concluding Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…“A static and incomplete understanding of the idea of absolute rent” resulted from this mechanistic endeavour to rigidly address the criteria (Ball et al. 1985:8). As a result, the focus on the organic composition of capital was abandoned, and absolute rent as a theory of price and profit fell into neglect, and when Harvey and Chatterjee's article “Absolute Rent and the Structuring of Space” was published in Antipode in 1974, a much‐narrower definition of the category was offered, alongside a change of name to “class monopoly rent”.…”

Section: Class Monopoly Rentmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…I then distil the conditions that require to be met in an application of absolute rent to contemporary real estate development and set out a research hypothesis that can be tested. Alive to Michael Ball's injunction that absolute rent can be understood only in the specific context of contemporary housing supply (Ball et al 1985), I read the "grey" literature and academic studies of the speculative housebuilding industry in the UK and Australia through this framework of analysis. I conclude that the slow responsiveness associated with the housebuilding industry in both countries is the effective operation of a strategy of artificial scarcity straddling land and housing markets.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Absolute rent has proved challenging to translate from the agricultural setting described by Marx in the late 19 th century to contemporary urban development markets and attempts to apply it to housebuilding and real estate investment in the 1970s foundered on the mechanics of this transposition (Ball et al. 1985). In the pages of this journal in 1974, David Harvey and Lata Chatterjee excised absolute rent of its complexities by renaming it “class monopoly rent”, thus conflating Marxian rental categories and inspiring a lively and evolving literature on residential submarkets.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

Artificial Scarcity in Housebuilding and the Impact on Affordability: The Return of Absolute Rent

Bradley

2023

Antipode

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The slow response of volume housebuilders to changes in demand has been cited as a contributing cause of a global crisis of housing affordability and allegations of land banking have persistently dogged the industry. This article reviews the supply responsiveness of speculative housebuilders in the United Kingdom and Australia through the neglected Marxian analytic category of absolute rent. Absolute rent directs attention to the relationship between the value of land and the cost of housing and models a market in which landowners may withdraw land from supply to inflate prices. Through the lens of absolute rent, the real estate practices of the housebuilding industry can be understood as a strategy of artificial scarcity straddling land and housing markets. The findings of this investigation demonstrate the insights to be gained by a return to absolute rent that valuably expand the current debate on the supply and cost of housing.

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Section: The Return Of Absolute Rent: Concluding Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Class Monopoly Rentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Artificial Scarcity in Housebuilding and the Impact on Affordability: The Return of Absolute Rent

Bradley

2023

Antipode

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“…The short-lived revival and subsequent decline of heterodox rent theory has received extensive review, definitively so by Haila (1990), but see also, among others, Ball et al (1985), Clark (1988), Park (2014). Given this, we restrict ourselves to a summary overview here, seeking to offer an interpretation of the direction in which this literature has moved in the 25 years since Haila's review.…”

Section: The Marxist Revivalmentioning

confidence: 99%

Virtual special issue editorial essay: ‘The shitty rent business’: What’s the point of land rent theory?

2016

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In this introduction to a virtual special issue on land rent, we sketch out the history of land rent theory, encompassing classical political economy, Marx's political economy, the marginalist turn and subsequent foundations for urban economics, and the Marxist consensus around rent theory during geography's spatial turn. We then overview some of the contemporary strands of literature that have developed since the break down of this consensus, namely political economy approaches centred on capital-switching, institutionalism of various stripes, and the rent gap theory. We offer a critical urban political economy perspective and a particular set of arguments run through the review: first, land is not the same as capital but has unique attributes as a factor of production which require a separate theorisation. Second, since the 1970s consensus around land rent and the city dissipated, the critical literature has tended to take the question of why/how the payment exists at all for granted and so has ignored the particular dynamics of rent arising from the idiosyncrasies of land. Amongst the talk of an 'Anthropocene' and 'planetary urbanisation' it is surprising that the economic fulcrum of the capitalist remaking of geography has fallen so completely off the agenda. It is time to bring rent back into the analysis of land, cities and capitalism. Keywords David Harvey, ground rent, land rent, urban economics, urban political economy Incidentally, another thing I have at last been able to sort out is the shitty rent business. I had long harboured misgivings as to the absolute correctness of Ricardo's theory, and have at length got to the bottom of the swindle.

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Beyond the limits of rentability: Revalorizing urban space in late neoliberalism

Madden

2024

Environment and Planning F

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How has the process of urban spatial valorization evolved since the global financial crisis of 2007–2008? In the late neoliberal city, flows of value are increasingly captured through new forms of privately-controlled rentable property. In order to explore this process, this article develops the notion of rentability. It argues that the post-crisis period of urbanization in the neoliberal core is characterized by an emphasis on the expansion and deepening of rentability throughout urban and suburban space. The article details multiple manifestations of this process. It argues that there this process features distinctive spatial, scalar, and political patterns. And it explores how the expansion of rentability and of landlord-tenant relations are being contested in various ways. As more of urban life becomes subject to rent relations, new opportunities for resistance emerge.

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Modern Capitalism and The Theory of Urban Rent: A Review

Cited by 4 publications

References 0 publications

Artificial Scarcity in Housebuilding and the Impact on Affordability: The Return of Absolute Rent

Artificial Scarcity in Housebuilding and the Impact on Affordability: The Return of Absolute Rent

Virtual special issue editorial essay: ‘The shitty rent business’: What’s the point of land rent theory?

Beyond the limits of rentability: Revalorizing urban space in late neoliberalism

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