This paper contributes to debates on the financialisation of social housing and the related development of affordable housing, which has been shown to expand in relation to the increasing role of capital, actors, and instruments of financial markets. Building on housing studies, we develop a relational approach that takes into account the context-specific, complex interactions that exist beyond the dominant pattern of substitution of social by affordable housing found in the literature. Our case-study focuses on France, where policymakers have framed capital markets as a solution to the destabilisation of the traditional 'generalist' model of social housing by austerity. We show that governmental attempts to unlock access to capital markets through equity investment have been met with contestations, resulting in very limited experiments. However, capital markets have made their way through intermediate housing (logement locatif interm & eacute;diaire, LLI), a bespoke tax regime created to stimulate institutional investment into the production of 'affordable' housing for the 'middle class'. We discuss three modes of interrelations between social and intermediate housing (substitution, cross-subsidisation, and competition), and reflect on the long-term destabilising effects of peripheral financialisation on the social housing sector and policies.

This chapter conceptualises the financial infrastructures that underpin the investment circuits involved in the (re)production of the urban built environment. Adopting a sociotechnical perspective, it uncovers how financial infrastructures give a specific texture to the capital they circulate while commanding structures of opportunities and constraints for urban operators. By comparing three circuits of investment in French rental property markets, the chapter reveals how the sociotechnical mediations that link up financial infrastructures and the processes of urban production specifically shape both the power relations involved in urban production and their material and social outcomes.

The literature acknowledges the variety of local austerity policies, but has paid less attention to their geographical diversity. This paper questions the theorisation of space in this literature and investigates the relationships between local austerity policies and the diversity of local spatial systems. By combining two fiscal and socio-economic classifications of French municipalities, it provides a comprehensive and fine-grained mapping of local austerity for an entire country. Our findings demonstrate that austerity occurs in a wide range of local spatial systems and highlight numerous instances of mundane austerity that exist between affluent areas and those most severely impacted by austerity.

Over the past decade, asset managers have positioned themselves as strategic gatekeepers in the management and deployment of capital across the world. The scholarship on asset manager capitalism is increasingly examining how this industry acquires, retains and uses its power, as well as the broader repercussions of their agencies. This article contributes to the research agenda on the interplay between finance and space by scrutinising the roles and power of asset managers and how they connect capital markets and the geographies of an emerging asset class in Brazil, namely logistics. Using the COVID-19 crisis as a magnifying glass, we show how asset managers asserted their control over three dimensions that have enabled logistics buildings to be assetised: the spatial representations that shape investment decisions; the material transformations that give form to new logistics facilities; and the generation and diffusion of information that allow investment options to become comparable. By building bridges across spaces along these dimensions, asset managers have expanded their power as nodal actors within the financial infrastructures that intermediate money flows across sectors and places.

Les métropoles entretiennent un lien étroit avec les différents modes d’accumulation des richesses. L’article explore comment elles sont le site d’un capitalisme mondialisé, financiarisé et urbanisé depuis les années 1970.

Inspired by Streeck's consolidation state theory, this paper develops a theoretical framework of the restructuring of the state in late-stage financialized capitalism. It observes how in Italy, an emblematic consolidation state, the use of public real estate investment funds supports assetization, that is how state properties are gradually transformed into financial assets via multilevel and multi-sector politics of public assets. As it explores the institutional and material rearrangements underpinning the restructuring of the Italian state, the paper shows how permanent austerity and financialization mutually reinforce each other, with the result that state organizations internalize a financial investor's viewpoint, while statecraft increasingly rely on financial actors, instruments and capital. The conclusion discusses how this theoretical framework can be extended beyond Italy and to other public assets.

Until recently, the terms “metropolis” and “metropolitanisation” were mainly used by academics and officials involved in the government of large urban areas. There are now signs that these phenomena are being taken up and politicised by social movements. In this special issue, the authors analyse some examples of such movements. In the introduction, we first situate the issue of metropolitan mobilisations within the literature analysing urban social movement. Based on this body of works and the articles gathered in the issue, we then formulate a number of cross-cutting findings, hypotheses and research perspectives. These relate to the adaptation of forms and repertoires of mobilisation to the characteristics of metropolitanisation; to the cognitive and discursive resources provided by metropolitan semantics and imaginaries for universalising the cause of movements; to the socially selective attributes of the main actors involved; and to the role of political opportunity structures that contribute to the metropolitan re-scaling of social movements in France. Finally, we examine the effects of metropolitan social movements on local public action, and vice versa.

Depuis une quarantaine d’annees, la financiarisation du capitalisme transforme les economies, les societes et les espaces urbains. Ce dossier interroge l’intervention croissante des acteurs, des instruments et des logiques de la finance dans la production urbaine, le role de la puissance publique et les consequences sociales, politiques et spatiales de ces evolutions.

Depuis une quarantaine d’annees, la financiarisation du capitalisme transforme les economies, les societes et les espaces urbains. Ce dossier interroge l’intervention croissante des acteurs, des instruments et des logiques de la finance dans la production urbaine, le role de la puissance publique et les consequences sociales, politiques et spatiales de ces evolutions.

Focusing on the growth of Real Estate Investment Trusts in Brazil, the paper explores how financializing policy instruments intertwine financial markets and the urban built environment. It studies the career of REITs and questions the role of financial market capital and actors in urban dynamics. The paper uncovers three processes usually considered separately: i) how a network of public and private financial market actors coaxes state bodies into using their regulatory powers and financial resources to transform real estate into an asset class; ii) how the government-run financial market authority and banks lure urban households into liquid real estate through marketing and education campaigns; and iii) how asset managers are “applied economic geographers” insofar as they channel households’ capital into a selected cities and properties. The active role played by financial actors in the design, enhancement and implementation of such a policy instrument leads us to conclude on their role as urban policy-makers.

L’extension du domaine d’intervention de la finance de marché à l’exploitation de biens immobiliers repose sur des gestionnaires d’actifs mandatés par leurs clients-investisseurs particuliers ou institutionnels. L’article montre comment leurs critères d’investissement, définis au sein de leur communauté professionnelle, pèsent sur les espaces urbains en raison de l’enrôlement des acteurs traditionnels de l’immobilier et de l’aménagement. Ces derniers, incités à s’aligner sur les gestionnaires par la discipline marchande, par l’intégration de la filière d’investissement et de promotion d’immobilier locatif, ainsi que par l’évolution entrepreneuriale des agendas du développement territorial, font circuler les standards d’investissement auprès des gouvernements urbains. Cela se matérialise par une hypersélectivité géographique et sociale promue par les gestionnaires d’actifs, qu’il s’agisse des territoires accédant aux capitaux, des formes urbaines, ou du type d’usages et d’usagers. La financiarisation à l’œuvre dans l’immobilier renforce alors la dynamique de métropolisation.

L’article contribue à explorer les circuits de financement de la production urbaine. Il développe un cadre analytique conceptualisant ces circuits comme des infrastructures financières qui collectent et distribuent des capitaux, et les rémunèrent en retour à partir de l’extraction de la rente foncière. S’appuyant sur une approche sociotechnique, cette contribution expose comment les infrastructures financières confèrent une texture spécifique aux capitaux qu’elles mettent en circulation et de ce fait imposent un ensemble de contraintes et d’opportunités aux acteurs traditionnels de la production urbaine. À partir de ce cadre analytique, l’article compare quatre circuits de financement de l’immobilier locatif en France métropolitaine. Il met au jour la spécificité des circuits de financement dits financiarisés en exposant la forte sélectivité spatiale et sociale de leurs investissements, en termes de formes bâties, de localisations inter et intra-urbaines, de sélection et d’éviction des usages et usagers.

Le projet de loi ELAN actuellement debattu au Parlement propose de transformer en profondeur les modes de financement du logement social et l’organisation des bailleurs. Matthieu Gimat et Ludovic Halbert mettent en perspective les mesures qui ont accompagne, depuis le debut des annees 2000, l’evolution de ce secteur pousse a une plus grande rentabilite.

This interview with Pierre Veltz examines the issues investigated in his book “The hyper-industrial society. The new productive capitalism” (Seuil, 2017). Some of the themes discussed focus on changes in productive systems, territorial recompositions and challenges in terms of territorial development.

The increased involvement of market finance in real estate development is underpinned by asset managers operating on behalf of retail and institutional investor clients. This paper examines how the investment criteria established within their professional community have a bearing on urban spaces due to the enrollment of long-standing real estate and planning actors. On account of market discipline, the growing integration of the investment and rental property development sectors, as well as the entrepreneurial turn in regional development agendas, the latter are compelled to align themselves with asset managers, spreading their investment criteria to urban governments. The ongoing financialization of real estate thus supports the dynamics of metropolitanization. It leads to the unfolding of geographically and socially hyper-selective investment patterns promoted by asset managers, whether in terms of which locations have access to capital, urban form, or types of uses and users.

L’article analyse le « travail » de financiarisation portant sur les régulations du secteur de l’immobilier non résidentiel, où des acteurs mobilisant des capitaux, représentations et techniques de la finance de marché ont étendu leur présence depuis les années 1990. À partir d’une enquête sur la fabrique d’une politique environnementale de réduction de la consommation énergétique des bâtiments, nous montrons comment ces gestionnaires d’actifs et experts immobiliers coproduisent ces régulations avec l’appareil politico-administratif. Depuis des positions dominantes au sein des concertations, ces acteurs de l’immobilier financiarisé ont ainsi cherché à rendre les règles compatibles avec leurs pratiques d’accumulation. Malgré la mobilisation d’autres propriétaires qui ont porté des positions dissonantes, et à l’issue d’un rapport de pouvoir, ils sont parvenus à diffuser leurs données, représentations et techniques financiarisées auprès de l’appareil politico-administratif.