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Urban Affairs Association Annual Meeting
Toronto, April 4-7 2018
Special Sessions on Financialization, Housing and Urban Inequalities
Organizers:
Alan Walks, Susanne Soederberg, Dylan Simone, Emily Hawes, Andrew Kaufman, and Lama Tawakkol
Cities across the globe have been undergoing a massive transformation in the aftermath of the 2008 global financial crisis. While some cities have witnessed deepening poverty, foreclosures, and homelessness, others have experienced bubbling property markets, rampant gentrification, and rental housing crises. Some cities have witnessed both processes simultaneously, with effects on social, income, and wealth inequalities that vary along axes of difference such as race, gender, class, age, and citizenship. Undergirding such changes has been a reorganization of the global financial system, with new kinds of lenders and insidious innovations in new credit products. Simultaneously many countries have implemented national consumer protection strategies, financial literacy initiatives, and financially inclusive policy, which potentially serve their stated purposes of strengthening the financial resilience of individuals and households, but can also be conceptualized as deepening processes of state-led neoliberalism and financialization. Comparison between countries and their associated policy initiatives will promote dialogue on the scalar components and effects of contemporary finance-led capitalism.
Our sessions seek papers that speak broadly about such changes, and could relate to:
Transformations in global finance, financing of mortgages, urban infrastructure, and urban services, new geographies of lending (delocalization and relocation of lenders and flows, etc)
New forms of gentrification, the relationships between financialization and gentrification, effects of gentrification on local populations and population sub-groups
Asset-based welfare policies, housing as pension, the evolution of pension-fund capitalism, generational effects
Influence of institutional investors on urban environments and urban political and social processes, (e.g., via investment in commercial, residential, infrastructural projects, etc.)
Financialization and changing trends in inter-generational and intra-generational wealth and income inequality, and associated changes in patterns of housing and the built environment
New urban inequalities, effects of financialization and/or housing trends on geographies of labour, rental markets, poverty and slums
Flows of credit among cities, concentrations of wealth and debt in cities, shifting functions of global and non-global cities
The financialization of rental housing and the implications for rents, income distributions, displacements and evictions, and social groups living in rental housing
Financialization of care and housing solutions (e.g., long-term care facilities, retirement homes, and challenges to aging-in-place) for elderly citizens in aging societies
The functions and forms of consumer protection frameworks at various levels of government (national, regional, and local frameworks), and their connections to global initiatives
Financially inclusive policy in the state-led and private sectors
Financial literacy campaigns and national strategies in reshaping global dynamics of subject formation
Relationships between financial inclusion and individual/household wealth/asset/debt accumulation and their impacts on crisis formation
The legal geographies of financialization (e.g. legal and extra-legal techniques of the firm, financial jurisdictions, and role of law in processes of accumulation)
..
If you are potentially interested in participating in our sessions in some fashion (paper, panel, etc), please contact:
Alan Walks ([log in to unmask])
Susanne Soederberg ([log in to unmask])
Dylan Simone ([log in to unmask]
Emily Hawes ([log in to unmask])
Andrew Kaufman ([log in to unmask]
Lama Tawakkol ([log in to unmask])