Why do cities adopt certain instruments, and how does the use of particular methods of raising capital affect who benefits from and pays for urban infrastructures? Rachel Weber’s work advances the concept of “financialization” as shorthand for how these tools bring new politics, kinds of knowledge, and risks to bear on policy and development decisions. Co-sponsored with Global Metropolitan Studies and the Department of City and Regional Planning.
October 31, 2024 | 3:30-5pm | 8th floor, Social Sciences Building | Register to attend here
About the speaker:
Dr. Rachel N. Weber is a professor in the Urban Planning and Policy Department of the University of Illinois at Chicago where she has taught and conducted research in the fields of economic development, real estate, city politics, and public finance since 1998. Weber is the author of over 50 peer-reviewed journal articles, as well as numerous book chapters and published reports, and is the co-editor of the Oxford Handbook of Urban Planning, a compilation of 40 essays by leading urban scholars. Her book, From Boom to Bubble: How Finance Built the New Chicago won the Best Book Award from the Urban Affairs Association in 2017. Weber’s current research project, tentatively entitled “The Urban Oracular: Prediction and Speculation in Real Estate,” unpacks the mechanics of contemporary property speculation in an age of financialization and digitalization. In addition to her academic responsibilities, Weber has served as an advisor to planning agencies, political candidates, and community organizations on issues related to property taxes, infrastructure finance, and neighborhood change. She was appointed to then-presidential candidate Barack Obama’s Urban Policy Committee in 2008 and by Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel to the Tax Increment Financing Reform Task Force in 2011. She has been cited and quoted extensively in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, National Public Radio, The Economist, Crain’s, The Chicago Tribune, and other news outlets.
Further details:
Most accounts of the financialization of space critique the rentier but overlook the work of the forecasters and the calculative knowledge practices that inform property capital’s (dis)investment decisions. In this talk, Weber fills this gap and reports on an industry analysis of the professionals that produce knowledge for the investment funds that buy and sell commercial real estate. These professionals are part of predictive knowledge infrastructures that help speculators create and capture the inter-temporal value differentials (i.e., capital gains) extracted from space. The last half century has witnessed the proliferation of futuring techniques and data sources intended to steer property speculators toward potentially profitable opportunities. Weber examines the recent restructuring of the property data and forecasting industry, arguing that since the Global Financial Crisis, an oligopolistic market structure of data cartels has emerged through contested mergers and acquisitions. She considers the implications of this market concentration for asset pricing, urban development, and counterclaims of rights to the city.