Defne Kadioglu

Since the financial crisis of 2008/09, the “financialisation of housing” has become a buzzword widely used within and outside academia to describe economic and structural changes in the housing market. One of the most visible dimensions of this “financialization” is the growing presence of institutional investors as property owners in manifold cities across Europe. This trend has come along with a burgeoning housing affordability crisis that affects at new households in major cities. While housing is placed again under pressure, new questions arise in relation to the role of institutional investors as active agents of housing supply. There is no clear evidence of how institutional investors affect local housing markets and how they relate to housing affordability pressures in each city. Additionally, little is known about how housing policies and politics engage with institutional investors as novel housing actors and which are the challenges faced in housing policy development. To shed light on these questions that still remain underresearched, we have selected seven cities that vary significantly in terms of rental systems and market dynamics, housing policies and provision to examine the different, thus the city-specific effects of this general trend across Europe.
The financialization of housing has already become a major issue in urban and housing studies and research has disclosed the growing relevance of institutional investors, financial motives, financialised management and calculation techniques in the transformation of housing into an asset class (Gabor & Kohl 2022; Wu et al., 2020; Fernandez & Aalbers, 2020; Aalbers et al., 2020). However, after more than 15 years of interdisciplinary research it has become clear that the term "financialisation" is developing as a relatively imprecise umbrella for a broad variety of topics. We tender that the actual “doing” of financialization is highly context-bound, defined by spatial and temporal local particularities and, as such, subject to an immense array of variations. For example, while in Germany and Sweden institutional investors have been buying up entire housing estates and formerly public housing companies, in other cities of central and eastern Europe real estate investment trusts or real estate funds are gaining a foothold in niche markets such as care facilities, student dormitories or micro-apartments. In Spain and Ireland, and more recently, in Greece financialization is often discussed in relation to debt management and the securitization of Non-Performing Loans (NPLs). In our study, we explore these differences and describe the variety of ways in which institutional investors have established themselves in European cities.
The chief aim of our study is to shed light on the role and strategies of institutional investors in local housing markets. First, we trace how institutional investors approach local housing markets in seven different countries. Second, we explore how institutional investors' activities enmesh with the provision of affordable housing. Third, we reflect on the local specificities and the way institutional investors become embedded in local real-estate markets to consider why investment strategies differ significantly amongst cities and, therefore, we disclose the different gateways in the cities under study. In doing so, we highlight the role of local context in the path-dependency of the financialisation of housing. A fourth focus is on the interplay between institutional investors, policy actors and governments. We assume that in a highly regulated field such as urban and housing policy, different forms of exchange and cooperation between institutional investors and local policy actors emerge in each case, reflecting local specificites and dynamics.
To address the above, we have chosen a comparative case study design. Moving away from a conventional comparative approach of identifying similarities and differences, we aim at teasing out how the general restructuring of financialised housing is continuously restructured and reshaped by local dynamics. This helps disclose the path-dependency of housing finanicialisation across seven cities. In other words, it is not only the generic trend of housing financialisation that shapes local housing markets, but local circumstances that define the process of housing financialisation in each case. As such, in this comparative approach we bring together cases that represent different rental systems, different ideologies of housing provision, policies and planning and different market dynamics to explore how the contigent trajectories of housing financialisation are defined by local dynamics and how institutional investors reshape their strategies to adjust and/or accommodate to local circumstances.
To shed light on the role of institutional investors as key actors in the finanicalisation of housing against the background of different local contexts, seven case studies were selected to offer key information on the structure of the housing markets and the current challenges for affordable housing supply. For this, London, Brussels and Milan are selected as cities with a traditionally ownership-centered housing market and in the case of Brussels and Milan with a weak social housing sector and weak rent regulations. This is to some degree also the case of Warsaw where the housing market transitioned from a planned economy to a “super homeownership society” with a peculiar mix of housing rights and a lack of regulation. This contrasts Malmö and Berlin, two cities that were at least in the past characterised by very strong regulation of the private market and a strong non-profit sector. Athens stands as a case of extreme austerity, indebtedness and impoverishment of the local population, forming a very specific environment for the financialisation of housing.
The case study chapters that follow analyse the activities of institutional investors and describe their role in the supply of affordable housing. Additionally, the political and planning instruments which cities employ vis á vis institutional investors are presented. Of particular interest, are the forms of public-private collaboration through which city planners and policy-makers interact with institutional investors. The presentation of the seven case studies is followed by a cross-case summary in which the comparison of the strategies and tragectory of institutional investors is used to identify the path-dependecies of housing financialisation, and the way local contingencies work out the interaction between investors and the political-administrative system. The impact of institutional investors on housing affordability is a recurring theme underlying the queries under scrutiny.
The work presented here is the outcome of a six-month project which was financed by Science Po Paris and included scholars from Athens, Berlin, Brussels London, Malmö, Milan and Warsaw. It has built on the long-term engagement of the participating scientists with their respective cities and a highly developed expertise in the housing conditions, market dynamics, planning regulations and policy issues in different contexts. Nevertheless, the study has an explorative character. It provides first hand ideas about the different financial logics across Europe which need further examination.

Since the turn of the Millennium, debates within critical urban studies have given rise to intellectually-rich discussions that force us to rethink the location, theories, and practices of the field. While attending to the fundamental question of What is the urban?, theorizations have expanded to reflect where and how we should come to know and understand it. In other words, what is considered worthy of attention to produce knowledge of urban processes? (cf. Robinson and Roy 2016). New approaches have sought to question not only the location of knowledge production but also to emphasize the importance of difference, identity, the everyday, more-than-human actors, and novel strategies of comparison when studying urban processes (Leitner, Sheppard, and Peck 2020). These developments are welcomed at a time when significant urban transformations are underway. However, more work needs to be done to create a field of critical urban studies that overtly engages with anti-colonial, anti-racist, anti-capitalist, and anti-patriarchal struggles worldwide, while addressing the urgent challenges of 21st century urbanisation, social inequality and environmental justice in more global ways. Furthermore, empirical examinations of the so-called Global South are becoming more relevant for understanding global processes of urbanisation, let alone debunking the biased ethnocentrism of prevailing urban studies hitherto. In this regard, a healthy renewal of the debates on im/possible comparisons across multiple scales, time frames, and social, economic, and political contexts demands a central attention. Hence, the geographical and epistemological margins of critical urban scholarship need to be explored much more in-depth in order to create openings towards what Arturo Escobar (2007) calls "worlds and knowledges otherwise." Dislocating Urban Studies: Rethinking Theory, Shifting Practice is a series of digital workshops that invites scholars working on/in/out of the above-mentioned margins who have carried out empirical, methodological or theoretical work that helps expand the boundaries of urban studies. Our aim is to engage in critical dialogue and explore different starting points or strategies that contribute to dislocating the centre of the field. In four workshops, we seek to: • Workshop 1: Engage with forgotten or little-known anti-colonial and anti-capitalist urban concepts or theorists • Workshop 2: Learn from empirical cases from "off the map" of urban studies • Workshop 3: Explore methodological approaches that allow for research in understudied geographies and contribute to a global comparative urbanism • Workshop 4: Challenge, revisit or rethink the usefulness of key concepts in the field (e.g. financialization, gentrification, displacement, neoliberal urbanism, right to the city). Planned to be held in spring 2021, we invite early career scholars-PhD students (post-fieldwork), postdocs, and recently appointed faculty members-to the following workshops: