Havana

Aquesta comunicació vol ser una primera aproximació per posar en valor una de les múltiples facetes de Ròmul Bosch i Alsina (1846-1923), antic alcalde de Barcelona (1905), conegut per la seva activitat empresarial i la seva estreta vinculació al sector marítim i navilier. Les activitats comercials el van vincular durant tota la seva vida al món navilier, com a consignatari i propietari d’una distingida flota de vaixells destinats al comerç amb les Amèriques. N’importava cotó, sucre i teixits, entre d’altres, i hi exportava bàsicament vins. Va ocupar diferents càrrecs relacionats amb l’àmbit marítim, el més destacat dels quals va ser el de president de la Junta d’Obres del Port de Barcelona, del 1900 al 1904 i del 1906 al 1923. En aquests períodes Bosch va modernitzar i ampliar el port, unes tasques que li van ser recompensades amb el bateig d’una de les zones del port amb el seu nom.

The emerging literature on the globalization of real estate has addressed how internationally circulating capital has increasingly found its ways into housing markets of the "Global South". With relatively underdeveloped financial and real estate markets, these countries have discursively and materially been rebranded as emerging markets, that is, they have been shaped into frontiers in the global urbanization of capital. In this paper we scrutinize the trans-national real estate networks that shape and reshape the Cuban housing market. First, we reconstruct how, following the 2011 legalization of housing prices set between buyers and sellers, Cuban migrants and a few foreign investors, in cooperation with Cubans residing in Cuba, are buying properties in Cuba's cities, beach resorts and other towns. Second, we explore the economic and extra-economic motives behind such transnational property transactions, highlighting how residential properties are bought and converted into private restaurants or hotels. Central to our analysis is that the present development is not simply shaped by local or national demand and processes but also by international investment. We contend that a pattern of economic globalization unfolds where transnational remittances, rather than institutional investments or mortgage finance, steer Cuba's emerging property market, along with local investments among Cuban citizens.

The Division of Geography & Tourism at KU Leuven (Belgium) is looking for a full-time Postdoctoral researcher for up to 22 months for the research project "The Geography of Corporate Financialization" as well as two full-time PhD candidates for 4 years for the research project "The Making of Havana’s Property Market".

The Geography of Corporate Financialization
The financialization of the economy is widely discussed in the literature, especially outside mainstream economics. For several countries, there is evidence of a shift towards finance at the level of the economy at large as well as regarding the financialization of households, but the literature on the financialization of traditionally non-financial firms is less conclusive. The problem is that our understandings—and our statistics—of manufacturing firms versus financial firms are becoming increasingly outdated and new data sources and conceptualizations are needed to understand the contemporary economy. Our first aim is to show to what extent non-financial corporations in different economic sectors across the globe exhibit different signs of financialization in their financial accounts. Our second aim is to arrive at an understanding of the reasons for as well as the workings and the consequences of financialization in non-financial corporations.

The Making of Havana’s Property Market
This study aims to reconstruct Cuba’s economic transition with a particular focus on the making of the property market in the country’s capital city of Havana. The emerging literature on the globalization of real estate has addressed how internationally circulating capital has increasingly found its ways into the property markets of the ‘Global South’. The restrictions of underdeveloped financial and real estate markets in these countries have been turned into frontiers in the global urbanization of capital. We propose to study market making practices that shape and reshape the Cuban property market following the regularization of private property in 2011. We focus on: 1) the emerging homeownership and tourism property markets; 2) the transnational flow of investment, especially from Cuban expats in Miami and elsewhere in the US; and 3) how households (small entrepreneurs) use opportunities in the tourism property market. Together these processes are constitutive to Havana’s emerging property market. The practices of local entrepreneurs and the inflow of capital from Cuban expats in Miami into Havana’s (tourism) property market are an entry into understanding Cuba’s socioeconomic transition towards market socialism. As such, our study also responds to the call to develop more multipolar and cosmopolitan modes of urban theory construction in an age of globalized and financialized capitalism. The first PhD candidate will focus on homeownership whereas the second PhD candidate will focus on property tourism.