Neil Brenner has in the past few years made a major impact on the ways in which we understand the changing political geographies of the modern state Simultaneously analyzing the restructuring of urban governance and the transformation of national states under globalizing capitalism, 'New State Spaces' is a mature and sophisticated analysis of broad interdisciplinary interest, making this a highly significant contribution to the subject

New State Spaces: Urban Governance and the Rescaling of Statehood

Description: This is the first volume to analyse systematically the role of neoliberalism in contemporary processes of urban restructuring. Drawing upon cutting–edge theoretical work within radical geography, critical urban studies, neo–marxian state theory and critical social theory, contributions by leading scholars map the spaces of neoliberalism that have been forged and contested within contemporary North American and Western European cities.

Spaces of Neoliberalism: Urban Restructuring in North America and Western Europe

Financialization and sustainable urban planning are now two major components ofurban production and landscape change in Western cities. The purpose of this article isto demonstrate how the intervention of financial actors influences urban sustainability inthe building of megaprojects, by developing a conceptual framework for analysis andinterpretation. This framework aims first to examine the way in which sustainability hasbeen produced by the different actors involved in a real-life situation, and then to placethese interactions in their institutional, spatial and temporal context. Consequently,sustainability is understood as a social construct which is the object of negotiations thathave led to the making of institutional arrangements in order to allow the project to becarried through. This framework has been constructed from the financial geography andurban geography literature on ‘finance, the city and sustainability’and from a case study.The latter looks at the regeneration of a brownfield site to create a shopping and leisurecomplex that was the biggest in Switzerland and was purchased by financial actors.

https://doc.rero.ch/record/209827/files/Theurillat_Thierry_-_The_Sustainability_of_a_Financialized_Urban_Megaproject_The_Case_of_Sihlcity_20140423.pdf

The Sustainability of a Financialized Urban Megaproject: The Case of Sihlcity in Zurich

The evolution of the US sub-prime mortgage meltdown into a global financial crisis clearly demonstrates the increasingly integrated nature of mortgage and capital markets. However, notwithstanding the global scale and severity of the recent financial crisis, the effects of the credit crunch were mediated by nationally constituted housing markets, the activities of local financial institutions and national housing policies. Adopting an institutional perspective this paper critically examines the manner in which the financial crisis impacted upon the Australian and New Zealand housing markets. These countries had actively participated in the liberalisation of mortgage markets and experienced significant house price inflation post-2000 but, in contrast to the USA and some European experiences, they escaped a severe housing downturn. It is argued that a combination of pre-existing institutional practices, market conditions and government policies acted to shelter these markets and created the potential conditions for a new housing boom. While avoiding a deep housing slump, both Australia and New Zealand have to address the on-going macroeconomic implications of a system predicated on housing inflation and capital gains.

The global financial crisis and the Australian and New Zealand housing markets

La gestion de la question sociale s’est traduite, en France, par la constitution d’un « quasi –secteur » qui, a son apogee au milieu des annees 1970, articule protection sociale, aide sociale et action sociale. A la suite, et afin de faire face aux « nouveaux problemes sociaux », se propage un processus assez generalise de socio-Territorialisation empruntant a quatre repertoires d’action assez distincts : l’amenagement reparateur, l’administration integrative, la gestion modernisatrice et le developpement endogene. L’expertise d’Etat se double alors d’une expertise davantage generaliste, construite a l’articulation des differentes echelles d’action publique. Depuis 2005, le nouveau repertoire qui se structure, celui de l’activation cohesive, s’accompagne d’une expertise plus prescriptive et fonctionne comme un marqueur du nouveau regime d’Etat social actif. Le detour par le Quebec permet alors d’entrevoir le sens et les modalites des reordonnancements en cours et, tout a la fois, de reperer certaines des composantes specifiques de notre dynamique nationale.

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La gestion localisée de la question sociale : diversité des échelles, circulation des idées, contributions expertes.

Resume En prenant pour objet les dispositifs fiscaux, mis en place a partir des annees 1980 et destines a favoriser l’investissement locatif par les particuliers, cet article va a l’encontre du discours dominant sur le retrait de l’Etat dans le secteur du logement. Ces dispositifs sont devenus un instrument central de la politique de construction de logements en France. Si les acteurs publics sont determinants dans leur elaboration, ils en perdent ensuite la maitrise au profit des acteurs prives, en particulier les promoteurs immobiliers, qui jouent un role decisif dans leur mise en œuvre. L’analyse de ces dispositifs temoigne d’un phenomene de dependance des acteurs de marche a l’egard de l’intervention publique. Plus largement, une transformation de la nature meme de l’action publique est pointee : outre le fait qu’elle s’oriente davantage vers les acteurs de marche, celle-ci est moins visible, les couts engendres sont difficile a evaluer et des incertitudes fortes pesent sur les effets produits.

Soutenir le marché : les nouveaux instruments de la politique du logement

Since the 1980s in Western Europe, centralized states' control over subnational territories has been deeply affected by processes of Europeanization and regionalization. These changes have raised the issue of state territorial restructuring in a particular fashion: what capacity have formerly centralized states retained to steer and control subnational territories? The article draws on Mann's concept of infrastructural power, which refers to the state's capacity to exercise control and implement political decisions over the national territory. The article applies the two main operationalizations of the concept, namely the capability of the state to exercise control and the weight of the state in the subnational territories. Empirically, the article focuses on the French state in two policy sectors (education and housing). Although France is a most likely case, this article challenges this expectation, and shows the limits of the French state's infrastructural power over the subnational territories since the late 1980s.

A Dethroned king? The limits of state infrastructural power in France

This article aims at demonstrating that including
infranational territories is essential to
appreciate interests groups' influence in some
policy sectors. The paper is based on an empirical
fieldwork focused on the strategies of private
real-estate developers to have an influence on
housing policies in France. While developers are
minor stakeholders at national and supranational
levels, they play a crucial role in the evolution of
housing policies' regulation. Their local mobilizations
have two dimensions : private real-estate
developers are extremely active during the implementation
stage of some national housing policies
(often fiscal ones) and they lobby local
government, which are in charge of issuing building
permits.

Les groupes d'intérêt vus du local : Les promoteurs immobiliers dans le secteur du logement en France

La reproduction ou représentation de cet article, notamment par photocopie, n'est autorisée que dans les limites des conditions générales d'utilisation du site ou, le cas échéant, des conditions générales de la licence souscrite par votre établissement. Toute autre reproduction ou représentation, en tout ou partie, sous quelque forme et de quelque manière que ce soit, est interdite sauf accord préalable et écrit de l'éditeur, en dehors des cas prévus par la législation en vigueur en France. Il est précisé que son stockage dans une base de données est également interdit.

/pdf/les-grands-promoteurs-immobiliers-francais-3s49f2tugk.pdf

Julie Pollard

Papers

Soutenir le marché : les nouveaux instruments de la politique du logement

A Dethroned king? The limits of state infrastructural power in France

Les groupes d'intérêt vus du local : Les promoteurs immobiliers dans le secteur du logement en France

Les grands promoteurs immobiliers français

Un tournant discret : la production de logements sociaux par les promoteurs immobiliers