The field as source of inspiration

Jackson Square with the St. Louis Cathedral in the French Quarter of New Orleans, Louisiana (circa 1920) Photograph appears in Gotham (2007a, p. 88). Reproduced by permission from the New Orleans Public Library, Louisiana Division and the City Archives. This photograph shows Jackson Square with the St. Louis Cathedral in the French Quarter of New Orleans, Louisiana. Established in 1718, the neighborhood developed with a mix of resident and commercial land uses within a rectangular grid of ap..

Re-anchoring capital in disaster-devastated spaces: Financialisation and the Gulf Opportunity (GO) Zone programme

This paper contributes to scholarship on the relationship between financialisation and the production of urban space by examining the implementation of the Gulf Opportunity (GO) Zone Act of 2005 (Pub. L. No. 109–135). From 2005 to December 2011, the GO Zone provided over $23 billion in tax-free, low-interest bonds and other tax incentives to individuals and businesses in the Gulf Coast area affected by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Drawing on government documents, planning reports, and interviews, I identify the limitations of the GO Zone and provide a critical assessment of the use of financialisation techniques to revitalise disaster-devastated communities. In doing so, my investigation seeks to deepen scholarly understanding of post-disaster regulatory experiments to illuminate the mechanisms underlying the production and regulation of uneven spatial development. My analysis challenges accounts that locate financialisation in deregulatory initiatives and, in contrast, shows that financialisation is a state-driven process that exacerbates risk and is associated with a series of intense contradictions, regulatory failures, and crisis tendencies. </jats:p