Despite Brexit and Trump, London and New York real estate will remain a safe deposit box for transnational wealth elites

The flow of money from the super-rich or wealth elites into real estate in global cities like London and New York have left analysts wondering whether this is a temporary surge or a deeper transformation of real estate markets. The rebellion against globalization, illustrated by Brexit and the election of Donald Trump, makes this an even more pressing issue. Rodrigo Fernandez, Annelore Hofman and Manuel B. Aalbers argue that to understand the geography of wealth elites, we need to look at the underlying mechanisms of global inequality, such offshore finance and the role of global cities as real estate investment locations

A finance- and real estate-driven regime in the United Kingdom

In the literature, it is argued that the Fordist regime of accumulation has gradually been replaced by a financedriven regime. We argue that the contemporary regime in the UK could be best characterized as a finance- and real estate-driven regime. Like Fordism, the new regime is thought to fuel the economy by propping up consumption, but unlike the Fordist regime it does not seek to do so through job creation or high and steady wages, but rather through private money creation and real estate price inflation. The reliance of the economy on private housing debt rather than public debt—‘privatized Keynesianism’ (Crouch, 2011)—is a key element of the new regime. The state has not simply facilitated the rise of the new regime but has put its faith in the financial and real estate sectors—both residential and commercial—to prop up the economy. Different layers of the UK government have favoured real estate development and investment, in part enabled by disintermediation and lobbying. For a while, the finance- and real estate-driven regime seemed to create economic growth. Although the regime appeared fragile during the financial crisis of 2007–2009, the neoliberal mode and its accompanying finance- and real estate-driven regime were saved and the dominance of finance and real estate have deepened. This paper is based on the analysis of publicly available statistics, policy and advocacy documents and 39 in-depth interviews with real estate professionals.status: publishe

Spaces of lobbying

© 2017 The Author(s) Geography Compass © 2017 John Wiley & Sons Ltd This paper departs from the observation that a systematic review of the available theories, concepts, and methods and techniques for researching lobbying is lacking. Lobbying is a relational geography of power. And although economic and political geographers study a range of practices that could be considered constitutive to lobbying, they have hitherto largely ignored the spaces of lobbying. We conceptualize lobbying as a practice of 3 flows between spaces of lobbying: the flows of people between organizations, the flows of ideas between these people, and the flows of resources between organizations. Lobbying is fundamental to understand the execution of power by firms towards a range of state actors, and understood as the directed actions of individuals and groups to alter, influence, or hamper the decision-making process of governments; these actions consist of the mobilization of resources that activate power and enable access to spaces of lobbying. Access to different spaces of lobbying will influence the effectiveness of lobbying practices. Geographers are in a unique position to look at the mobilization of power through access to spaces of lobbying and its resources. We discuss how lobbying is supported by material and immaterial resources for the (re)production of spaces of lobbying. Finally, we present different methods and techniques to research lobbying.status: publishe

London and New York as a safe deposit box for the transnational wealth elite

© 2016, © The Author(s) 2016. The paper focuses on transnational wealth elites buying residential properties in New York and London as an investment rather than as a primary residence. The transnational wealth elite is a group of people that have their origin in one locality, but invest their wealth transnationally since they entertain transnational jobs, assets and social networks. New York and London real estate has the unique quality that it is perceived to be highly liquid, i.e. easily resold to other investors. Together with the safe haven and socio-cultural characteristics of both cities and the way the real estate market and its professionals are organised, global city residential real estate functions as a ‘safe deposit box’. The paper brings together different geographies: of the wealth elite, of offshore financial centres through which most real estate purchases are organised, and of real estate investment locations. It also maps the consequences of the safe deposit box function of real estate, in terms of not only house prices increases, but also of economic, social and cultural changes and how elite decision-making impacted this comprehensive set of changes in the fabric of the city. In doing this, the paper substantiates work on the financialisation of real estate by focusing attention on the agency of the wealth elite and their investment and legal networks rather than on property developers, housing associations or institutional investors.status: publishe