Tracing the socio-spatial logics of transnational landlords’ real estate investment: Blackstone in Madrid

The rapid internationalisation of the Spanish property market has triggered debates about the main characteristics of emerging post-crisis urban dynamics. Financial and urban policy reforms have shaped a model depicted by incessant rent increases and displacements. Echoing these concerns, this article addresses two interconnected objectives about the way policy restructuring encouraged transnational investments into Spanish real estate and the concomitant socio-spatial effects this wider asset reshuffling has produced. Both queries are discussed by pinpointing the multi-scalar investment strategies of the private equity firm, Blackstone, which emerged as the predominant institutional investor during the recovery phase of the Spanish property market. The article initially sketches out the trajectory of the political economy of housing in Spain, and then it focuses on the strategies pursued by Blackstone for the acquisition of real estate and housing stock. The following sections connect the nodes of the financial chain that link this investor to former social housing tenants whose homes are by now owned by Blackstone. The spatial and social effects of this change in property ownership demonstrate the importance of in-depth research about the financial nodes that interplay with and shape the post-crisis urban condition in and beyond Southern Europe

Anaerobic membrane bioreactors enable high rate treatment of slaughterhouse wastewater

Anaerobic membrane bioreactors (AnMBRs) enable high space loading by retaining solids selectively through microfiltration membranes. For organic industrial wastewaters, this offers an alternative to lagoons and granule based high-rate anaerobic treatment due to excellent effluent quality, high tolerance to load variations, and ability to produce a solids free effluent for the purposes of reuse. While there has been extensive work on low-strength and low solids effluent, there has been limited application in high-solids, high fats systems such as slaughterhouse wastewater, which are a key application. A 200L AnMBR pilot plant operated at 2 Australian cattle slaughterhouses consistently removed over 95% of chemical oxygen demand (COD) from the wastewater. Virtually all degradable COD was converted to biogas, 78-90% of nitrogen and 74% of phosphorus in the wastewater were released to the treated permeate as ammonia and phosphate, respectively; which would enable subsequent nutrient capture. The mass loading rate limit of 3-3.5g CODLd is imposed by the active biomass inventory, with this in turn limited to 40gL (TS) by the need to manage membrane fouling control

Gated communities: Definitions, causes and consequences

Gated communities became an 'object of study' in the 1990s as social scientists observed their growth in several cities; they are now a feature of the urban landscape in most cities around the world. The expansion of gated communities has led to prolific research, examining different aspects of this type of residential development and providing evidence from case studies worldwide. This paper reviews how gated communities are conceptualised according to the literature and identifies the main factors influencing their development. It also considers spatial, economic, political and social consequences of the development of gated communities. These elements should be taken into account by planners and policymakers to minimise their negative impacts and maximise the positive consequences of a residential option that is likely to be part of the urban landscape for a long time

Wind Power Persistence Characterized by Superstatistics

Mitigating climate change demands a transition towards renewable electricity generation, with wind power being a particularly promising technology. Long periods either of high or of low wind therefore essentially define the necessary amount of storage to balance the power system. While the general statistics of wind velocities have been studied extensively, persistence (waiting) time statistics of wind is far from well understood. Here, we investigate the statistics of both high- and low-wind persistence. We find heavy tails and explain them as a superposition of different wind conditions, requiring q-exponential distributions instead of exponential distributions. Persistent wind conditions are not necessarily caused by stationary atmospheric circulation patterns nor by recurring individual weather types but may emerge as a combination of multiple weather types and circulation patterns. This also leads to Fréchet instead of Gumbel extreme value statistics. Understanding wind persistence statistically and synoptically may help to ensure a reliable and economically feasible future energy system, which uses a high share of wind generation

‘Post-pandemic’ transnational gentrifications: A critical outlook

Transnational gentrifications have been occurring at the crossroads of capital investment fuelled to satisfy the remarkable increase of so-called leisure-oriented mobilities. Such mobilities, however, cause disruptive social, spatial and economic transformations of urban and rural landscapes across the globe. Consequently, transnational gentrifications may be considered a crucial testimonial of economic shifts, during the 2008–2020 period of accumulation. In this article, we argue that the underlying conceptual assumptions of transnational gentrifications require crucial adjustments. We should especially consider the intellectual roots that simply celebrate leisure-oriented mobilities while setting aside the exclusionary social practices of the consumption of space, culture, heritage and place. We do this by interpreting the phenomenon by means of a political economy that understands (i) the lens of the multi-scalar organisation of state power as a centrepiece for orchestrating the conditions for transnational gentrifications; (ii) transnational middle-class leisure-oriented mobilities linked dichotomously with labour precariousness and flexibility; and (iii) the rent gap as an analytical tool to understand dispossession, and corresponding displacement of people, practices and discourses. This approach sheds light on the nuances of gentrification as an attribute of systemic violence exercised in financialised capitalism. It also supports us to sketch out a theoretically informed outlook for the ongoing reorientation of intertwined gentrifications by transnational capital investments with intermittent flows of people in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic

Die Flucht vor Gewalt? Stereotype und Motivationen beim Andrang auf <i>barrios privados</i> in Buenos Aires

Entgegen der medialen Berichterstattung zeigen die empirischen Erfahrungen in Buenos Aires, dass die Flucht in bewachte Wohnkomplexe keinen monokausalen Rückzug vor wachsender Gewalt darstellt. Der ausgeprägte Suburbanisierungsdrang konnte in den 1990er Jahren mit der Stabilisierung des Kreditwesens und nach dem Ausbau der Autobahnen von vielen jungen Familien der Mittelschicht verwirklicht werden. Dies stellt auch eine Konsequenz der unzureichenden Lebensbedingungen in zentralen städtischen Vierteln dar. Die verbreitete Umzäunung der neuen Wohnviertel ist dabei eine Strategie von Immobilienfirmen, die private Stadtentwicklung organisieren und sich so höhere Gewinnmargen versprechen. Wenngleich das Marketing der Firmen die Komponente Sicherheit in den Mittelpunkt stellt, spiegelt sich diese Verkaufsstrategie nicht in den Motivationen der Bewohner wider. Diese drehen sich um Aspekte, die aus den Suburbanisierungsprozessen in Westeuropa bekannt sind

Who Loses and Who Wins in a Housing Crisis? Lessons From Spain and Greece for a Nuanced Understanding of Dispossession

The emerging postcrisis geographies in Southern Europe are intrinsically related to debt and dispossession. In Spain, mortgage homeownership and indebtedness led to housing dispossessions, while in Greece, skyrocketing private indebtedness is eventually arranged through housing foreclosures. Building upon the notion of accumulation by dispossession, i.e., on the way capital accumulates wealth in the era of neoliberal globalization, this article elaborates two novel concepts to understand the housing crises in both countries. The perception of dispossession by odious taxation describes the process of wealth extraction facilitated by financial mechanisms in Greece, and dispossession by political fraud is conceived as a characterization of fraudulent political arrangements and financial tools used for orchestrating housing stealth in Spain. This nurtures the perception that a comparative insight on the processes of dispossession in the Spanish and Greek housing markets may facilitate a nuanced understanding over the interrelated processes of contemporary housing restructuring