Debtor Urbanization

Keynote Lecture

Dr Rachel Weber

Professor of Urban Planning and Policy, University of Illinois at Chicago

Buy the Sky and Sell the Sky: Performing Value in Urban Property Markets

There is conceptual confusion surrounding the ontological status of value in the financialization literature, with some treating values as intrinsic to commodities and “inflated” by speculation. I analyze processes of capitalization and value extraction in urban property markets to see if we can reconcile constructivist and materialist approaches to valuation. What are some of the compatibilities and tensions between these approaches? Can we simultaneously treat value as something that is constructed, extracted, and appropriated, or are there different kinds of value? I focus on the relationship between real estate capital and financial knowledges (e.g., appraisal), practices (e.g., urban governance), artifacts (e.g., buildings), and actors (e.g., investors, planners) through a case study of new office towers in downtown Chicago with vastly different values. I argue that property valuation is defined by its context and instrumentation, and that a multiplicity of (potentially contradictory) values with different temporalities allows capital to maximize the rents that can be extracted from the city.