Nordic Urban Political Economy

Funding the transition towards sustainable – so-called green – urban provision poses a major challenge for local and regional authorities worldwide. Shouldering this task, Swedish regions, municipalities, and municipal companies have taken a global front-runner position to expand the volume of green urban investments by accessing capital with Green Bonds. Today, 20 municipalities and regions are engaged in Green Bond financing amounting to a total debt of SEK 134 billion (€ 1.173 billion) (Kommuninvest, 2023). Notably, over 40% of the outstanding loans from the municipal-owned bank, Kommuninvest – the holder of 59% of Sweden’s total municipal debt – comprise Green Bonds. Examining the green municipal indebtedness in Sweden through secondary document analysis of selected municipalities, this paper contributes to the emerging critical scholarship on green financialisation of urban environments and infrastructures at the local level. Drawing from three theoretical frameworks: capital switching, urbanistion of capital, and financialisation, it investigates the phenomenon of green municipal indebtedness in terms of:

1) how it furthers the penetration of finance capital into the production of urban space,

2) how the enabling conditions for the indebtedness are created by long-term neoliberal policy and austerity, including underinvestment in the municipal sector,

3) to what extent it creates new financial risks and pressures for the municipal sector, and

4) what are the possible sustainability outputs economically and socially.

By delving into these aspects, our argument posits that the green municipal indebtedness reflects the emergence of a new form of green financialized urban entrepreneurialism.

 Mika Hyotylainen

Title: From entrepreneurialism to rentierism in urban governance?

Since Harvey’s (1989) influential analysis of urban governance transforming from managerialism to entrepreneurialism, urban political economy has viewed competition for circulating capital as a key task of local governments. However, the last decade has seen a growing literature around the notion of rentier capitalism. Sparked by the works such as Piketty (2013), Standing (2016), and Christophers (2020), there is now a rich literature on the idea that contemporary capitalism is less about competition and circulation, and more about value extraction in the form of various kinds of rents. Besides corporate and petit rentiers, there are also signs that local governments are increasingly reliant on value capture from land. There is gathering global evidence that urban politics is shifting from local states competing for circulating capital to instead extracting value from the built environment to meet their fiscal needs. And that local governments are deliberately using land value uplift via large scale urban development projects to maximize urban land rents. With this supposed transformation, is it still viable to call the model of local governance entrepreneurial? Or have we entered an era of local state rentierism, where urban governance is less about entrepreneurial activities or competition, and more about novel ways of value extraction via the built environment in the form of land rent? Drawing on a literature review regarding contemporary value capture policies, and introducing the premise of a new research project titled The Promise and Discontent of Fiscal Land Rent, this ‘idea paper’ engages with and invites a discussion on the question whether there is reason to suggest that we might be moving from entrepreneurialism to rentierism in urban governance. 

Defne Kadioglu

Title: From Vulnerable Neighborhoods to Financial Imaginaries: Unpacking Swedish Social Impact Investment

In Sweden, the question of how to confront increasing urban housing inequality and the connected socio-economic marginalization of neighborhoods, is hotly debated. While the public sector is struggling with budgetary constrains and is often charged with inefficiency, private and public housing companies tend to selectively engage in interventions that have positive effects on property values and rent increase. One field that has gained momentum in the course of this debate is  “social impact investment” (SII). SII refers to investments that are made with the intention to generate positive social impact alongside financial return. The underlying idea is that concerns around housing and neighborhood development can be ameliorated by reordering the relation between the public, private and financial sector and by alignining ‘the right kind of capital’ with given challenges (Nolan 2013; Fine 2012). This can, for example, take the form of debt earmarked for the purpose of crime reduction or maintenance work. In this presentation I discuss SII as a case of  housing policy financialization. Drawing on earlier accounts of financialization as a socio-technological process (Chiapello 2020), I engage with the institutions, organizations and actors/networks of actors that are produced though SII and ponder what the possible repurcussions could be on the Swedish housing system. This preliminary study is part of an effort for formulate a larger research project on the SII ecosystem in Sweden. 

Sami Moisio & Ugo Rossi 

Title: The Urban Field: Capital and Governmentally in the age of techno-monopoly

We live in an era of techno-monopoly power in which technocapitalism – through ubiquitous digital platforms – has colonized both the internet and key aspects of our everyday lives. Cities and larger urban and metropolitan environments have provided a fertile ground for the rise and rapid growth of this power. In the presentation, we reveal an urban monopoly capitalism supported by the “corporatized state”. We examine the relationship between capital and the state, and the generation of an urban governmentality centred on the economization of knowledge and technology in four key sites: labour, human capital, startups and forms of life. We argue that the urban field is a constitutively political construct that can be enacted in a different way, no longer as a value-extraction machine but as a collective endeavour aiming at redefining established modes of economic value creation.

Haoxuan Sa

Title: Immigrants’ Housing Careers, Realities and Perceptions—A case study of Helsinki Metropolitan Area

Not only in global metropolises like London or Hong Kong, immigrants are essential to the vitality of urban economies. Providing more affordable housing is one of the best solutions for attracting more immigrants and boosting economic growth. However, immigrants as vulnerable groups tend to be in disadvantaged positions in housing market because of various financial, social and cultural factors. Compared with other European countries, Finland has a short history of immigration. Thus, research on immigrants’ housing pathways in Finnish context is limited, especially from a comparative perspective. In this project, we investigate immigrants’ housing careers, realities and perceptions in the Finnish context, and in the Helsinki Metropolitan Area in particular. Forms of social capital and housing pathways are applied as theoretical framework. The housing situation of various immigrants’ groups, including Chinese groups, Vietnamese groups, second generation Somalis, and western African groups, are explored in this research.

 Elina Sutela

Title: “What gets measured, gets fixed” – Exploring the political economy of housing data and numbers

Data and numbers are vital in contemporary policymaking, directing attention to specific goals and playing a key role in evidence-based policies. Although numbers and statistical data are often framed as neutral, accurate, and objective, they are inherently political. Numerous decisions go into creating statistics and operationalizing indicators, and these choices, along with how the data is interpreted, significantly impact how policy problems are defined, categorized, and discussed. I argue that housing is a major policy area where numbers crucially influence how urban housing issues are framed and defined, yet housing research has largely overlooked the politics of numbers. On one hand, numbers are essential in promoting market-based urban housing policies, emphasizing market efficiency as the benchmark for success. On the other hand, as discussed in feminist political economy, the production of statistical data can serve as a tool of epistemic governance, advancing progressive and feminist policy goals. Drawing on the sociology of quantification, this paper explores the political economy of housing data and numbers. In sum, quantification approaches numbers as a sociological phenomenon—how they are produced, communicated, and their consequences for society and modern life. This paper examines various examples of how numbers are used to frame and expose housing problems or justify specific policy approaches. It particularly focuses on how housing market data or debates on housing shortages shape current policies to promote housing affordability, while also exploring how numbers can be used to advocate for the right to adequate housing.

Jani Vuolteenaho, Juho Luukkonen & Juho Kauppi

Title: The Land Question and the (De-)valorization of space through urbanized policies

As political economists from Harvey to Haila have emphasized, land value differentiation is not only as a battleground between inclusion and exclusion, but also plays a coordinating role in the capitalist urban and wider development. In present-day England, for instance, up to 70% of the sale price of residential properties currently consists of land value (Christophers 2018). By contrast, in declining areas in Finland, for instance, many properties have altogether lost their sale value (as distinct from apartments’ use value), even as collateral for renovation loans. The effects of economic growth, wealth accumulation, and inequality accelerated by the global finance economy and neoliberal policy programs vary strikingly between and within regions and localities, in part mirroring applied (de)regulation policies by local and central governments. Hence, for very timely reasons, analytic and theoretical openings into land-related processes and conflicts have been on the rise in various academic fields. In the paper, our examples will concentrate on the manifestations of financialization of land and real estate in the Helsinki metropolitan area.

Fulong Wu

Title: Governing China’s urban development: state entrepreneurialism