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Unleashing speculative urbanism: Speculation and urban transformations

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  • Helga Leitner
  • Eric Sheppard

Abstract

The papers and commentaries constituting this special issue offer new insights into speculative urbanism from the perspective of two southern metropolises. Based on an international and interdisciplinary collaboration comparing speculative urbanism in central and peri-urban Jakarta (Indonesia) and Bengaluru (India), and interrogating the literature triggered by a seminal 2011 paper by Michal Goldman, this issue extends existing speculative urbanism scholarship in four ways. First, the papers in this special issue take a multi-scalar approach, placing speculative urban practices within the broader spatio-temporal conjunctural contexts shaping their emergence. Second, extending currently economistic framings, they show how speculation also is socio-cultural. The diverse actors engaged in speculative urbanism do not simply seek to accumulate wealth; they do so with aspirations in mind for differentially imagined, but yet-to-be-realized, urban/peri-urban futures. Third, they highlight how speculative urbanism involves a broader range of actors than the usual suspects (developers and financial institutions), including land brokers, individual landlords, the state and its actors, and residents displaced from informal settlements. Fourth, they draw attention to diverse objects of urban speculation; not only land and property, but also more-than-human phenomena such as urban socio-ecologies and socio-technical networks.

Suggested Citation

  • Helga Leitner & Eric Sheppard, 2023. "Unleashing speculative urbanism: Speculation and urban transformations," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 55(2), pages 359-366, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:envira:v:55:y:2023:i:2:p:359-366
    DOI: 10.1177/0308518X231151945
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Michael Goldman, 2011. "Speculative Urbanism and the Making of the Next World City," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 35(3), pages 555-581, May.
    2. Helga Leitner & Eric Sheppard, 2022. "Speculating on land, property and peri/urban futures: A conjunctural approach to intra-metropolitan comparison," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 59(8), pages 1655-1675, June.
    3. Michael Goldman & Devika Narayan, 2021. "Through the Optics of Finance: Speculative Urbanism and the Transformation of Markets," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 45(2), pages 209-231, March.
    4. Bear, Laura, 2020. "Speculation: a political economy of technologies of imagination," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 103433, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    5. Helga Leitner & Eric Sheppard & Emma Colven, 2022. "Market-Induced Displacement and Its Afterlives: Lived Experiences of Loss and Resilience," Annals of the American Association of Geographers, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 112(3), pages 753-762, March.
    6. Shin, Hyun Bang, 2016. "Economic transition and speculative urbanisation in China: gentrification versus dispossession," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 62608, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
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