Sociétés financières d’immobilier et système urbain mexicain : le rôle des investisseurs dans le renforcement des centralités métropolitaines

During the first decade of the 21st century, institutional reforms were carried out in Mexico to promote the creation of financial entities in the stock market to raise funds for a growing real estate sector. Real estate investment trusts (FIBRA), by converting rental properties into stock market assets, are one of the main instruments. Inspired by the US Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT), these companies manage rental properties in the productive sector, such as offices, shopping centers, hotels, and industrial buildings, among others. This article examines the participation of this instrument in the process of financialized urbanization by analyzing the real estate portfolios of FIBRAs and their diffusion in the urban system. The census and geo-referencing of more than 200 properties allows for an analysis of the structure of the tertiary sector (commercial and office) as a whole. The results show a process of specialization and diversification according to the trusts. On the one hand, the distribution of FIBRA properties in the most favoured sectors of cities reflects the role of this instrument in the concentration of capitalist investment in certain sectors of cities. On the other hand, exploring the actors at the heart of FIBRA market logics in the city of Monterrey, where the political, economic, and social elite constitute a homogeneous social group, allows us to analyze the strategies implemented by local private investors to guarantee their control of the entire real estate chain. Financialization then reinforces the process of 'corporate accumulation by dispossession' (Mbiba, 2017), strengthening the exclusivity of metropolitan economic centers.