The Speculative City: Emergent Forms and Norms of the Built Environment

The Speculative City explores property speculation as a key aspect of financialization and its role in reshaping the contemporary built environment. The book offers a series of case studies that encompass a range of cities whose urban fabrics have undergone significant transformation in recent years.

While the forms of these developments share many similarities, their trajectories and social outcomes were contingent upon existing planning and policy frameworks in addition to the historical roles assumed by the state and the private sector in housing and welfare provision. By paying close attention to the forces and actors involved in property development, this book underscores that the built environment has played an integral part in shaping new values and collective aspirations, while also facilitating the spread of financial logics in urban governance. The essays in this collection show that these dynamics represent a larger shift of politics and culture in the ongoing production of urban space and prompt reflections on future trajectories of finance-led property speculation.

Cecilia L. Chu is an associate professor in the Division of Landscape Architecture at the University of Hong Kong.
Shenjing He is professor and associate dean in the Faculty of Architecture at The University of Hong Kong.