The production of value in built and unbuilt environments: Towards planetary financialization?

This research proposal is dedicated to exploring the relationship between the production of space and financialization. Its main goal is to develop, test and share a theoretical and methodological framework for understanding planetary financialization. This working hypothesis suggests that financialization leads to a homogenization and standardization of investment vehicles, practices, and calculative devices influencing the creation of various commodities and assets across diverse economic sectors (such as real estate, agriculture, mining, forestry etc.). Essentially, the contemporary production of space and environment shares increasingly common financial infrastructures, often circulating among different places and economic sectors. However, while investment practices may exhibit more uniformity, the actual outcomes on spaces and human life are inherently unequal both spatially and socially. To check this hypothesis, some questions orient the present proposal: how are these spaces and environments resulting from planetary financialization characterized? Who are the actors? What are the practices and instruments involved in the expansion of finance in the production of space? What are the local and global inequalities that these processes generate? What are the local resistance and the social movements fighting back?

Key Publications

Shimbo, L., Sanfelici, D. (2023) "Globalizing financial valuation: International property consultants in São Paulo", Finance and Society, 9: 35-53.

Bardet, F.; Shimbo, L. ; Carvalho, H. (Eds), Valua terra: Faire la valeur des environments. Lyon: Éditions 205, 2022. 376 p.

Shimbo, L. (2019) "An unprecedented alignment: state, finance, construction and housing production in Brazil since the 2000s." International Journal of Housing Policy, 19(3):337-353. https://doi.org/10.1080/19491247.2019.1573960