Vertical gentrification: Housing financialization and the high-rise spatial fix in New York City

Keywords: urban geography, critical GIS, political economy, gentrification, New York City
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Tuesday
Session Start / End Time: 3/1/2022 08:00 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 3/1/2022 09:20 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 50

Abstract

New York City has experienced a boom in elite ‘luxury’ housing development. This sort of housing often involves vertical development, building upward into the skyline (e.g. super-tall skyscrapers) and downward into the subterranean (e.g. basement amenities like garages, theatres, or swimming pools). Verticality plays a central role in these buildings’ financialization: driven by elite capital and institutional investors who value the liquidity of super-prime housing, the expansion into previously unbuilt skyline and subterranean spaces enables a “high rise spatial fix” premised on “air mining”, commodifying volumetric spaces above and below the surface of a building lot. Using an original map of over 50,000 high-end housing sales, the paper maps the volumetric characteristics of luxury development in the city using 3D GIS and quantitative methods. On average, new build luxury development increased height by 6.8 stories and more than doubled building volumes. This vertical growth is correlated to indicators of financialization, especially ownership through LLCs and REITs. This suggests that, in the sort of highly gentrified neighborhoods where luxury development is concentrated, institutional investors have exhausted the last remaining supply of ‘disinvested’ land and are turning toward vertical space as a new kind of gentrification frontier.