Towards a geography of urban financialization in Italy: A theoretical framework

Journal title RIVISTA GEOGRAFICA ITALIANA
Author/s Emanuele Sciuva, Caterina Ciarleglio
Publishing Year 2025 Issue 2025/3
Language Italian Pages 16 P. 84-104 File size 0 KB
DOI 10.3280/rgioa3-2025oa21174
DOI is like a bar code for intellectual property: to have more infomation click here

View article Download Open Access article

FrancoAngeli is member of Publishers International Linking Association, Inc (PILA), a not-for-profit association which run the CrossRef service enabling links to and from online scholarly content.

Towards a geography of urban financialization in Italy: A theoretical framework. Financialisation has gained centrality in academic and public debates, especially since the 2008 financial crisis, highlighting the increasing role of finance in urban processes. Through the emergence of financial markets, actors and narratives, real estate, infrastructure and urban development projects have been incrementally treated as financial assets, transforming cities into global capital markets. Although this phenomenon has been widely studied internationally, the literature in Italy remains limited. This monographic issue of Rivista Geografica Italiana intends to fill this gap, offering a critical review of the literature and proposing new perspectives for the study of financialisation in the Italian context. The authors analyse the global debate, investigating how the dynamics of financialisation find expression in the Italian case, focusing on issues such as housing, short-term rentals, urban development projects and infrastructures. The introductory article is divided into four sections: an introduction that sets out the objectives and methodology shared by the authors; a theoretical framework that examines the emergence of financialisation as an urban theme; a summary of the contributions to the volume; and finally, some proposals to further develop Italian geographical research, highlighting how a look ‘from Italy’ can enrich the international theoretical debate.

Keywords: financialisation, infrastructure, urban development projects, housing, short-term rentals

  1. Aalbers M.B. (2016). Urban financialization. International Encyclopedia of Geography: People, the Earth, Environment and Technology: 1-7. DOI: 10.1002/9781118786352.wbieg2018.
  2. Aalbers M.B. (2017). The variegated financialization of housing. International journal of urban and regional research, 41(4): 542-554. DOI: 10.1111/1468-2427.12522.
  3. Aalbers M.B. (2023). State/finance symbiosis. Urban Geography, 44(4): 796-802. DOI: 10.1080/02723638.2021.2016259.
  4. Anguelov D. (2023). Financializing urban infrastructure? The speculative state-spaces of ‘public-public partnerships’ in Jakarta. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 55(2): 445-470. DOI: 10.1177/0308518X221135823.
  5. Arrighi G., Silver B.J. (2001). Capitalism and world (dis) order. Review of International Studies, 27(5): 257-279. DOI: 10.1017/S0260210501008117.
  6. Bei G., Celata F. (2023). Challenges and effects of short-term rentals regulation: A counterfactual assessment of European cities. Annals of Tourism Research, 101, 103605. DOI: 10.1016/j.annals.2023.103605.
  7. Belotti E. (2023). The invisible hand of the shareholding state: the financialization of Italian real-estate investment funds for social housing. Housing Studies, 38(7): 1260-1283. DOI: 10.1080/02673037.2021.1935762.
  8. Belotti E., Arbaci S. (2021). From right to good, and to asset: The state-led financialisation of the social rented housing in Italy. Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space, 39(2): 414-433. DOI: 10.1177/2399654420941517.
  9. Birch K., Muniesa F. (2020). Assetization: Turning things into assets in technoscientific capitalism. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press. DOI: 10.7551/mitpress/12075.001.0001.
  10. Birch K., Ward C. (2024). Assetization and the ‘new asset geographies’. Dialogues in Human Geography, 14(1): 9-29. DOI: 10.1177/20438206221130807.
  11. Cenere S., Mangione E., Santangelo M., Servillo L. (2023). Setting up a university city. Geographies of exclusion in North Turin. Tijdschrift voor economische en sociale geografie, 114(5): 400-414. DOI: 10.1111/tesg.12550.
  12. Christophers B. (2017). The state and financialization of public land in the United Kingdom. Antipode, 49(1): 62-85. DOI: doi.org/10.1111/anti.12267.
  13. Conte V., Anselmi G. (2022). When large-scale regeneration becomes an engine of urban growth: How new power coalitions are shaping Milan’s governance. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 54(6): 1184-1199. DOI: 10.1177/0308518X221100828.
  14. Conte V., Fiore M. (2024). Quale rapporto tra capitali e territori? Prospettive teoriche e di ricerca sulla finanziarizzazione dello sviluppo urbano. Sociologia urbana e rurale. DOI: 10.3280/SUR2025-17524.
  15. Epstein G.A. (2005). Financialization and the world economy. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing. DOI: 10.4337/9781781008263.
  16. Fields D. (2018). Constructing a new asset class: Property-led financial accumulation after the crisis. Economic Geography, 94(2): 118- 140. DOI: 10.1080/00130095.2017.1397492.
  17. Gambarotto F., Rangone M., Solari S. (2019). Financialization and deindustrialization in the Southern European periphery. Athens Journal of Mediterranean Studies, 5(3): 151-172. DOI: 10.30958/ajms.5-3-2.
  18. Gambarotto F., Solari S. (2015). The peripheralization of Southern European capitalism within the EMU. Review of International Political Economy, 22(4): 788-812. DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2014.955518.
  19. Goulding R., Leaver A., Silver J. (2023). From homes to assets: Transcalar territorial networks and the financialization of build to rent in Greater Manchester. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 55(4): 828-849. DOI: 10.1177/0308518X221138104.
  20. Guironnet A., Attuyer K., Halbert L. (2016). Building cities on financial assets: The financialisation of property markets and its implications for city governments in the Paris city-region. Urban studies, 53(7), 1442-1464. DOI: 10.1177/0042098015576474.
  21. Harvey D. (1989). From managerialism to entrepreneurialism: the transformation in urban governance in late capitalism. Geografiska Annaler: series B, human geography, 71(1): 3-17. DOI: 10.1080/04353684.1989.11879583.
  22. Harvey D. (2005). A brief history of neoliberalism. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780199283262.001.0001.
  23. Harvey D. (2006). Spaces of global capitalism. A Theory of Uneven Geographical Development. London and New York: Verso.
  24. Ioannou S., Wójcik D. (2019). On financialization and its future. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 51(1): 263-271. DOI: 10.1177/0308518X18820912.
  25. Jover J., Cocola‐Gant A. (2023). The political economy of housing investment in the short‐term rental market: Insights from urban Portugal. Antipode, 55(1): 134-155. DOI: 10.1111/anti.12881.
  26. Kaika M., Ruggiero L. (2016). Land financialization as a ‘lived’ process: The transformation of Milan’s Bicocca by Pirelli. European Urban and Regional Studies, 23(1): 3-22. DOI: 10.1177/0969776413484166.
  27. Lauermann J., Mallak K. (2023). Elite capture and urban geography: Analyzing geographies of privilege. Progress in Human Geography, 47(5): 645-663. DOI: 10.1177/03091325231186810.
  28. Lima R. (2024). Subordinate housing financialization: tracing global institutional investment into Lisbon’s urban development. Urban Geography, 45(6): 1072-1094. DOI: 10.1080/02723638.2023.2245302.
  29. Mermet A.C. (2022). Can gentrification theory learn from Airbnb? Airbnbfication and the asset economy in Reykjavík. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 54(6): 1147-1164. DOI: 10.1177/0308518X221094616.
  30. Mosciaro M. (2021). Selling Milan in pieces: the finance-led production of urban spaces. European Planning Studies, 29(1): 201-218. DOI: 10.1080/09654313.2020.1735309.
  31. O’Brien P., O’Neill P., Pike A. (2019). Funding, financing and governing urban infrastructures. Urban Studies, 56(7): 1291-1303. DOI: 10.1177/0042098018824014.
  32. O’Neill P. (2019). The financialisation of urban infrastructure: A framework of analysis. Urban Studies, 56(7): 1304-1325. DOI: 10.1177/0042098017751983.
  33. Pike A., O’Brien P., Strickland T., Tomaney J. (2019). Financialising city statecraft and infrastructure. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing. DOI: 10.4337/9781788118958.
  34. Pollard J. (2023). The political conditions of the rise of real-estate developers in French housing policies. Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space, 41(2): 274-291. DOI: 10.1177/23996544221129125.
  35. Revington N., August M. (2020). Making a market for itself: The emergent financialization of student housing in Canada. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 52(5): 856-877. DOI: 10.1177/0308518X19884577.
  36. Revington N., Benhocine C. (2023). Financializing Through Crisis? Student Housing and Studentification During the Covid‐19 Pandemic and Beyond. Tijdschrift voor economische en sociale geografie, 114(5): 415-430. DOI: 10.1111/tesg.12549.
  37. Savini F., Aalbers M.B. (2016). The de-contextualisation of land use planning through financialisation: Urban redevelopment in Milan. European urban and regional studies, 23(4). DOI: 10.1177/0969776415585887.
  38. Tozzi L. (2023). L’ invenzione di Milano: culto della comunicazione e politiche urbane. Napoli, Italia: Cronopio.
  39. Tulumello S., Dagkouli-Kyriakoglou M. (2024). Housing financialization and the state, in and beyond Southern Europe: a conceptual and operational framework. Housing, Theory and Society, 41(2): 192-215. DOI: 10.1080/14036096.2023.2279529.
  40. Whiteside H. (2023). State and collective ownership: thwarting and enabling financialization?. Urban Geography, 44(2): 326-336. DOI: 10.1080/02723638.2021.1986973.

Emanuele Sciuva, Caterina Ciarleglio, Verso una geografia della finanziarizzazione urbana italiana: un inquadramento teorico in "RIVISTA GEOGRAFICA ITALIANA" 3/2025, pp 84-104, DOI: 10.3280/rgioa3-2025oa21174