Historicizing urban political economy: financialization, platformization, and the past and present of urban studies

Abstract

This chapter engages with urban political economy through the lenses of recent discussions on housing financialization and platform urbanism. I discuss the contribution of urban political economy to understand the present predicament and its limits: on the one hand, a certain tendency to presentism – the risk of overemphasizing the peculiarity of the post-1970s conjuncture in detriment of an understanding of the recursive nature of certain trajectories of capitalist development, and a limited understanding of the politics of the present of urban change. On those grounds, I make a twofold call for the field: I advocate for a deeper historicization of urban political economy by engaging with Giovanni Arrighi’s long centuries and the genealogical gaze of critical logistical studies, and argue for a fully dialectical approach to the politics of urban political economy. In summary, I trace the contours of a conceptual project with both analytical and strategic value: analytical, in that it allows us to understand the present predicament as a peculiar iteration of recursive phenomena driven by dialectical struggles around social reproduction, and strategic, in that it contributes to de-fetishizing financialization and platformization, thereby opening up to a political imaginary capable of visualizing – and enacting – different futures.