Building the speculative city

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Description

Dr. Weber will discuss her research on periods of rapid change in the physical fabric of the city -- the dizzying "construction booms" when the real estate industry, financial system, and public planning all operate in overdrive. By asking what leads developers to build more than the market can support, why they build new instead of modernizing older structures,and why some older, "obsolete" buildings are rediscovered, revitalized, and infused with symbolic capital while others are demolished or lay fallow, she argues that the routine professional practices of private real estate actors, financiers, and local governments create incentives for periodic overbuilding. To illustrate these dynamics, she will examine the case of Chicago's Loop during the Millennial boom, roughly 1997 through 2008.