Planeamiento urbanístico durante la burbuja y la posterior resaca inmobiliaria: de los excesos del neodesarrollismo a las dificultades de un urbanismo corrector. El caso del área urbana de León = Urban planning during the Spanish housing bubble and after its outbrake: the difficulties of a corrective urbanism. Leon city urban area as a case-study

ResumenEn este artículo se presenta el planeamiento urbanístico del área urbana de León como ejemplo paradigmático del enfoque neodesarrollista que fue característico del pasado boom inmobiliario español, combinando liberalización del suelo y apuesta por el crecimiento residencial como motor económico. Se analizan también sus efectos territoriales, en particular el exceso y la sobredimensión del suelo clasificado, y la situación urbanística una vez producido el estallido de la burbuja. Para ello, el trabajo examina en detalle los planes vigentes en varios municipios (León, San Andrés, Villaquilambre, Garrafe, Villaturiel), tanto desde el punto de vista cualitativo como cuantitativo. Se repasan también los escasos instrumentos existentes en la actualidad para la reconducción y corrección de estos efectos negativos, destacando como conclusión la necesidad de diseñar herramientas específicas, de activar la ordenación del territorio a escala supramunicipal y de repensar el planeamiento a escala municipal.AbstractThis article presents the urban planning of the urban area of León as a paradigmatic example of the expansive approach characteristic of the recent Spanish housing bubble. Its territorial effects are also analysed, in particular the excess and oversize of land classification, and the situation after the bubble outbreak. For this, the paper examines the plans in various municipalities, both from a qualitative and quantitative point of view. The few instruments currently in existence for the correction of these negative effects are also reviewed, highlighting as a conclusion the need to design specific tools, and to activate spatial planning at the supramunicipal scale and to rethink planning at the municipal level.

Theory and Practice of Crisis in Political Economy: The Case of the Great Recession in Spain

This paper addresses Marx’s theory of crisis in order to analyze the Great Recession in Spain, a peripheral economy within the Eurozone. It demonstrates that underlying the problem of the “housing bubble” is an incapacity to generate surplus value, which in turn explains certain particularities related to capital composition, productivity, wages, and finance. The article further carries out a critique of both orthodox and heterodox approaches that focus on (1) profit squeeze caused by labor market rigidities, (2) underconsumption due to stagnant wages, and (3) finances, interest rates, and indebtedness JEL classification: B14, E11, E20, E43, J30

Housing bubbles and land planning corruption: evidence from Spain’s largest municipalities

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to quantify to what extent the housing bubble in the early-to-mid 2000s in Spain exacerbated land planning corruption among Spain’s largest municipalities. Design/methodology/approach The authors exploit plausibly exogenous variation in housing prices induced by changes in local mortgage market conditions; namely, the rapid expansion of savings banks (Cajas de Ahorros). Accounting for electoral competition in the 2003–2007 and 2007–2009 electoral cycles among Spanish municipalities larger than 25,000 inhabitants, the authors estimate a positive relationship between housing prices and land planning corruption in municipalities with variation in savings bank establishments using instrumental variables techniques. Findings A 1% increase in housing prices leads to a 3.9% points increase in the probability of land planning corruption. Moreover, absolute majority governments (not needing other parties’ support) are more susceptible to the incidence of corruption than non-majority ones. Two policy implications to address corruption emerge: enhance electoral competition and increase scrutiny over land planning decisions in sparsely populated. Originality/value First empirical evidence of a formal link between the 2000s housing bubble in Spain and land planning corruption.

Impact of Emotional Perceived Value on the Uncertain Evolution of the Housing Bubble

In China, the housing bubble is not only an economic issue but also an important social and political issue. According to game theory, the housing bubble is an equilibrium result of the interaction between policy environment and participants’ behavior. In this process, due to the interaction between speculation, regulation, and emotions, the development and evolution of the housing bubble are faced with uncertainty. Different from traditional econometric analysis, this article adopts the evolutionary game analysis method in order to establish a multi-stage evolutionary game analysis framework for the housing bubble. Firstly, by analyzing the emotional perceived value of related subjects under optimism, pessimism, and uncertainty, this article explores the mechanism of emotional perceived value on the housing bubble under the condition of inconsistent policy objectives. Secondly, it introduces emotional perceived value into the evolutionary game analysis framework of housing bubbles and analyzes the strategic combination and game equilibrium between investors and local governments under different emotions. Finally, taking Hainan province as an example, it conducts a MATLAB numerical simulation on the uncertain evolution of the housing bubble and proposes a staged strategy combination to deal with the housing bubble. The results show that: (1) emotional perceived value is affected by policy environment; (2) changes in the strength of policy effects make emotional perceived value change, which has different incentive effects on investors’ speculation and local governments’ regulation; (3) there are differences in emotional perceived value in different stages, which improves the uncertainty of the game equilibrium result between investors and local governments; and (4) considering the evolutionary characteristics of the housing bubble in different stages, its countermeasures should not only prevent insufficient regulation but also avoid excessive regulation. The above conclusions can provide theoretical and practical references for predicting the behavior of real estate investors, identifying the evolution mechanisms and rules of real estate bubbles and formulating relevant regulatory policies.

Inequality on the Increase: Trajectories of Privilege and Inequality in Madrid

In Spain, housing is one of the main axes of social inequality. Its position within Spain’s economic model and welfare system is key to understanding why its financialization at the beginning of the 21st century had such different consequences among residents as well as territorially. In this context, from 2001 to 2011, Madrid became one of the most segregated metropolitan areas in Europe. This article delves into how both housing and its location organise inequality in different social spheres and reproduce it over time. To this end, the geography of this inequality is analysed in different social residential trajectories, along with how segregation produces its own dynamics of inequality. The analysis is based on census data and applies a combination of factor and cluster analyses. The results reveal important processes of social residential marginalisation articulated by the interaction between high international immigration and the spatial manifestation of the housing bubble. The main socio-spatial result of this process is the disappearance of mixed social spaces in Madrid, previously located in the centre of the city. This dynamic produces opposite territories in terms of advantage and disadvantage in different spheres linked to social inequality such as education, health, leisure, care and even prejudice. In the process, impoverished immigrants disperse towards the neighbourhoods that concentrate the greatest disadvantages in each of these spheres.

This time is the same: like the housing bubble, the Fed is ignoring the shale bubble in plain sight

We are now far advanced into the third central bank generated bub-ble of the last two decades, but our monetary politburo has taken no notice whatsoever of its self-evident leading wave. Namely, the massive malinvestments and debt mania in the shale patch. Call them monetary bourbons. It is no exaggeration to say that inhabitants of the Eccles Building deserve every single word of Talleyrand’s famous epithet: «They learned nothing and forgot nothing». To wit, during the last cycle they claimed to be fostering the Great Moderation and permanent full employment prosperity. It didn’t work. When the housing and credit bubble blew-up, it washed out all the phony gains from the Greenspan/Bernanke printing spree. By the time the liquidation was finished in early 2010, there were 2 million fewer payroll jobs than there had been at the turn of the century. Never mind. The Fed simply doubled-down. Instead of expand-ing its balance sheet by 50%, as happened during the eight years between 2000 and 2008, it went into monetary warp drive, balloon-ing its made-from-thin-air liabilities by 5X in only six years.