Neil Gray
Biographic Data
| ID | 5226009 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Neil Gray |
| GIVEN NAMES | Neil |
| FAMILY NAME | Gray |
| SIGNATURE | GRAY N |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Glasgow |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-4795-2095 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 12 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 118 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 12 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2011 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Housing struggles in Athens, Barcelona and Glasgow
Housing is a multidimensional issue: it is at once a fundamental human need, a critical resource, a pillar of urban economies, and a claimed human and/or social right. Radical claims articulated through housing struggles often shed new light on different facets of the ongoing housing crisis, while also functioning as meaning-making, performative practices in their own right. In January 2025, as part of the HousInC research project, we organised a…
Rent controls in comparative perspective
In Scotland, the policy landscape around rent controls is rapidly evolving and full of uncertainty. At this critical moment, an international symposium in Edinburgh brought together activists and academics in similar contexts living with or fighting for rent controls from across Europe and North America. This contribution is organised around reflections from the participants on (1) the history of rent controls in their area; (2) the current rent …
David Harvey
The publication of the first ‘critical introduction' to David Harvey is long overdue and most welcome. Aimed at degree students and more experienced readers seeking to gain a broader understanding of Harvey's voluminous oeuvre, the book is clear and comprehensive, making a strong defence of the ‘power of abstraction' in his work and productively centring crisis at the core of his writings. The book fills an obvious need in terms of the reception …
Capital’s welfare dependency
Comparing case studies of long-term, large-scale urban regeneration projects in Glasgow and Edinburgh, Scotland, this paper brings together two addendums to the rent gap model in the shape of the ‘reputational gap’ and the ‘state subsidy gap’. These neologisms are mobilised to clarify the risk-laden centrality of the state’s role in both the formation and potential closure of rent gaps in large-scale areas of disinvestment and devalorisation. Whi…
Correcting market failure? Stalled regeneration and the state subsidy gap
This paper develops the neologism state subsidy gap to underscore the necessity of state intervention in the formation and potential closure of rent gaps. The state subsidy gap is the economic gap that must be bridged by the state to make a currently unviable urban investment scenario potentially profitable for private developers. The pertinence of this conception is particularly apparent in old industrial, relatively impoverished cities where gl…
From autonomous to autonomist geographies
Autonomist Marxist ideas and concepts are resurgent and, with their latent spatiality, are well placed to contribute to radical geographical debates. In particular, the methodology of ‘class composition’ analysis provides a rigorous, materialist critique of transforming capitalist social relations. This paper first provides vital historical–theoretical context from the milieu of Italian Operaismo, before emphasising the value of autonomist Marxis…
Rethinking Italian Autonomist Marxism
Class composition was the most important concept to be developed within the rich milieu of Italian autonomist Marxism, acutely addressing subject‐object dichotomies and organisational problems of internal differentiation in and between classed, raced and gendered social formations. Yet “compositionist” analysis has received remarkably little attention within urban‐geographical literatures. This paper reviews and develops the class composition con…
Biogeochemical consequences of a changing Arctic shelf seafloor ecosystem
Unprecedented and dramatic transformations are occurring in the Arctic in response to climate change, but academic, public, and political discourse has disproportionately focussed on the most visible and direct aspects of change, including sea ice melt, permafrost thaw, the fate of charismatic megafauna, and the expansion of fisheries. Such narratives disregard the importance of less visible and indirect processes and, in particular, miss the sub…
Beyond the Right to the City
The cry and demand for the Right to the City (RttC) risks becoming a cliché, merely signifying urban rebellion rather than proving its practical content on the ground. I explore the limits of the thesis via its fraught entanglement with private property rights and the state‐form; and through Lefebvre's radical critique of the state, political economy and rights elsewhere. Rights claims, I contend, unintentionally reify the uneven power relations …
Neither Shoreditch nor Manhattan
Speirs Locks is being re‐constructed as a new cultural quarter in Glasgow North, with urban boosters envisioning the unlikely, rundown and de‐populated light industrial estate as a key site in the city's ongoing cultural regeneration strategy. Yet this creative place‐making initiative, I argue, masks a post‐political conjuncture based on urban speculation, displacement and the foreclosure of dissent. Post‐politics at Speirs Locks is characterised…
By Any Means Necessary
When compulsory purchase for urban regeneration is combined with a sporting mega‐event, we have an archetypal example of what Giorgio Agamben called the “state of exception”. Through a study of compulsory purchase orders (CPOs) on the site of the Athletes' Village for Glasgow's 2014 Commonwealth Games, we expose CPOs as a classed tool mobilised to violently displace working class neighbourhoods. In doing so, we show how a fictionalised mantra of …
Glasgow’s new urban frontier
Focusing on Glasgow’s East End, home to the 2014 Commonwealth Games, this paper explores the ways in which narratives of decline, ‘blight’ and decay play a central role in stigmatising the local population. ‘Glasgow East’ represents the new urban frontier in a city that has been heralded in recent decades as a model of successful post‐industrial transformation. Utilising Löic Wacquant’s arguments about advanced marginality and territorial stigmat…
Glasgow’s new urban frontier
Focusing on Glasgow’s East End, home to the 2014 Commonwealth Games, this paper explores the ways in which narratives of decline, ‘blight’ and decay play a central role in stigmatising the local population. ‘Glasgow East’ represents the new urban frontier in a city that has been heralded in recent decades as a model of successful post‐industrial transformation. Utilising Löic Wacquant’s arguments about advanced marginality and territorial stigmat…
By Any Means Necessary
When compulsory purchase for urban regeneration is combined with a sporting mega‐event, we have an archetypal example of what Giorgio Agamben called the “state of exception”. Through a study of compulsory purchase orders (CPOs) on the site of the Athletes' Village for Glasgow's 2014 Commonwealth Games, we expose CPOs as a classed tool mobilised to violently displace working class neighbourhoods. In doing so, we show how a fictionalised mantra of …
Beyond the Right to the City
The cry and demand for the Right to the City (RttC) risks becoming a cliché, merely signifying urban rebellion rather than proving its practical content on the ground. I explore the limits of the thesis via its fraught entanglement with private property rights and the state‐form; and through Lefebvre's radical critique of the state, political economy and rights elsewhere. Rights claims, I contend, unintentionally reify the uneven power relations …
From autonomous to autonomist geographies
Autonomist Marxist ideas and concepts are resurgent and, with their latent spatiality, are well placed to contribute to radical geographical debates. In particular, the methodology of ‘class composition’ analysis provides a rigorous, materialist critique of transforming capitalist social relations. This paper first provides vital historical–theoretical context from the milieu of Italian Operaismo, before emphasising the value of autonomist Marxis…
Rethinking Italian Autonomist Marxism
Class composition was the most important concept to be developed within the rich milieu of Italian autonomist Marxism, acutely addressing subject‐object dichotomies and organisational problems of internal differentiation in and between classed, raced and gendered social formations. Yet “compositionist” analysis has received remarkably little attention within urban‐geographical literatures. This paper reviews and develops the class composition con…
Capital’s welfare dependency
Comparing case studies of long-term, large-scale urban regeneration projects in Glasgow and Edinburgh, Scotland, this paper brings together two addendums to the rent gap model in the shape of the ‘reputational gap’ and the ‘state subsidy gap’. These neologisms are mobilised to clarify the risk-laden centrality of the state’s role in both the formation and potential closure of rent gaps in large-scale areas of disinvestment and devalorisation. Whi…
Neither Shoreditch nor Manhattan
Speirs Locks is being re‐constructed as a new cultural quarter in Glasgow North, with urban boosters envisioning the unlikely, rundown and de‐populated light industrial estate as a key site in the city's ongoing cultural regeneration strategy. Yet this creative place‐making initiative, I argue, masks a post‐political conjuncture based on urban speculation, displacement and the foreclosure of dissent. Post‐politics at Speirs Locks is characterised…
Correcting market failure? Stalled regeneration and the state subsidy gap
This paper develops the neologism state subsidy gap to underscore the necessity of state intervention in the formation and potential closure of rent gaps. The state subsidy gap is the economic gap that must be bridged by the state to make a currently unviable urban investment scenario potentially profitable for private developers. The pertinence of this conception is particularly apparent in old industrial, relatively impoverished cities where gl…
Biogeochemical consequences of a changing Arctic shelf seafloor ecosystem
Unprecedented and dramatic transformations are occurring in the Arctic in response to climate change, but academic, public, and political discourse has disproportionately focussed on the most visible and direct aspects of change, including sea ice melt, permafrost thaw, the fate of charismatic megafauna, and the expansion of fisheries. Such narratives disregard the importance of less visible and indirect processes and, in particular, miss the sub…
Glasgow’s new urban frontier
Focusing on Glasgow’s East End, home to the 2014 Commonwealth Games, this paper explores the ways in which narratives of decline, ‘blight’ and decay play a central role in stigmatising the local population. ‘Glasgow East’ represents the new urban frontier in a city that has been heralded in recent decades as a model of successful post‐industrial transformation. Utilising Löic Wacquant’s arguments about advanced marginality and territorial stigmat…
By Any Means Necessary
When compulsory purchase for urban regeneration is combined with a sporting mega‐event, we have an archetypal example of what Giorgio Agamben called the “state of exception”. Through a study of compulsory purchase orders (CPOs) on the site of the Athletes' Village for Glasgow's 2014 Commonwealth Games, we expose CPOs as a classed tool mobilised to violently displace working class neighbourhoods. In doing so, we show how a fictionalised mantra of …
Beyond the Right to the City
The cry and demand for the Right to the City (RttC) risks becoming a cliché, merely signifying urban rebellion rather than proving its practical content on the ground. I explore the limits of the thesis via its fraught entanglement with private property rights and the state‐form; and through Lefebvre's radical critique of the state, political economy and rights elsewhere. Rights claims, I contend, unintentionally reify the uneven power relations …
Neither Shoreditch nor Manhattan
Speirs Locks is being re‐constructed as a new cultural quarter in Glasgow North, with urban boosters envisioning the unlikely, rundown and de‐populated light industrial estate as a key site in the city's ongoing cultural regeneration strategy. Yet this creative place‐making initiative, I argue, masks a post‐political conjuncture based on urban speculation, displacement and the foreclosure of dissent. Post‐politics at Speirs Locks is characterised…
Correcting market failure? Stalled regeneration and the state subsidy gap
This paper develops the neologism state subsidy gap to underscore the necessity of state intervention in the formation and potential closure of rent gaps. The state subsidy gap is the economic gap that must be bridged by the state to make a currently unviable urban investment scenario potentially profitable for private developers. The pertinence of this conception is particularly apparent in old industrial, relatively impoverished cities where gl…
From autonomous to autonomist geographies
Autonomist Marxist ideas and concepts are resurgent and, with their latent spatiality, are well placed to contribute to radical geographical debates. In particular, the methodology of ‘class composition’ analysis provides a rigorous, materialist critique of transforming capitalist social relations. This paper first provides vital historical–theoretical context from the milieu of Italian Operaismo, before emphasising the value of autonomist Marxis…
Rethinking Italian Autonomist Marxism
Class composition was the most important concept to be developed within the rich milieu of Italian autonomist Marxism, acutely addressing subject‐object dichotomies and organisational problems of internal differentiation in and between classed, raced and gendered social formations. Yet “compositionist” analysis has received remarkably little attention within urban‐geographical literatures. This paper reviews and develops the class composition con…
Biogeochemical consequences of a changing Arctic shelf seafloor ecosystem
Unprecedented and dramatic transformations are occurring in the Arctic in response to climate change, but academic, public, and political discourse has disproportionately focussed on the most visible and direct aspects of change, including sea ice melt, permafrost thaw, the fate of charismatic megafauna, and the expansion of fisheries. Such narratives disregard the importance of less visible and indirect processes and, in particular, miss the sub…
David Harvey
The publication of the first ‘critical introduction' to David Harvey is long overdue and most welcome. Aimed at degree students and more experienced readers seeking to gain a broader understanding of Harvey's voluminous oeuvre, the book is clear and comprehensive, making a strong defence of the ‘power of abstraction' in his work and productively centring crisis at the core of his writings. The book fills an obvious need in terms of the reception …
Capital’s welfare dependency
Comparing case studies of long-term, large-scale urban regeneration projects in Glasgow and Edinburgh, Scotland, this paper brings together two addendums to the rent gap model in the shape of the ‘reputational gap’ and the ‘state subsidy gap’. These neologisms are mobilised to clarify the risk-laden centrality of the state’s role in both the formation and potential closure of rent gaps in large-scale areas of disinvestment and devalorisation. Whi…
Rent controls in comparative perspective
In Scotland, the policy landscape around rent controls is rapidly evolving and full of uncertainty. At this critical moment, an international symposium in Edinburgh brought together activists and academics in similar contexts living with or fighting for rent controls from across Europe and North America. This contribution is organised around reflections from the participants on (1) the history of rent controls in their area; (2) the current rent …
Housing struggles in Athens, Barcelona and Glasgow
Housing is a multidimensional issue: it is at once a fundamental human need, a critical resource, a pillar of urban economies, and a claimed human and/or social right. Radical claims articulated through housing struggles often shed new light on different facets of the ongoing housing crisis, while also functioning as meaning-making, performative practices in their own right. In January 2025, as part of the HousInC research project, we organised a…
Housing, Finance, and Neoliberalism (9 works) · Political science (9 works) · Urban Planning and Governance (9 works) · Law (8 works) · Sociology (8 works) · Politics (7 works) · Law (6 works) · Economics (4 works) · Geography (4 works) · Political economy (4 works)