Frances Brill
Dados Biográficos
| ID | 1474902 |
|---|---|
| NOME | Frances Brill |
| PRENOMES | Frances |
| SOBRENOME | Brill |
| ASSINATURA | BRILL F |
| AFILIAÇÕES | University College London |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-5438-7605 |
| VERIFICADO | Sim |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 24 |
| TOTAL DE CITAÇÕES | 135 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 24 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMEIRO ANO DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2018 |
| ANO MAIS RECENTE DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 7 |
A Crisis of Displaceability
How housing crises are narrated shapes whose precarity becomes visible and what responses are rendered possible. This paper interrogates how crisis is made legible, is circulated, and contested through the case of Zurich, a city conventionally seen as secure for capital and tenants. Drawing on interviews with private sector actors, media discourse, and engagement with housing movements, we show how Zurich's housing crisis is framed through narrat…
Entangling housing and migration politics
This paper interrogates how private sector actors construct and mobilize migration narratives as part of market-making practices in contemporary urban housing systems. Using a performativity framework (cf. Callon, 1998a , Robin, 2022 ), we analyze how real estate actors generate and circulate narratives and imagery that produce a sense of urgency around housing provision. We argue that such narratives do more than reflect market conditions, they …
The role of (changing) consultants and data in the market for sustainable, financialized, real estate markets
This article explores the politics of expertise in financialized real estate markets. It questions: What expertise is valued in decision-making? How does the type of knowledge demanded by market actors reflect a prioritization of particular forms of expertise and their corresponding experts? In turn, what does this mean for how problems, in this case the question of sustainable property, are understood and navigated in real estate markets? To exp…
How to Make a City into a Firetrap
Despite legislation banning combustible cladding materials after the 2017 Grenfell fire, at least 10,000 buildings were still awaiting remediation in 2022. This is in large part because fragmented ownership and management structures alongside the specificities of British property law produced a situation in which individual apartment owners (leaseholders) were liable for the costs of remediation rather than those who own the buildings (freeholder…
State capitalism, capitalist statism
We respond to the special issue's call for a multiscalar, historicised approach to state capitalism through an exploration of Sovereign Wealth Fund investment into London real estate. We point to how the UK's ostensibly market-led recovery since the 2008 financial crisis has relied in part on attracting 'patient' state capitalist investments. In this, we contextualise the relational regulation of real estate markets as the outcome of intersecting…
Towards a virtual statecraft
In this paper we draw on the findings of a mixed methods research project that has examined the production, regulation, and delivery of housing in London. Our aim is to develop fresh insights into the growing mobilisation of numbers and targets in contemporary planning systems. More specifically, we bring two fields of literature into conversation. First, drawing on recent contributions from Pike et al. (2019) we develop their notion of ‘city sta…
Cladding and community
The longstanding housing crisis in the UK, and London in particular, has been exacerbated in recent years by an increased understanding of the flammability of buildings and the arrival of what activists term ‘The Cladding Scandal’. In this paper, I show how in response to the health and financial risks of The Cladding Scandal, disparate groups come together to challenge the dominant politics of expertise through the enrolment of traditionally ‘ex…
Anticipating demand shocks
‘Patient capital’ is presented by many policymakers as a panacea to address domestic (and sometimes city-level) gaps in financing urban development, particularly housing, that emerged in the post-2008 credit crunch. In this article, we analyse the complexities of patient investors’ entry into residential markets in London and their response to the first major, and unexpected, crisis of demand: the COVID-19 pandemic and immediate falls in market d…
Introduction to special issue on the governance of residential investment
Sourcing and commodifying knowledge for investment and development in cities
In this paper we analyse the role of knowledge and research teams in urban development, drawing on the case of London’s residential market. We argue that in large real estate advisory firms, the brokers and consultants who mediate the arrival of investment into a particular site or city are reliant on research teams, which are often hidden from public awareness and under-researched in academic discussions. To acquire sufficient data to meet resea…
Governing investors and developers
This article argues that urban governance, and academic theorisations of it, have focused on the role and strategies of real estate developers at the expense of understanding how investors are shaped by regulatory environments. In contrast, using the case of institutional investment in London’s private rental housing (Build to Rent), in this article I argue that unpacking the private sector and the development process helps reveal different types…
Constructing comparisons
In this commentary I reflect on experimental approaches to comparative urbanism emerging in recent papers. Drawing on the methodological approaches employed in the special issue on Comparative Methods for Global Urban Studies, I highlight the way in which a more reactive and responsive approach – to both pre-existing conditions and understandings of urban development, as well as realities faced during fieldwork and analysis – have elucidated new …
Practising comparative urbanism
This paper addresses methodological approaches to comparative urban geography and the consequences of such approaches. It demonstrates three ways by which an imaginative comparison can be constructed and employed: letting the sites speak to one another, repeated instance analysis, and tracing. Successfully employing these methods requires adopting comparison as both an implicit ethos and explicit approach during data collection and analysis, answ…
Comparative urbanism in times of Covid-19 and beyond
Living with a pandemic has transformed the everyday lives of citizens globally. For researchers engaged in qualitative comparative approaches that are contingent on travelling across borders, especially those of us living and writing in locations away from where we research, the pandemic has raised practical and methodological questions. Restricted movements and heightened border controls since March 2020 have transformed our practices as early c…
Putting the crisis to work
The emergence of a Build to Rent model
This paper analyses 'Build to Rent' (BTR), a new form of tenure in London's housing market. We examine the ways in which private and public sector actors have shaped the context of BTR's emergence, and developed a model for delivery in London. We argue they relied on and constructed narratives of negativity about the private rental sector, which were juxtaposed with their product to position BTR as a solution to part of London's housing crisis. B…
Follow the Firm
Economic geography and housing studies have begun to grapple with how institutional investment operates and impacts particular cities or sites. There has been less attention to the ways in which institutional investment functions across different scales: the theorization of financialization has, to date, left unaddressed the ways in which global or international actors confront multiple scales of corporate strategy, politics, and markets. In this…
Relational regulation and Chinese real estate investment in London
National governments, urban authorities and supra-national bodies increasingly see the provision of new housing as a core priority. There has been a strong emphasis on reforming the regulatory environments that exist within geographical territories and making them more welcoming to inward investment. However, such outlooks we claim often fall into a territorial trap and give too much prominence to the regulations and policy environments found in …
Towards a pluralistic understanding of Chinese homeowners
Complexity and coordination in London's Silvertown Quays
This paper contributes to existing research on the relational work of real estate developers to demonstrate how internal corporate complexities create opaqueness in governance settings and limit potential community engagement. This work is particularly pertinent at a time when there is renewed interest in the private sector, yet very little analysis that begins from the perspective of the developer. Drawing on the example of London's Silvertown, …
Failed Fantasies in a South African Context
The (proposed) development of private sector-led, large-scale urban projects on the periphery of many African cities has drawn increased attention to the geographical breadth and potential consequences of the phenomena in recent years. This work demonstrates the speculative nature of many of these projects and their ‘world-class city’ aspirations, but also how such plans will exacerbate existing problems, including spatial inequality and environm…
Understanding project mobility
This paper builds on policy mobility research to question how loosely deployed references to specific models or sites reveal how tacit and explicit knowledge are required to effectively replicate urban ideas in new places. Departing from existing analysis of policies and the public sector, we use policy mobility framing to critically engage with the strategies of the private sector. We analyse King’s Cross’ arrival in two large-scale redevelopmen…
The risky business of real estate developers
Recent work on financialization in urban political economy and economic geography has highlighted real estate developers as a point of analysis for understanding urban governance and ongoing urban restructuring. This paper contributes to this literature by showing how an analytical entry point focused on risk mitigation can help better understand the position of developers in urban governance. In doing so, we call for more geographically sensitiv…
Playing the game
The emergence of a Build to Rent model
This paper analyses 'Build to Rent' (BTR), a new form of tenure in London's housing market. We examine the ways in which private and public sector actors have shaped the context of BTR's emergence, and developed a model for delivery in London. We argue they relied on and constructed narratives of negativity about the private rental sector, which were juxtaposed with their product to position BTR as a solution to part of London's housing crisis. B…
Playing the game
Follow the Firm
Economic geography and housing studies have begun to grapple with how institutional investment operates and impacts particular cities or sites. There has been less attention to the ways in which institutional investment functions across different scales: the theorization of financialization has, to date, left unaddressed the ways in which global or international actors confront multiple scales of corporate strategy, politics, and markets. In this…
The risky business of real estate developers
Recent work on financialization in urban political economy and economic geography has highlighted real estate developers as a point of analysis for understanding urban governance and ongoing urban restructuring. This paper contributes to this literature by showing how an analytical entry point focused on risk mitigation can help better understand the position of developers in urban governance. In doing so, we call for more geographically sensitiv…
Anticipating demand shocks
‘Patient capital’ is presented by many policymakers as a panacea to address domestic (and sometimes city-level) gaps in financing urban development, particularly housing, that emerged in the post-2008 credit crunch. In this article, we analyse the complexities of patient investors’ entry into residential markets in London and their response to the first major, and unexpected, crisis of demand: the COVID-19 pandemic and immediate falls in market d…
State capitalism, capitalist statism
We respond to the special issue's call for a multiscalar, historicised approach to state capitalism through an exploration of Sovereign Wealth Fund investment into London real estate. We point to how the UK's ostensibly market-led recovery since the 2008 financial crisis has relied in part on attracting 'patient' state capitalist investments. In this, we contextualise the relational regulation of real estate markets as the outcome of intersecting…
Governing investors and developers
This article argues that urban governance, and academic theorisations of it, have focused on the role and strategies of real estate developers at the expense of understanding how investors are shaped by regulatory environments. In contrast, using the case of institutional investment in London’s private rental housing (Build to Rent), in this article I argue that unpacking the private sector and the development process helps reveal different types…
Relational regulation and Chinese real estate investment in London
National governments, urban authorities and supra-national bodies increasingly see the provision of new housing as a core priority. There has been a strong emphasis on reforming the regulatory environments that exist within geographical territories and making them more welcoming to inward investment. However, such outlooks we claim often fall into a territorial trap and give too much prominence to the regulations and policy environments found in …
Practising comparative urbanism
This paper addresses methodological approaches to comparative urban geography and the consequences of such approaches. It demonstrates three ways by which an imaginative comparison can be constructed and employed: letting the sites speak to one another, repeated instance analysis, and tracing. Successfully employing these methods requires adopting comparison as both an implicit ethos and explicit approach during data collection and analysis, answ…
Complexity and coordination in London's Silvertown Quays
This paper contributes to existing research on the relational work of real estate developers to demonstrate how internal corporate complexities create opaqueness in governance settings and limit potential community engagement. This work is particularly pertinent at a time when there is renewed interest in the private sector, yet very little analysis that begins from the perspective of the developer. Drawing on the example of London's Silvertown, …
Understanding project mobility
This paper builds on policy mobility research to question how loosely deployed references to specific models or sites reveal how tacit and explicit knowledge are required to effectively replicate urban ideas in new places. Departing from existing analysis of policies and the public sector, we use policy mobility framing to critically engage with the strategies of the private sector. We analyse King’s Cross’ arrival in two large-scale redevelopmen…
Cladding and community
The longstanding housing crisis in the UK, and London in particular, has been exacerbated in recent years by an increased understanding of the flammability of buildings and the arrival of what activists term ‘The Cladding Scandal’. In this paper, I show how in response to the health and financial risks of The Cladding Scandal, disparate groups come together to challenge the dominant politics of expertise through the enrolment of traditionally ‘ex…
How to Make a City into a Firetrap
Despite legislation banning combustible cladding materials after the 2017 Grenfell fire, at least 10,000 buildings were still awaiting remediation in 2022. This is in large part because fragmented ownership and management structures alongside the specificities of British property law produced a situation in which individual apartment owners (leaseholders) were liable for the costs of remediation rather than those who own the buildings (freeholder…
Putting the crisis to work
Constructing comparisons
In this commentary I reflect on experimental approaches to comparative urbanism emerging in recent papers. Drawing on the methodological approaches employed in the special issue on Comparative Methods for Global Urban Studies, I highlight the way in which a more reactive and responsive approach – to both pre-existing conditions and understandings of urban development, as well as realities faced during fieldwork and analysis – have elucidated new …
Introduction to special issue on the governance of residential investment
Sourcing and commodifying knowledge for investment and development in cities
In this paper we analyse the role of knowledge and research teams in urban development, drawing on the case of London’s residential market. We argue that in large real estate advisory firms, the brokers and consultants who mediate the arrival of investment into a particular site or city are reliant on research teams, which are often hidden from public awareness and under-researched in academic discussions. To acquire sufficient data to meet resea…
Towards a pluralistic understanding of Chinese homeowners
Playing the game
Failed Fantasies in a South African Context
The (proposed) development of private sector-led, large-scale urban projects on the periphery of many African cities has drawn increased attention to the geographical breadth and potential consequences of the phenomena in recent years. This work demonstrates the speculative nature of many of these projects and their ‘world-class city’ aspirations, but also how such plans will exacerbate existing problems, including spatial inequality and environm…
Understanding project mobility
This paper builds on policy mobility research to question how loosely deployed references to specific models or sites reveal how tacit and explicit knowledge are required to effectively replicate urban ideas in new places. Departing from existing analysis of policies and the public sector, we use policy mobility framing to critically engage with the strategies of the private sector. We analyse King’s Cross’ arrival in two large-scale redevelopmen…
The risky business of real estate developers
Recent work on financialization in urban political economy and economic geography has highlighted real estate developers as a point of analysis for understanding urban governance and ongoing urban restructuring. This paper contributes to this literature by showing how an analytical entry point focused on risk mitigation can help better understand the position of developers in urban governance. In doing so, we call for more geographically sensitiv…
Relational regulation and Chinese real estate investment in London
National governments, urban authorities and supra-national bodies increasingly see the provision of new housing as a core priority. There has been a strong emphasis on reforming the regulatory environments that exist within geographical territories and making them more welcoming to inward investment. However, such outlooks we claim often fall into a territorial trap and give too much prominence to the regulations and policy environments found in …
Towards a pluralistic understanding of Chinese homeowners
Complexity and coordination in London's Silvertown Quays
This paper contributes to existing research on the relational work of real estate developers to demonstrate how internal corporate complexities create opaqueness in governance settings and limit potential community engagement. This work is particularly pertinent at a time when there is renewed interest in the private sector, yet very little analysis that begins from the perspective of the developer. Drawing on the example of London's Silvertown, …
Putting the crisis to work
The emergence of a Build to Rent model
This paper analyses 'Build to Rent' (BTR), a new form of tenure in London's housing market. We examine the ways in which private and public sector actors have shaped the context of BTR's emergence, and developed a model for delivery in London. We argue they relied on and constructed narratives of negativity about the private rental sector, which were juxtaposed with their product to position BTR as a solution to part of London's housing crisis. B…
Follow the Firm
Economic geography and housing studies have begun to grapple with how institutional investment operates and impacts particular cities or sites. There has been less attention to the ways in which institutional investment functions across different scales: the theorization of financialization has, to date, left unaddressed the ways in which global or international actors confront multiple scales of corporate strategy, politics, and markets. In this…
Towards a virtual statecraft
In this paper we draw on the findings of a mixed methods research project that has examined the production, regulation, and delivery of housing in London. Our aim is to develop fresh insights into the growing mobilisation of numbers and targets in contemporary planning systems. More specifically, we bring two fields of literature into conversation. First, drawing on recent contributions from Pike et al. (2019) we develop their notion of ‘city sta…
Cladding and community
The longstanding housing crisis in the UK, and London in particular, has been exacerbated in recent years by an increased understanding of the flammability of buildings and the arrival of what activists term ‘The Cladding Scandal’. In this paper, I show how in response to the health and financial risks of The Cladding Scandal, disparate groups come together to challenge the dominant politics of expertise through the enrolment of traditionally ‘ex…
Anticipating demand shocks
‘Patient capital’ is presented by many policymakers as a panacea to address domestic (and sometimes city-level) gaps in financing urban development, particularly housing, that emerged in the post-2008 credit crunch. In this article, we analyse the complexities of patient investors’ entry into residential markets in London and their response to the first major, and unexpected, crisis of demand: the COVID-19 pandemic and immediate falls in market d…
Introduction to special issue on the governance of residential investment
Sourcing and commodifying knowledge for investment and development in cities
In this paper we analyse the role of knowledge and research teams in urban development, drawing on the case of London’s residential market. We argue that in large real estate advisory firms, the brokers and consultants who mediate the arrival of investment into a particular site or city are reliant on research teams, which are often hidden from public awareness and under-researched in academic discussions. To acquire sufficient data to meet resea…
Governing investors and developers
This article argues that urban governance, and academic theorisations of it, have focused on the role and strategies of real estate developers at the expense of understanding how investors are shaped by regulatory environments. In contrast, using the case of institutional investment in London’s private rental housing (Build to Rent), in this article I argue that unpacking the private sector and the development process helps reveal different types…
Constructing comparisons
In this commentary I reflect on experimental approaches to comparative urbanism emerging in recent papers. Drawing on the methodological approaches employed in the special issue on Comparative Methods for Global Urban Studies, I highlight the way in which a more reactive and responsive approach – to both pre-existing conditions and understandings of urban development, as well as realities faced during fieldwork and analysis – have elucidated new …
Practising comparative urbanism
This paper addresses methodological approaches to comparative urban geography and the consequences of such approaches. It demonstrates three ways by which an imaginative comparison can be constructed and employed: letting the sites speak to one another, repeated instance analysis, and tracing. Successfully employing these methods requires adopting comparison as both an implicit ethos and explicit approach during data collection and analysis, answ…
Comparative urbanism in times of Covid-19 and beyond
Living with a pandemic has transformed the everyday lives of citizens globally. For researchers engaged in qualitative comparative approaches that are contingent on travelling across borders, especially those of us living and writing in locations away from where we research, the pandemic has raised practical and methodological questions. Restricted movements and heightened border controls since March 2020 have transformed our practices as early c…
State capitalism, capitalist statism
We respond to the special issue's call for a multiscalar, historicised approach to state capitalism through an exploration of Sovereign Wealth Fund investment into London real estate. We point to how the UK's ostensibly market-led recovery since the 2008 financial crisis has relied in part on attracting 'patient' state capitalist investments. In this, we contextualise the relational regulation of real estate markets as the outcome of intersecting…
How to Make a City into a Firetrap
Despite legislation banning combustible cladding materials after the 2017 Grenfell fire, at least 10,000 buildings were still awaiting remediation in 2022. This is in large part because fragmented ownership and management structures alongside the specificities of British property law produced a situation in which individual apartment owners (leaseholders) were liable for the costs of remediation rather than those who own the buildings (freeholder…
A Crisis of Displaceability
How housing crises are narrated shapes whose precarity becomes visible and what responses are rendered possible. This paper interrogates how crisis is made legible, is circulated, and contested through the case of Zurich, a city conventionally seen as secure for capital and tenants. Drawing on interviews with private sector actors, media discourse, and engagement with housing movements, we show how Zurich's housing crisis is framed through narrat…
Entangling housing and migration politics
This paper interrogates how private sector actors construct and mobilize migration narratives as part of market-making practices in contemporary urban housing systems. Using a performativity framework (cf. Callon, 1998a , Robin, 2022 ), we analyze how real estate actors generate and circulate narratives and imagery that produce a sense of urgency around housing provision. We argue that such narratives do more than reflect market conditions, they …
The role of (changing) consultants and data in the market for sustainable, financialized, real estate markets
This article explores the politics of expertise in financialized real estate markets. It questions: What expertise is valued in decision-making? How does the type of knowledge demanded by market actors reflect a prioritization of particular forms of expertise and their corresponding experts? In turn, what does this mean for how problems, in this case the question of sustainable property, are understood and navigated in real estate markets? To exp…
Political science (20 obras) · Housing, Finance, and Neoliberalism (19 obras) · Urban Planning and Governance (19 obras) · Politics (15 obras) · Law (14 obras) · Real estate (13 obras) · Sociology (13 obras) · Economics (12 obras) · Business (11 obras) · Finance (10 obras)