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During the Great Recession, the housing bubble took much of the blame for bringing the American economy to its knees, but commercial real estate also experienced its own boom-and-bust in the same time period. In Chicago, for example, law firms and corporate headquarters abandoned their historic downtown office buildings for the millions of brand-new square feet that were built elsewhere in the central business district. What causes construction booms like this, and why do they so often leave a glut of vacant space and economic distress in their wake? In From Boom to Bubble, Rachel Weber debunks the idea that booms occur only when cities are growing and innovating. Instead, she argues, even in cities experiencing employment and population decline, developers rush to erect new office towers and apartment buildings when they have financial incentives to do so. Focusing on the main causes of overbuilding during the early 2000s, Weber documents the case of Chicago's "Millennial Boom," showing that the Loop's expansion was a response to global and local pressures to produce new assets. An influx of cheap cash, made available through the use of complex financial instruments, helped transform what started as a boom grounded in modest occupant demand into a speculative bubble, where pricing and supply had only tenuous connections to the market. Innovative and compelling, From Boom to Bubble is an unprecedented historical, sociological, and geographic look at how property markets change and fail-and how that affects cities.
Show moreDuring the Great Recession, the housing bubble took much of the blame for bringing the American economy to its knees, but commercial real estate also experienced its own boom-and-bust in the same time period. In Chicago, for example, law firms and corporate headquarters abandoned their historic downtown office buildings for the millions of brand-new square feet that were built elsewhere in the central business district. What causes construction booms like this, and why do they so often leave a glut of vacant space and economic distress in their wake? In From Boom to Bubble, Rachel Weber debunks the idea that booms occur only when cities are growing and innovating. Instead, she argues, even in cities experiencing employment and population decline, developers rush to erect new office towers and apartment buildings when they have financial incentives to do so. Focusing on the main causes of overbuilding during the early 2000s, Weber documents the case of Chicago's "Millennial Boom," showing that the Loop's expansion was a response to global and local pressures to produce new assets. An influx of cheap cash, made available through the use of complex financial instruments, helped transform what started as a boom grounded in modest occupant demand into a speculative bubble, where pricing and supply had only tenuous connections to the market. Innovative and compelling, From Boom to Bubble is an unprecedented historical, sociological, and geographic look at how property markets change and fail-and how that affects cities.
Show moreRachel Weber is associate professor in the Urban Planning and Policy Department and a faculty fellow in the Great Cities Institute at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She is the author of Swords into Dow Shares: Governing the Decline of the Military Industrial Complex and coeditor of the Oxford Handbook for Urban Planning. She was a member of the Urban Policy Advisory Committee for then-presidential candidate Barack Obama and appointed to the Tax Increment Financing Reform Task Force by Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel.
"From Boom to Bubble is a careful, convincing, and very readable
account of how the real estate bubble that fueled the Great
Recession happened, and Weber indicates, could well happen again.
Weber builds a case for how all the stakeholders in the process -
developers, mortgage brokers, real estate brokers, appraisers,
building managers, real estate lawyers, permit expediters, mayors,
and planners - face incentives to fuel a boom to such an extent
that it becomes a bubble, with real estate investment continuing
unabated even when demand no longer exists and vacancy rates are
high."-- "Planning Perspectives"
"Weber gives us a compelling book that cements her reputation as
one of the top urban planners in the field of urban political
economy. Her sophisticated and nuanced understanding of complex
systems like global finance and real estate markets is conveyed
easily and accessibly to those both inside and outside of academia.
From Boom to Bubble is a major contribution, one that will most
certainly be widely read and discussed for years to come."-- "Joel
Rast, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee"
"Weber offers an innovative and valuable approach, contributing
important new insights and understanding to a multidisciplinary
audience. From Boom to Bubble will be widely read as it contributes
to the long standing and enduring scholarly focus on Chicago as the
paradigmatic city and as a timely explication of financialization,
the defining moment of the twenty-first century. Weber has an
extraordinary depth of knowledge and she writes in an engaging and
readable style that explains complex material in an accessible and
understandable manner. This book solidifies Weber's position as one
of the leading scholars of the urban built environment."-- "Robert
W. Lake, Rutgers University"
"Weber's From Boom to Bubble will appeal to planners, geographers,
sociologists, political scientists, and historians who appreciate a
critical perspective on global real estate and capital flows and
those who study global financial crises. This is outstanding
scholarship, and offers deep insights into the dynamic real estate
markets of this Millennial era."-- "Journal of the American
Planning Association"
"Weber's recent book offers a landmark contribution to the
scholarship of urban studies. Written in a sharp and vivid style,
and drawing from an intimate knowledge of Chicago, From Boom to
Bubble constitutes an impressive work. Combining empirically-rich
material with theoretically-informed research, Weber achieves the
feat of bringing a strikingly new perspective to the much-debated
question of why urban development is prone to overbuilding."--
"Planning Theory and Practice"
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