Rent
Rent is the monthly price of occupying a home that belongs to someone else. In cities where supply does not keep pace with demand —or where housing has become a financial asset— rent absorbs a growing share of income and decides who gets to stay.
The old rule of spending at most a third of income on rent no longer holds in most capitals. Three policies are in dispute: capping prices, expanding public housing, and taxing empty or tourist homes. Each has evidence for and against, and the pieces in this section go through them case by case.
Videos on this term (127)
- Urban geopolitics
How do cities intertwine in a globalized world?
A bus stop brings together strangers, a screen, cables, vehicles, noise and expectations for a few minutes. None of…
3 min read - Urban form
Learn how invisible borders define life in the neighborhoods
Two people pass each other on a street and take only seconds to decide how to behave. A glance can communicate…
3 min read - Infrastructure
Brian Berry: Cities as an Invisible System of Connections
Brian J. L. Berry showed that cities form systems ranked by flows of goods, people and information: central places,…
Brian Berry 3 min read - Surveillance / data
Urbanized Fear: Security, Segregation and Resistance in the City
Teresa Caldeira explains how fear designs the city: the talk of crime, fortified enclaves in São Paulo, the paradox…
3 min read - Urban economy
Castells: From Collective Consumption to the Space of Flows
Manuel Castells's urban thought moved from collective consumption and urban social movements to the network society…
Manuel Castells 3 min read - Housing
Jason Corburn and Street Science: Planning with the Neighbourhood
Jason Corburn proposes in Street Science combining technical knowledge with neighbourhood knowledge to plan healthy…
Jason Corburn 3 min read - Urban ecology
Matthew Gandy: Urban Nature Reveals Power in the City
Matthew Gandy shows that water, waste, parks and expressways are nature produced by political decisions: urban…
Matthew Gandy 3 min read - Urban form
Néstor García Canclini: Where Cultures Mix, Belonging Emerges
Néstor García Canclini explains Latin American urban culture as hybridity: Hybrid Cultures, consumption as…
3 min read - Urban ecology
Unequal Connection: Stephen Graham and Technology in the City
Stephen Graham shows that transport, energy and data networks are a geography of power: fragmentation, bypass,…
Stephen Graham 3 min read - Urban economy
Capitalist Accumulation in Space: David Harvey and the Urban Struggle
David Harvey explains why capital keeps remaking the city: spatial fix, uneven development and housing as an asset.
David Harvey 3 min read - Urban economy
Jane Jacobs: How Life on the Streets Builds Safe and Vibrant Cities
Jane Jacobs argued that mixed uses, small blocks, old buildings and density keep streets alive and safe through…
Jane Jacobs 3 min read - Urban geopolitics
Rem Koolhaas: Manhattanism, Bigness and the Generic City
Rem Koolhaas explains what happens when the city grows faster than the planner's control: Manhattanism, Bigness,…
Rem Koolhaas 3 min read - Urban economy
Who Wins When the City Becomes a Business: Molotch's Growth Machine
Harvey Molotch's growth machine explains who really wins when the city becomes a business: developers, politicians.…
3 min read - Public space
Why Cities Should Not Be Identical Models: Jennifer Robinson
Jennifer Robinson argues in Ordinary Cities that every city can produce theory and that judging them by the…
Jennifer Robinson 3 min read - Urban economy
Ananya Roy: The State Can Also Be Informal
Ananya Roy shows that urban informality is produced by the state as it tolerates, authorises or demolishes…
Ananya Roy 3 min read - Public space
Richard Sennett's Open City: Open or Close the Public Space?
Richard Sennett defends the open city, designed for encounters with strangers, against closed enclosures. Ville and…
Richard Sennett 3 min read - Urban economy
AbdouMaliq Simone: People as the Infrastructure of the City
AbdouMaliq Simone shows that informal networks sustain urban life in the Global South: people as infrastructure,…
AbdouMaliq Simone 3 min read - Housing
The Rent Gap: How It Reveals When Gentrification Has Already Begun
Neil Smith's rent gap measures the difference between current and potential land rent and shows that gentrification…
3 min read - Urban economy
Why Some Cities Innovate and Others Do Not: Michael Storper
Michael Storper explains why some cities innovate and others do not: organisations, technologies and territories,…
Michael Storper 3 min read - Urban form
Mariana Valverde: How Small Rules Order Our City
Mariana Valverde shows that licences, zoning, regulations and policing produce urban order decision by decision.…
Mariana Valverde 3 min read - Housing
Sharon Zukin: How Culture Turns a Neighbourhood into a Product
Sharon Zukin explains how the symbolic economy raises a neighbourhood's value before prices rise: the sequence of…
Sharon Zukin 3 min read - Housing
What a Housing Bubble Is and Why It Is a Problem for the City
A housing bubble appears when price detaches from rents and wages and is sustained by credit and resale…
3 min read - Housing
The Real Cost of Living Away: More Than Rent
Cheap housing on the outskirts is paid in bus hours, fuel, care and lost opportunities: the H+T index, Carlos…
3 min read - Mobility
The Bike Improves Your Health and Enhances Your Neighbourhood
Cycling cuts mortality risk, frees street space, lowers noise and pollution and keeps local shops alive.
3 min read - Housing
Why People Buy Buildings to Leave Them Empty and Who Is to Blame
Emptying a tenanted block converts a wholesale valuation into retail profit: Savills figures, the Fidere, Patrizia…
4 min read - Urban ecology
Water, a Resource Not Everyone Can Enjoy Equally
Who runs out of water first is decided by leaks, planning and distribution, not the climate. Cape Town's Day Zero.…
3 min read - Mobility
Traffic and Fear Kept Our Children Confined at Home
From eight in ten children walking to school alone to one in ten: how the car expelled children from the street,…
3 min read - Housing
Empty Homes and Price Crisis: How Does the Market React?
Why homes stay empty amid a housing crisis and how the market reacts to correction: the home as store of value,…
3 min read - Urban economy
Guggenheim Versus the Rest: Myths and Realities of Iconic Museums
Why the Guggenheim effect worked in Bilbao and failed when copied: the prior plan, Beatriz Plaza's data, the…
3 min read - Mobility
Your Free Parking Costs Way More Than You Think: Shoup's Numbers
A supermarket lot could hold a hundred homes: Donald Shoup's high cost of free parking, minimums copied from…
3 min read - Housing
How Airbnb Changes the City: Rising Rents and Vanishing Neighbours
Airbnb raises rents, replaces local shops and dissolves neighbourhood ties. What the studies show and how…
3 min read - Mobility
The City Steals Time and Offers Speed: Mobility Versus Accessibility
Mobility measures speed; accessibility measures what you can reach. Induced demand, the one-hour travel budget of…
3 min read - Urban AI
Algorithms That Decide Your Rent in Spain and the United States
Revenue management programs pool landlords' data and recommend rents that rise all at once: how they work, the…
3 min read - Housing
Art Washing: Murals, Investment and Displacement in Cities
Art washing uses murals, galleries and festivals to prepare working-class neighbourhoods for investment.
3 min read - Urban geopolitics
Who Experiments in Our Cities? Pilots and Risk in the Global South
Experimental urbanism tests the cities of the future in the Global South, from Eko Atlantic to India's smart cities…
3 min read - Housing
The Historic Centre as a Deceptive Façade: Tourism Without Neighbours
Historic centres restore their stones and lose their residents to short-term rentals and souvenir shops.
3 min read
