Real Estate. Histories of Architecture and Capital

It is often assumed that architects and urban planners are responsible for shaping our cities. Especially since the onset of global capitalism, however, much urban expansion worldwide has been driven by developers and builders in the pursuit of profit. Despite the considerable effects of market logic on urban space, the mechanisms of this influential industry have received comparatively limited attention within architectural history.

This volume collectively foregrounds the actors behind real estate development – developers and builders as well as financiers and media strategists – as producers of architecture. It advances the study of real estate as a significant object of inquiry for architectural history and puts forward methods and types of evidence useful for its investigation. In doing so, it seeks to further our understanding of how cities are designed and the ways speculation has shaped the built environment from the eighteenth century to the present.